Crossing The Panama Canal

Apologies to those have been reading so far.  The formatting took a turn for the worse on my last entry. Hopefully that’s rectified now.  Anyway, its back to business as usual with this post.

So, I did the coolest things I think I’ll do on this trip. I crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Panama Canal. My crossing started with an early wake up call, 5.00am in fact. Shiny and showered I headed to top of the ship as we took our turn entering the locks in the canal. There are ships littered all around, some waiting to traverse the canal and others that have just sunk, a little disconcerting when you are on a cruise ship.

Our pilot took us past the attractively named city of Colon and at 7.00am into the first of the three locks you must negotiate to make it up to the man-made Gatun Lake which is 26 metres above sea level. Each of the new locks are 426 metres long, 54 metres across and 19 metres deep. By way of comparison the Crown Princess is 290 metres long, 36 metres across and has a draught of 5.3 metres. We made it quite easily.

It is a ridiculously complex process. Before entering the Atlantic side locks a pilot comes on board to bring you to their entrance. A second pilot comes on board to take you through the three locks, then the Gatun Lake pilot embarks to take you across the lake. The pacific lock pilots then join to take you through the last three locks, and a final pilot comes on board to take you back out of Panamanian waters.

To further complicate things there are a series of specialist tugboats used along the way. You have one to get you into the locks, two whilst you are in the locks (both Atlantic and Pacific sides), another to help make a turn at a critical point on the lake and final tugboat to help you exit the last lock and out into the channel leading to the Pacific Ocean.

It is an engineering marvel. The locks have sliding doors at either end and each hold 101,000 cubic metres of water. They fill and empty in eight minutes. There are twenty-four staff required to tie up each ship in each of the locks and the entire process takes 9.5 hours. Made up of about 30 minutes to transit into Panamanian waters to the first lock, 1.5 hours to clear the Atlantic locks, 5.5 hours to cross Gatun Lake, another 1.5 hours to clear the Pacific locks and a further 30 minutes to leave Panamanian waters on the Pacific side.

Gatun Lake is man made and was created by damming the Chagres River, from there you hit the Culebra Cut. This was commenced by the French in the 1880’s and abandoned, then the United States purchased the canal and completed the cut in 1913.

The entire elevated level of the canal is through jungle allegedly populated by an assortment of wildlife, we saw none of it. That being said there was plenty of bird life present and the only other creatures of note I witnessed were a couple of American crocodiles, something the crew told us was almost unheard of.

One of the most interesting thing to note along the canal was Renacer Prison. It was here Panamanian strong man, drug dealer, murderer, gun runner, money launderer and all-round top bloke and snappy dresser Manuel Noriega was incarcerated after he had served prison time in both the US and France.  Bordered by the Panama Canal on one side and the jungle on the other three and dotted with three imposing guard towers. It seemed like a pretty bleak place to spend any time in, let alone your dotage.  

There was also an old floating crane built by the Germans and used from 1941 until it was confiscated for war repatriation in 1945. Officially known as Titan and affectionately known as Herman The German it worked in multiple shipyards before moving to the Panama Canal in 1996 to help with dredging. It had worked n some pretty famous lifts including the refit the Battleship USS Missouri and the Spruce Goose (Howard Hughes' behemoth of a plane). In Panama it replaced two even older floating cranes that had been in use since 1914!

There are also three substantial bridges you pass under as you cross from one ocean to another. The Atlantic Bridge, The Centennial Bridge and The Bridge of the Americas. It is pretty cool that these are what connects North and South America. As you cross below the last of these Panama City can be seen in the distance dominating the skyline. I was astounded at the high-rise and skyscrapers that littered the city. They say it’s built on the prosperity generated by the Canal. I somehow think there may be some money coming in from another source.

As I contemplated this we sailed away at a stately 10 knots and Panama City slowly faded into the distance. Tomorrow night at 2.00am we cross the equator. There used to be a somewhat gruesome initiation that sailors had to undertake the first time they did this. I trust our Cruise Director has something a little more pleasant in mind.