If this is all you signed up for, then this is your day!
However, it’s my guess that as exciting as the Canal is, you’d have missed a “boatload” of experience by only transiting the Canal. Hey, you could do the Canal and be back on a plane home in 10 hours!
Sunrise at 6:30 followed by the normal wonderful breakfast plus some super chicken this morning.
José 3 treated us to an amazing briefing about the Canal with Q&A following. He provided way too many tidbits to remember, but through photos and maps at the back you will have, I hope, enough to push you to learn and appreciate more.
When our questions died down, José showed the PBS special film on the Canal: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/panama/
We watched from the dining room as our lead ship, the Alkyonis, got its call to move to the Canal, and soon we watched our pilot arrive to be our guide (each vessel going through the Canal must have a Panamanian pilot onboard to communicate with Canal Control and to be responsible for safe passage).
The beginning of a trip through the Panama Canal happens way before the beginning. You must apply and wait in a very long line (as many as 400 ships in a que). The above is a print out of just four vessels due for the southbound transit today. It covers all the stats of the ship, departure time, her cargo, here type, her port of registry and lots more.
Goodbye Panama City and hello to our companion ship through the locks today.
This is one of our life rafts aboard the Discovery. It is simply released from an upper deck and inflates and launches itself. Cool!
Left: our pilot arrives.
Above: This companion vessel was with us for a short distance to the Miraflores Locks. It contained some crazy number like 5000 automobiles in temperature and humidity-controlled decks. It is too wide for the old canal and so took the new canal fork after this bridge.
We finally get a close-up of the Bridge of the Americas. Plans are being made to rebuild it…it’s already to low for some of the big ships!
These enormous cranes are kept busy offloading and unloading cargo from both side of the Canal. On the right and behind the cranes is the Panama Railroad which picks up and delivers goods to/from ships and runs parallel to the Canal. The cranes to the left do a similar loading operation for cargo coming from or going to road traffic on the Pan-American Highway cross country to/from Costa Rica.
One of the new $5,000,000 tugs. Their engine produces 4000 horsepower and they have amazingly skilled captains!
One tug finishes guiding the Alkyonis into the Miraflores Locks ahead of us. The linesmen toss ropes tied to cables so that the mules can take over centering the ship in the middle of the lock These locks will bring us up 54 feet.
Our lead ship is into the next lock waiting for us to cruise in and lash up to the side.
There sure are some gorgeous bridges in Panama!
This is one of the large container ships that we passed on the journey. The largest of these types pay $1,300,000 for each trip through the Canal!!
The day continued as we climbed through the Pedro Miguel Locks and made it through the Culibra Cut and finally into a mooring point in a side channel of Lake Gatun. All the other traffic continued on and in a few hours were out the other side of the Canal into the Caribbean Sea.
We were incredibly lucky to be able to spend three days “inside” the Panama Canal, to absorb its many features and take our time to enjoy them.
The trip through the locks and the tons of information about the Canal were pretty exciting, but the day was barely ½ over. After lunch, the crew lowered the hydraulic sub-deck and broke out the kayaks. The next few photos speak for themselves as to whether our group had any fun in the water.
Paul and Barbara were the first to launch.
Gail and Sheila were next.
Mary and Val quickly got coordinated and seemed to win the race out and back.
There was an optional motor boat tour of several of the islands in Lake Gatun in the late afternoon which resulted in these photos of two rather protective sloth mothers with their babies.
In addition to a crocodile who was too fast for my camera, this lazy toucan made the trip a very successful one.
Hoist the wine flag, Captain, it’s been a day!
