Are cruisers able to transit the Panama Canal?

[Pontoonrob]

I have been searching but my Google ** is not good. My friend and I are hoping to transit the canal. We understand there are significant backups for the commercial ships. We can find no info regarding sailboats. Does anyone have any experience with this recently?

[JPA Cate]

No experience, but the slowdown is due to drought in the area. They won't care about sailboats, way too small a part of their business; and Panama want to keep Gatun Lake fresh water. People are likely to be "tetchy" when they're afraid they may run out of water.

Ann

[Munoz]

Cruising yachts for the most part are unaffected as normally up to 3 yachts are locked thru together with smaller comercial ships so no extra water is consumed.

Right now the world rally boats have just started going thru and this does tend to create a bit of a backlog (in previous years 2 week wait between being measured and the transit date was the worst case scenario, it may be a bit worse this year). Outside of the February/March high season is is unusual to have to wait more than a week (I was offered a slot 48 hours later back in July)

[disputin]

Originally Posted by Munoz

Cruising yachts for the most part are unaffected as normally up to 3 yachts are locked thru together with smaller comercial ships so no extra water is consumed.

Right now the world rally boats have just started going thru and this does tend to create a bit of a backlog (in previous years 2 week wait between being measured and the transit date was the worst case scenario, it may be a bit worse this year). Outside of the February/March high season is is unusual to have to wait more than a week (I was offered a slot 48 hours later back in July)

SV Basik just posted that they heard back from their Panama agent and due to shipping back-ups and drought, they won't be able to transit until late March.

So yes you can transit, but it will be delayed. Whatever the Panama planning window was before it just got extended by about 60 days.

Sean

[grantmc]

Originally Posted by disputin

URL="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxPH3YeAw7J-fOmScQuJ2A"]SV Basik[/URL] just posted that they heard back from their Panama agent and due to shipping back-ups and drought, they won't be able to transit until late March.

So yes you can transit, but it will be delayed. Whatever the Panama planning window was before it just got extended by about 60 days.
Sean

That's a dummy whammy for world shipping given the missile attacks for ships passing the Horn of Africa on their passage to/from the Suez Canal.