Day 6: Panama Canal … Transiting the Big Ditch

Wednesday, 11 January 2017
At Sea … Pacific Ocean
Temps: 90F (32C) @ UTC 6:30P (1:30P Ship’s Time)

A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men
who have done the work of building the Panama Canal.
~Theodore Roosevelt ~

We sailed under the Bridge of the Americas at 4:00p and left the Panama Canal behind for the Pacific Ocean.  The Panama City skyline, which I’ve been enjoying for the past hour is far in the distance.

WOW!  What a great day we had.  The weather was fantastic … hot at times — 90F around 1:30p by my thermometer.  But there was a breeze cooling us down at times.  As long as we were in the shade, it was downright comfy.  And not a drop of rain fell on us … unusual for the tropics.  We’ve always had decent weather for our crossings — this being the third full one since our first in 2002 (plus a partial we did in 2007), but today was the absolute best.

I had a plan for today’s Panama Canal Transit.  That plan failed miserably.  What was the plan?  Why, to take it easy, of course.  After all, we’d been through the canal several times before, right?  I was going to go to the forward decks for the initial approach, then go to deck 5 for some detail shots of the activity on shore, and then return to the veranda to spend the rest of the day enjoying the views from the ship’s stern.  Hah!  In my own defense, I just love this transit and am always too excited to sit still.  Besides, Insignia being a smaller ship than Celebrity’s Infinity — the ship on which we did our first two full transits — I had a different perspective of things on this crossing.

I have tons of facts and anecdotes that I could reel off about the Canal, but I will restrain myself from doing that.  If you’re interested, you can look them up for yourself.  Instead, I am going to share a few photos of our 50-mile transit and call it even.  One fact that I should share … Insignia paid a toll of somewhere around $150,000 today … just to be raised 85 feet from sea level to take us up from the Atlantic, over the Continental Divide, and back down to the Pacific.

Looking back at the first three steps of the Panama Canal — the Gatun Locks.

The Culebra Cut is where the Canal cuts through the Continental Divide.  Its
constructions remains as one of the greatest engineering feats of all time.

Centennial Bridge is one of the two vehicle crossings over the Panama Canal.  It was built
to relieve the traffic crowding the Bridge of the Americas and replaces it as the carrier
of the Pan-American Highway, which runs from Alaska to the tip of South America.

The arrow directing Insignia into the east lane of the Pedro Miguel Lock is just for show.
These days communications are handled via modern telecommunication devices.

These Mitsubishi-built “mules” use steel cables to keep the ship centered in the lock chambers.

As the water level drops in our lock chamber, a cargo vessel arrives to begin its own descent.

Mirror image … literally.  I love this shot from the mirror inside our cabin.

Entering the first of the two chambers of the Miraflores Locks …
our eight-hour transit will be over before long.

Look at all the people who have come to the Miraflores Visitor Center to cheer us on.

We’re out … looking back at the Miraflores Locks.

One of my favorite photos from today … even with bad light.
The last time we saw the Pacific entrance to the Neopanamax Locks, dirt was
still flying and construction was far from completed.  This was all built …

… to accommodate mega cargo vessels.  These vessels are huge!  Compared to regular cargo ships, which carry around 7,000 containers, these behemoths can carry 13,000.  Too bad I
have nothing to provide perspective at the time we encounter this vessel in Gatun Lake.

The Panama City skyline rises from behind the rainforest … or so it would seem.  it’s just an optical illusion of the zoom lens … the city is actually quite a distance away.

And that’s a wrap for our day going through the Panama Canal.

[If you’re so inclined, you can check out the many photos I posted in the blog story I wrote of our 2014 crossing. I am also including a link to the time lapse video Mui put together of our 2014 transit. Claiming that doing the video once was sufficient, he did not break out the camera today.]

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