“Order of the Ditch”

Many fellow passengers have been waiting for today and took this specific itinerary to get to experience today. It’s the day we transit the Panama Canal from the Atlantic side to the Pacific. We end the day in Panama City after traversing the 3 lock stations, cuts and lakes. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that excited about it but I recognize that it’s definitely an incredible feat of engineering and ingenuity and I understand its significance to world wide trade. Going through the locks was really interesting, and I was up at 6:30 am to see what was probably the first sun rise of my vacation along with dozens of others on board. I was pleasantly surprised by the views from the ship as we passed through Gatun Lake.

There is a plethora of information on the canal, its engineering, its history etc, and I can’t face beginning to distill it into an interesting post. So I’ll provide a bit of information I have gleaned from the on ship guide, and some other info sources, but it’s not at all intensive. Can you tell I’m coming to the end of my journey and I’m a tad weary?

Some Milestones in the Panama Canal History:

1914 – August 15 – The Panama Canal is officially opened

1962- October 12 – the first public crossing, the Bridge of the Americas, is opened for public use on the Pacific side of the canal

1999 – December 31 – Panama takes over the administration and operation of the Canal

2016– June 26 – the expanded canal is officially opened.

2019 – August 2 – Inauguration of the third Bridge of the Atlantic

So yesterday afternoon we beat it out of Bocas del Toro late due to some passengers not getting back on the ship on time. I’m sure the Captain was not pleased as we had to be in moorage at the entrance to the canal by 2 am to secure our reserved spot for today. Windstar pays a premium to be able to book specific dates for their crossings.

We started moving this morning, with a Panamanian pilot on board at about 5 am, and we joined a line of ships moving toward the narrower “Panamax” locks. Just as the sun was rising we went under the high span of the Atlantic Bridge, completed in 2019 that joins the two sides of the isthmus for vehicular traffic.

There is now a new channel of the canal (finished in 2016), to allow for the super large ships, and the huge passenger ship in line behind us veered off to the port and entered the “Neopanamax Locks” as it was too large to get through the smaller channel. The new channel allows for more and larger traffic, by increasing the width and depth of the locks. The larger ships are 1 1/2 times the size of the previous ships and their capacity is twice as much.

We did not enter the first set of locks until almost 8 am. There were three locks to get us up to the highest point, of Gatun Lake, 85 feet above the ocean. There was a car carrier going through the lock in the other direction which was 106 feet wide. The lock is only 110 feet wide so there was only 2 feet clearance on each side. Tight squeeze!

I’ve “locked through” on numerous occasions on the Rideau system between Ottawa and Kingston and have seen the Sault Ste Marie locks for the lake freighters going through from Lake Huron to Lake Superior so I’m familiar with the operation. Of course, this is a bit larger scale! Something I hadn’t seen before were the small mechanical “mules” that run along the sides of the canal with lines on the ships to make sure they stay centred in the lock. For small ships 2 mules are used but for the larger ones they used 8.

As you have no doubt read, there was a severe water drought in Panama last winter and the number of ships allowed through the locks is dramatically reduced. I think they said from 42 to 22. Many of the large container ships are forced to go around the southern tip of South America as the explorers once did. One of the changes they have made to deal with the water shortage is to re-route water between the two channels while emptying one and filling the other so that less water needs to be used from Gatun Lake.

We locked through the second lock, Pedro Miguel Lock, at approximately 2:00 pm. There was just one small step in this lock to take us down to the level of Miraflores Lake. And then the last step, the Miraflores Locks was two steps of 27 ft each to take us down to the level of the Pacific Ocean. After just 54 miles but an all day adventure we had transited from the Atlantic to the Pacific and earned a pin adding us to the “Order of the Ditch”.

Today, we sadly received Panamanian customs forms, luggage tags and instructions for disembarkation tomorrow morning. The two weeks have flown by and it’s been a fabulous adventure. While I am on this adventure by myself, I have met some wonderful people along the way. I first met Clair from Denver/Wisconsin last year on another Caribbean cruise, and we got on so well that we planned to be on the same cruise at the same time this year. And as it turns out, a friend from Calgary who I haven’t seen for probably 10 years, Karen, unknown to me had booked this very same cruise. So it’s been great to re-connect and spend time with both of them as well as Adrienne last week. We did our own thing sometimes and did things together at others. Always lots to talk about and laughs over our dinners. Tonight the three of us celebrated our last supper at the outdoor Candles Restaurant instead of the main dining room, and it was a lovely evening.

Don’t know if I’ll have time to post tomorrow as I will be disembarking and staying over night one in Panama City before my flight home on Sunday. I hope you have enjoyed this journey. Until next time……..