For all its mere 50 miles, few waterways claim a more pivotal role in the world of international trade and seafaring legend than the Panama Canal. Since its completion by the USA in 1914 – an earlier French attempt ended in disease and bankruptcy – it has offered safe passage from the Caribbean to the Pacific through the heart of Central America, a short cut of some 5,000 miles. As an object of geographic and economic interest, a feat of engineering ingenuity and a focal point of world shipping it is as impressive and relevant today as ever.I am not the world’s most experienced yachtswoman; even so, I realised sailing the Panama Canal would not be as simple as sticking on the engine and heading southwest for 11 hours There are six locks to negotiate for a start. What I hadn’t conceived was the staggering contrasts of the transit from mangrove swamp at the Atlantic, through a tropical lake, a deep gorge and finally the sweeping entrance to the Pacific’s Gulf of Panama, marked by the arching Bridge of the Americas linking South and Central America.
By the time my three fellow crewmates and I reached Panama we had been at sea for eight weeks. Barely having stepped on a sailing vessel before, I had managed to cadge a berth on a yacht delivery from France to Mexico’s Baja California. The appointment was made solely on the premise of my gender and inexperience: the skipper always likes to take one woman, although I’m not sure I ever discovered why, and my incompetence gave him someone to shout at.Day after day of listless sea talk had left me in no doubt as to the magnitude of what we were about to undertake.

Neither had the initiation element of the Panama Canal passed me by. By the time we reached the far side, I would still be as green a sailor as they come – seasickness continues to dog me on everything from rowing boats to cross-channel ferries – but I would at least have one nautical trophy on my side.Confident I was not; it had taken me that time to get to grips with my bowline, a knot eight-year-olds muster in minutes. Yet now the fate of a new 50ft luxury Beneatau rested heavily on my, and my three fellow line-handlers’ knot-tying abilities.The night before our scheduled 5am transit we moored on a buoy in Limon Bay near the canal approach. From the grey mist of the pre-dawn sea our adviser for the day Peter, an American Panamanian, and his apprentice Mr Chan, chugged into view on a canal authority boat and clambered aboard.

It was Peter’s job to ensure the good ship Silvia – named by Swedish crewmember Matthias in deference to his queen – completed this stage of her 7,600-mile journey in one piece. We were on strict orders from the captain to be exceedingly nice. We even opened the cockpit awning for the first time (having previously resorted to tying a sheet above the helm to keep the midday sun off lest we damage the boat’s fixtures before delivering her).Since Spain’s Charles I commissioned a survey in 1534 for a waterway between the oceans, the Panamanian isthmus has been the focus of fraught international wrangling. The Panama Canal Zone, a corridor five miles either side of the channel, reverting from the USA to Panama only in the final hours of 1999.

So it is no surprise that securing and completing a Panama Canal transit is a complicated affair. A mass of form-filling and inspections had had us hanging around the dilapidated port of Col?or days. Finally, we were on our way, but the onus was still on keeping sweet the powers that be.Peter, encouraging but unconvinced, issued instructions over plastic mugs of tea as we motored slowly between the huge container ships that had been our dorm mates, and into a wide mangrove creek. The mood onboard was expectantly sober as we made our way into the channel. Above the gentle pump of the engine the swamp’s assorted wildlife stirred into their early morning routines. Meanwhile, Lorenzo, our additional line-handler – commandeered for the day from the yacht club – snoozed below. The day before, he had acquired for us the necessary four lock-manoeuvring ropes, each 125 feet long.