Friday,  Feb 01 - Day 12 of holiday and Day 10 on board Island Princess

Happy Anniversary Freddi!

Ships awaiting the Canal

 

Panama and Containers

This day commenced at about 6:45 am and was to be marked by our trip through the Panama Canal.  Naturally we wanted to get up early enough to see the Bridge of the Americas as we passed under that.  Opps ....  missed that as our timing was off.  However we did get to view the bridge after the fact.  We did get to the bow deck on our floor in time to see the approach to the Miraflores two step locks to Miraflores Lake which runs up to the Pedro Miguel locks.  These three steps raise the ship by 85 feet (26 m)  from the Pacific Ocean.  The current lock length is 1000' and 106' across.  That makes it a tight fit for most of the ocean going ships today.  Some of the container ships hold up to 4000 containers and can still fit into these locks.  Some of the larger container ships that now hold up to 12,000 containers cannot go through the current locks.  There is a huge project going on at both the south and north entrances to the canal to allow larger ships to pass.  That will also increase the number of lanes available from 2 to 4 and they expect this monstrous project to be complete late in 2015.  There was evidence of this work at the entrance from the Pacific side as well as where we exited later in the day.  The increased capacity will double revenues for the canal and will allow ships that are up to 1200' and 160' wide to go through the canal.

Two lanes - two ships

The canal is an amazing engineering project that was completed at the beginning of the 20th century (opened in 1914).  A failed attempt by the French to build a sea level canal was rescued by the Americans and re-designed to construct a higher route (+85' - 26 m) that still required a huge effort.  The French lost some 20k people due to malaria and other mosquito born disease.  This was a very dense rain forest so there were tons of mosquitoes.  The Americans waged war on the mosquitoes and then built the 80 km canal after the French abandoned their efforts when their allocated money ran out.



Rowboat guys.....

As we left the southern entrance locks we sailed past the 12+km of sheer cut granite and limestone through the Continental Divide.  This is called Culebra Cut.   It was very impressive and one wonders how they accomplished this at the turn of the century.  That part gave way to the more open man-made lake called Gutan Lake that is the second largest man-made lake in the world. In that lake we passed some freighters filled with containers and the Pacific Princess cruise ship.  That was the name of the ship on "The Love Boat" television program.  There was much tooting of horns and waving when we passed the sister ship.



Centennial Bridge past the first locks

As the day wore (the whole process was a 8.5 hour event) on we approached the set of three locks that drops us the requisite 85' down to the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. As in the other locks we watched the men row out to secure the ship to the "Mules" which guide the ship through the locks.  Each ship has 8 mules (4 on each side)  that regulate the speed, stopping capacity and distance from the concrete sides as they enter the locks.  Their key role is to keep the ship centred in the lock as the side space is sometime measured in inches.  The mules are 2.9 million dollar diesel engines that run on a track on the shore and are attached to the ship by heavy cables.  These mules are built by Mitsubishi and are very important to the successful transfer through the locks.

Freddi and The Love Boat

 

Mules at work

Once we arrived at the exiting locks we were delayed as the largest crane (Titan Crane) on the canal was dredging one of the locks and only one was usable.  That delayed us by 1.5 hours but also gave a good view of this huge crane as they pulled it out of the lock.  We filled its vacated space and our process of descending started.  It took almost 2 hours and we were standing in different parts of the ship taking photographs.  There were many good photo opportunities and we both clicked off quite a few pictures.  Once free of the third lock we sailed past the town of Colon which is one of the largest container shipping piers in the world.  It is run by the Chinese thereby fueling the myth that the Chinese control the canal.  The Panamanians control the canal and generate some 5 billion dollars a year.  Our ship pays somewhere close to $400k for the transit in one day.  However, the Chinese do control the large sea ports in the world and this one actually allows assembly of product for final shipping without charging any duty to thee shippers.  This industry supports this industrial town.

We had been outside on the sun and the wind pretty much all day and were both feeling the effects of the sun.  My face was burned and even Freddi got a sunburn on her nose and cheek bones.  It hurt and we were brilliant at our evening dinner.

As it was the date of our anniversary we had reserved at Bayou for dinner.  Goran was back in the right restaurant for him and we were joined by Mario as he decanted a fine wine for the occasion.  I enjoyed oysters with baked parmesan followed by a small servings of seafood gumbo while Freddi enjoyed  creole spicy shrimp followed by a small servings of chicken and sausage jambalaya as appetizers.  The main course was the Carpet Baggers Filet dinner with a lobster tail added to mine.  The dinner was superb and the selection of Don Melchor wine was a perfect match.  This wine can be seen on www.concheytoro.com.  Our waiter made it a special evening and we rolled out of there close to 10 pm.

Ships waiting on Atlantic/Caribbean side