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Posted 09 September 2007 - 10:19 PM
From his Blog (posted 7th Sept. '07)
"I promised Bob of the CruiserLog Web that I would give a report on Panama after transiting. However, I do not have his email address on this laptop and thus post the information here - he may freely copy it onto his discussion board.
Firstly, I use an agent where a lot of cruisers do everything themselves and thus save quite a considerable amount of money. The reason for using an agent is time - we are undertaking a delivery and the quicker we can get through the canal the better. I used Stanley Scott and he is kept updated as to the date and time of our arrival in Colon. Within an hour of our arrival we have been measured by the Canal Admeasurer and the relevant documentation completed and our certificate issued. This was done at the Panama Canal Yacht Club, where after I motored across the bay to Shelter Bay Marina as there was no room at PCYC for us. Stanley took care of both our immigration, emigration, cruising permit (needed by all yachts irrelevant if cruising or not), Zarpe and other documentation. I include immigration in this as we have two South Africans on board needing visas for Panama. We are supposed to have the visas before arrival but Stanley has a friend who "disregards" this requirement for, I am sure, a small fee, and just stamps our passports.
So, the cost to us was $1254.00, which included our transit fee, agent fee, immigration, emigration, cruising permit, Zarpe, one line handler with 4 lines and 6 tyres for fenders, two visas and an overtime fee of $20.00 as we arrived on Monday which was declared a public holiday to celebrate the start of work on the new deep-water locking system they want to complete by 2014. We did not pay a deposit of $850 which a cruiser would pay if they were doing all the running around themselves.
We arrived on Monday and started our transit on Wednesday, completing it on Thursday. Other cruisers I spoke to at Shelter Bay, who had done all the running around themselves, told me that they had been waiting for over a week for a transit and could not understand how we get to transit before them - all I can say is that I am sure some third world under-counter exchanges are made to "make things happen".
Whilst in Trinidad we learnt of problems with cruising yachts entering the Ecuadorian waters and new restrictions and reporting procedures. The Galapagos Islands are part of Ecuador and we are going to arrive there without complying with the new regulations which, when read, only apply to vessels over 500 MT, which the authorities appear to disregard and apply to smaller vessels as well. Lets see what happens when we arrive there.
Well, that's enough for now - regards from all aboard."
Read his very interesting blog about his current delivery at:
http://www.sailblogs...ber/deliveries/
The Sailblogs blog really has some great features for cruisers.
Also see the Cruising Wiki page on the Panama Canal - HERE.
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