The Panama Canal

    

The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is like going to the Grand Canyon, no pictures or words can substitute for the grandeur before your eyes and ears. We started our journey at 4:30 am when the ship lifted anchor and set a course towards the entrance. We passed all the ships waiting in the night for their turn to go through and were met by several tugs just past the Bridge of the Americas. By 6:00 we were approaching the first of the Mira Loma locks that we had visited yesterday. We watched as they connected us to 8 of the mule engines to guide our ship through the locks. The Mule train does not pull the ships through the locks, they use their own props for that. The purpose of the Mule is to keep the ship centered as it passes through and is raised by each of the locks. There is generally 2 off the bow and 1 at the stern. In as much as we are such a large ship, we had 2 in the front and  2 in the back on both sides. There is only about 2 feet of clearance on both sides of the ship and the lock. Once we are centered in the lock, they open up and release the water from the lock ahead of us until the water between the two locks levels. This first lock raised the ship 28 feet. We proceeded into the second lock and were raised an additional 28 feet. It is difficult to describe the sensation as you sit on this massive craft, and what seems to effortless, are raised up essentially 3 stories.   

We travelled a short distance to Pedro Miguel lock. again we are met by the tugs who help align us to the lock and are connected to Mule trains to move us safely through the lock. This lock will raise us an additional 29 feet and we will now be at 85 feet above sea level. During the process of lifting the ship, the canal will have used 26 million gallons of water. it will use the same amount for the decent on the Carribean side. We will now cruise through the Gaillard Cut. This was the most impressive part of actually constructing the canal. The Gaillard cut is a slice through the end of the begining of the Rocky Mountains. This is where the continental divide begins. They dug a trench to form a channal for the ships to go around the hills but it all had to be exactly 85 feet above sea level when flooded. They did this at the turn of century. The French tried it, and failed. The Americans under Teddy Roosevelt succeded. At the conclusion, it took almost $750,000,000 to build the canal, most of it went to cutting the Gaillard Cut. Many men lost their lives building the canal due to malaria, disease, and the heat. It cost 500 lives per mile.

The distance from the San Pedro lock and the Gatun lake is the Gaillard cut and is only wide enough for 1 ship to travel through so it is set for all Northbound traffic in the morning and Southbound traffic in the afternoon. This made our journey even more exciting to experience as there were always several ships in the locks at the same time traveling in the same direction. It is a money maker as they charge by the passenger or by the gross weight. for our ship it was approx $350,000. It took several hours to cross Gatun lake which like Lake Mead, is created by damning a river. As we move northward, the lake becomes very expansive with lots of little islands that were at one time hilltops.

The Gatun locks lower the ships to meet the Carribean sea. They are a set of 3 locks were the icing on the cake of this experience. Lifting the ship to 85 feet was impressive, but lowering it down 85 feet in the space of 300 yards was spectacular. We all ventured to many locations around the ship as we went from lock to lock. But for the final lock we all met in our stateroom in the aft and sat on the veranda having a drink while experiencing the last 30 foot drop. To experience up close the size of the gate that was holding back all those millions of gallons just 3 feet in front of us was like being first hand in the King Kong movie where they have those giant gates that keep kong out. They are massive rivited metal that looked like the metal on the Nautilus from 20,000 leagues.  As we left we could see three different ships in the locks all at different stages of lowering. Pictures were plentiful and I am sure we have enough for a DVD which I have been assigned to produce for Christmas.