Panama Canal Crossing - Day 1

Around 3pm on the afternoon of Saturday, May 14 our 3 line handlers that we hired boarded Faraway at the marina. Ian and I had spent the previous evening wrapping car tyres to protect our yacht from other boats and/or the lock wall and sorting out the lines. We motored out to the designated meeting point on 'The Flats' anchorage. The yachts 'Puffin' and 'Scila' also joined us in the flats. Keith is up the front of Puffin trying to release the anchor. We could hear him cussing from 50 meters away! After an hour or so our 'Advisor' for the first day of the canal transit boarded our yacht from a tug boat. He was a very friendly guy called Ricki who was enthusiastic about his job and really put us all at ease. The photo shows our 3 line handlers and Ricki to my left. At this point we didn't know which vessels we would be going through the lock with. We waited patiently trying to second guess the options that had been allocated to us by the Panama Canal Authority.