Two agencies meet you on the water in Panama. SENAN (Servicio Nacional Aeronaval) is the maritime police and coast guard: it does boardings, checks papers and runs search and rescue. The Autoridad Marítima de Panamá (AMP) writes and administers the rules for vessels and seafarers and inspects commercial boats. The Autoridad del Canal de Panamá (ACP) controls the canal approaches at Balboa and Colón, where small boats must stay clear of the channel and the anchorages. There is no Panamanian equivalent of a Coast Guard Auxiliary vessel safety check; what a boarding asks for is your registration or patente, the skipper's licence, your zarpe if you are moving between ports, IDs for everyone aboard, and basic safety gear.
People ask: what will SENAN ask me for, what equipment must I carry, and where can I not go. The documents are listed above. Equipment expectations follow the AMP's rules for the vessel class and the ATP's list for tourist boats (life jackets for all, radio, compass, chart, fire extinguisher). No-go zones are the canal channel, the Balboa and Cristóbal anchorages, port security areas and the marked zones in the Bahía de Panamá.
This collection will cover required safety equipment on Panama boats, SENAN and AMP boardings and how to prepare, boating rules in Panama (COLREGs, speed, canal approaches, no-go zones), navigation lights and signals, VHF, DSC and EPIRB and who listens, boater education, float plans, docking and anchoring safety with big tides and reefs, and small boats around the canal approaches. The Panama City pages on marine offices, official maps and zones, the Bahía de Panamá and the Balboa entrance are live now.
The Florida Coast Guard sub-hub is the twin: the boarding feels similar, the paperwork and the agency are not.