The first Blue Planet Odyssey and Pacific Odyssey yachts will start making their transit of the Panama Canal today, Saturday 14th February.
Despite the Carnival weekend meaning that many of the ‘course advisors’ each yacht must have onboard being on holiday, the Canal Commission has done its utmost to ensure the yachts get through the Canal as speedily as possible.
The first batch of yachts to go will be Lovesail, Windwalker, Tom Tom at 1740 on Saturday, followed by Chapter Two, Blue Wind and Ransom at 1840. The next transit and final five yachts are scheduled for Monday.
The yachts will complete the transit in two days. The first group will raft up at Gatun locks in two groups of three yachts each. From here they will go up to Gatun Lake and overnight there, completing their transit on Sunday morning through the second set of Miraflores Locks into the Pacific Ocean. The process will be the same for the second group of five yachts: they will go up to Gatun locks on Monday and continue their transit on Tuesday.
The Panama Canal has a live webcam for the two locks, which can be viewed at the link below if you would like to try to spot them as they go through:
http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html
Map of Panama Canal – Source Wikipedia.com – Click to enlarge.
