Day 5 Panama Canal

1-10 Day 5 Panama Canal

Up very early to start observing the transit of the Panama Canal. What an amazing structure. It took almost all day to go through the three sets of locks. It is a lock-type canal that is about 80 kilometers long and unites the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It officially opened the doors to international trade in 1914. Its service is available to a limited number of vessels with a year in advance reservation. Because of larger ships being built, a new canal area is being constructed to accommodate larger and more ships. Currently, the maximum dimensions for a ship are 106 feet wide, 965 feet long with a draft of 39 ½ feet.

The Canal's three sets of locks, each of which has two lanes, operates as water lifts to elevate ships 26 meters above sea level to the level of Gatun Lake, in their transit of the channel across the Continental Divide, and then lower them back to sea level on the opposite side of the Isthmus. During the lockages, miter gates seal the locks chambers and gravity drains the waster to the lower levels. Approximately 197 million liters of fresh water are used for each lockage and ultimately flushed into the sea.

When passing through the locks, ships are assisted by electric locomotives which use cables to align and tow the ships. Working in pairs, locomotives move on rails and keep the vessels in position within the lock chambers.

The first and largest lock was the Gatun Locks – a three step process. There are two lanes, and we followed a Seaborne ship most of the day. Donkeys used to help guide the ships into the compartments so the current locomotives are still referred to as donkeys. For our ship, in the compartments, we had two feet of space on each side of the ship – not a lot of wiggle room!

We sailed a few hours until we reached the next two sets of locks. They had to be divided into two separate locks because the sea floor was not strong enough to handle the weight. The next small lock was the Pedro Miguel Locks – a two-step process. The last was the Miraflores Locks.

During the Miguel Locks, I went back to the cabin and was surprised to find the room dark. As I looked out the window, I realized we were in the lock and our cabin was below the upper level. I immediately snapped tons of pictures of this perspective. Most of the rest of the pictures were taken from the Crow's Nest (highest inside point on the ship) and the 3rd level outside front deck.

I decided to take all my pictures of the last lock from the outside 3rd level bow. It took about an hour – and it was very warm out there! But I took lots of great pictures which I will share at a later time. We are still working out the kinks on getting this blog up and going from the ship.

The most amazing thing about the Canal was to realize that it is about 100 years old and still operating. It is such an important part of transportation for the world. While it is costly, it is still more economical for most ships to go through the Canal rather than sail around South America. We also saw lots of big ships in the Canal area – it is one busy place!!!

Tonight we decided not to eat with our “group of 8” - we're not interested in the nightly ship's entertainment, so we will have a later supper and try to post all my blog entries. We also need to download and respond to e-mails. So, that will be our evening's entertainment!