Layne and I spent the summer of 1999 sailing the west coast of Central America. We had a 34 foot Gemini 105 catamaran and traveled with with two large dogs as we spent two years traveling from San Francisco to Key West because I had the dream and Layne had the grounding to get the details sorted out.
We rented out our home in Santa Cruz, Layne took a leave of absence from her law firm and I quit my job driving a truck and off we went. We arrived at the Panama Canal in August 1999 after a year harbor hopping Mexico and Central America.
The hand over of the Panama Canal was scheduled for noon on December 30th 1999 and we wanted to transit well before that date as no one quite knew what the new Panamanian administration would be doing with small pleasure craft, vessels that cost more to transit than we paid. Panama was counting down the seconds until the US flag came down in front of the Canal Administration building and a big party was planned across the country.
A way of life was ending and the signs of withdrawal were everywhere. The United States created Panama in 1903 with the complicity of some wealthy families in the renegade province that belonged to Colombia. The idea was to annex a slice of land to build the canal as a reward for making the Colombian province its own country.
Except it wasn’t really. The new country was cut in half by the canal a zone exclusively American where cabal employees live outside and apart from Panama, a zone where locals were not allowed. Panamanians could cross the canal at two points and at limited openings a constant reminder there country wasn’t all theirs.
The treaty of 1977 restored sovereignty but it wasn’t until 1999 that the United States finally withdrew. We moored our boat at the Balboa Yacht club and started the process of preparing to transit the canal.
To drive through the old Canal Zone last week was a reminder of that past even as we were stuck in traffic trying to leave the city on the Bridge of the Americas over the canal.
The administration building is still there, the US flag is gone as is the monument to George Washington Goethals who supervised construction of the “Eighth Wonder of the World” and became the first Governor of the Canal Zone. Below is the shell of the shopping mall under Ancon Hill where to our astonishment there was a Blockbuster Video Store with all the latest hit movies and which accepted our California membership cards. I don’t recall what hits were showing in 1999.
In 1999 the boundaries of the canal zone were still visible with duplicate streets on either side of the sagging fence that had marked the border of the state within a state. The border had gone by then but the scars of separation were still visible.
The peculiar style of Zone architecture stands out and we inched slowly through these places where we had walked nearly 25 years ago.
It took about an hour to inch up into the Bridge of the Americas so we had plenty of time to reminisce about our 40 year old selves as we recalled our office visits to get our boat measured, to hire line handlers and recycling lines to secure our boat in the huge locks.
It was a jolt after a year of total freedom to come and go as we pleased to find ourselves at a bureaucratic roadblock and to be obliged to ask for passage cap in hand on someone else’s schedule. The American bureaucrats still oversaw the process which was efficient impersonal and not terribly interested in our needs. Panama immediately hiked the transit fee to a flat $500 in 2000 and made it clear small boats no longer shared equal billing with big ships.
I wouldn’t have minded an ice cold Coke at this stage of the traffic jam but dared not lose our place in line. I did notice the name of the store with its bod to the past.
Nowadays small boats are no longer measured for transit but we had to submit to an arcane measuring system that calculated the capacity of the vessel to transport cargo. It’s an obscure measurement particular to the canal and our Admeasurer was a pleasant man whose name I forget but who is probably recorded in the photo album where I store these pre-digital images.
His plan was to take his pension from the outgoing American Administration as offered to all employees and stay on in the job when the Panamanians took over and carry on as before. He was quite content and no wonder!
No dinghies were allowed to land and we had to honk our horn to attract the attention of the free launch service offered by the Balboa Yacht club. The club house had burned down but this was the only place you could stop in the Canal to prepare for transit so the club services continued uninterrupted! Many boaters complained of slow service but we made sure to tip a dollar every time they came out to us and we never kept waiting when we needed to go ashore.
We paid our transit in full, the sun I cannot recall but it was inconsequential, a couple of hundred dollars maybe and we advised we would be staying at Pedro Miguel Boat Club and pausing our transit after we got through the Miraflores Locks. On the appointed day our Advisor arrived.
He was a young Panamanian pilot in training and he advised us what to do in the transit. It was nerve wracking of course and somewhat awe inspiring but we got it done.
Emma napped on one of the long lines we had to rest in case we needed to tie up directly to the walls of the chambers of the Miraflores Locks. You had to have four line handlers and four 125 foot lines for the transit. We had a mixture of friends and hired professional line handlers onboard.
Debs was Layne’s dog and he was the alert member of the family while Emma slept.
We had to hurry up and wait our turn to get into the locks:
We left San Diego in October 1998 as part of the Baja rally to Cabo San Lucas and we got this aerial photograph of our boat as a result.
And a year later we were tied up in the middle of the canal for a few weeks while Layne flew back to California her leave of absence transformed into quitting with no plans to return.
Pedro Miguel Boat Club was a recreation center for canal employees and open to small boats in transit. The Panamanians wanted nothing to do with it and forced it to close. They opened a new marina near Portobello but we did get to enjoy the club in its waning days, a unique experience.
It was a weird island of what we had left behind when we took off across Central America, an oasis of the familiar in an alien landscape, sailing talk, traveler talk among people who understood each other. 
I sent out emails from Internet cafes along the way but at Pedro Miguel they had an Internet connection all their own. Pretty modern in 1999.
Emma and Debs had the run of the place except the clubhouse and it was a break for them also to be in a compound without other dogs where they could roam at will. We had rescued Debs in Santa Cruz from a neighbor who kept him chained up so he lived being free to chase monkeys and explore the club grounds. He and steady quiet Emma were inseparable
I for t six weeks in the club in the rain and heat of the typical Panama climate.
We line handled for friends and I ended up transiting the canal at least three times as I recall.
It was an experience watching ships lock up and down all day and all night from the comfort of your own home. And it’s all gone now.
