Day 12

Thursday, Oct. 6

What a great day through the canal.  We were up early, and went under the Bridge of the Americas at about 5:30.  Then we travelled north until we reached the Miraflores Locks where we entered the first lock at about 7:00 am.  This was really interesting.  We were in the left channel, and with our staterooms on the starboard (right) side of the ship, we could watch the operations of the large ship that was just ahead of us.

The Miraflores Locks raise the ship in two steps, about 54 feet in all, and then a short sail on Miraflores Lake to get to the third lock, Pedro Miguel Lock.  Here we were raised the final step to get to 85 feet above sea level.  After that we continued on and went under the Centennial Bridge, and then on into the Culebra Cut.  Ships can only go through this area one at a time due to the narrow channel.  It is here that the major work was done, and this area requires constant dredging as the land continues to slip down into the canal.

Once through the cut, we were on Gatun Lake, which is a man-made lake, at one time the largest in the world.  It is where the water for the locks comes from, and is replenished by all the rainfall.  Arthur, our guide from yesterday, said that Panama gets 26 feet of rainfall each year, so that is lots of water constantly being added to the lake.  The unfortunate thing is that they fill the locks with fresh water, and then dump it into the sea when they empty the locks.

They are building new sets of locks at both ends of the canal so they can take the bigger ships in use today.  These locks will recycle most of their water so that they won’t use much more than today.  These locks are to open in 2014 which will be the 100^th anniversary of the Panama Canal.

It was about a 3 hour sail through Gatun Lake, and then we came to the final set of locks at Colon on the Caribbean Sea.  The Gatun Locks have all three steps together, and we were lowered the 85 feet to sea level in a relatively short period of time.  From there, it was off to Columbia where we were to reach Cartegena by morning.

Very hot again, and there was a huge thunderstorm to the east as we reached Colon, but we didn’t get any rain.  It remains very humid, and it is almost uncomfortable unless we are inside our air conditioned cabin.