Ocean to Ocean

Saturday, February 1, 2025

We’re here! The Eighth Wonder of the World - the Panama Canal!

Today we will make a full transit of the Panama Canal. It will last almost 11 hours. We will spend most of the day outdoors, on our balcony. (None of the passengers will be able to get off the ship today.) We have been through the Canal several times, but it is still a thrill to be here. I have a lot to say about some of Ken’s photos, so I am not going to bother with captions - they are harder to do on my iPad.

Construction of the Canal commenced in 1904 and took 10 years to complete. 22,000 lives were lost during the French attempt to construct a canal in the 1880’s, mostly due to tropical diseases. During the 1904-14 effort to build the canal, the official number of deaths was 5,609, but many historians believe the true number was much higher.

We will be passing through the original section of the Canal. The Coral Princess is a Panamax ship, which means it was built to be able to fit through the original canal.

In 2016 an expansion of the Canal was completed, a project that had encompassed about 10-years. The expanded waterway includes locks that can accommodate the gargantuan modern container ships.

Here is the Bridge of the Americas, which carries the Pan-American Highway over the Canal. As we sailed under the bridge, we said adios to the Pacific Ocean.

There is a lot going on in this next photo. You can see: 

• Both channels of the original canal
• The Miraflores Locks
• What a Panamax ship looks like in a lock (scraping the walls?)
• Three different water levels. The ship on the left has been elevated inside the first lock. The ship on the right is even more elevated, having passed into the second lock.

It is necessary to use external power to move the ships through the locks. They do not use their own engines. The power is supplied by powerful locomotives called “mules.” This method has been used since the opening of the Canal. Here, two mules are tied to the forward port side of our ship by steel cables. Of course, there are a total of 8 mules being used to pull us into the locks.

If you know what this bird is, please put it in the comments.  At one point we saw some deer, but we weren’t quick enough to get a picture.

Below is a good photo of a lock with the gates closed. You can see how much higher the water is on the left side. It is probably still filling up. These locks do not use pumps - they operate solely by gravity.

Here is another view of a lock with closed gates at Miraflores Locks. Note the steep incline that the mules will be ascending as they pull a ship through the locks. In the distant background a container ships can be seen making it’s way through the new channel (it is mostly orange).

Yeah, we are that close!

Here’s one starting to open.

The final lock in the Miraflores section.

At this point, the old and new channels are fairly close, but they are not at the same elevation.

Looking backwards to see what it looks like when the other guy is still in the last lock.

A member of the cruise staff has been narrating from time to time. He had a lot to say about container ships. The average container ship will carry 15,000-17,000 containers. 

He also had a lot to say about China, and I’m not sure he fully realized that he was reading a not-so-subtly scripted explainer about the role of China in the new Canal and in the operation of the Canal today. China doesn’t technically “operate” the Canal, but they have recently signed 25-year contracts to operate the ports at both ends of the Canal.

The Pedro Miguel Locks will do the last lift before we reach Gatun Lake, created during the original construction of the Panama Canal. There is a big arrow on top of the building at the tip of the pier. It tells the next ship which side of the lock to enter. The arrow lights up at night, as the Canal operates 24/7.

You can also see two little rowboats tied up at the end of the pier.

The purpose of the rowboats is to take the cable from the mule and bring it to the ship so it can be tied onto the ship. It’s trickier than it looks, apparently. Other methods have been tried over the years, including the use of motorboats, but nothing has worked better than the simple rowboat.

Then there was this heavy-duty looking dredge.

And that bit!

On one side of the lake there was a large dam to help control the quantity of water in the canal. We could see how dense the jungle was here. This is a photo of the Chagres River, taken from Lake Gatun, prior to entering the locks that will take us down to the Caribbean Sea.

Almost done!

After the excitement of our Canal Day, we had a nice dinner and then went to see a comedian named Steve Moris. He was once in the Beach Boys” backup band, but became a comedian. We enjoyed his humorous takes on aging and being a little overweight.

Today’s fabric is Panama Duck. It is a type of canvas that is usually made from a blend of cotton and polyester. It is tightly-woven and heavy, strong, durable, and water-resistant. 

Panama Duck was first produced during the construction of the Panama Canal and was used in clothing, tents, and sails. In those days it probably would have been 100% cotton.

Here we have cotton Panama fabric, 300 cm wide, “for tipis, tents, and awnings,” from StoffGarnConneXion on Etsy.