Tuesday July 30 – Panama Canal

We had a wonderful day passing through this marvelous engineering feat.  Because the land was not flat, the canal had to be built by flooding three cities and making lakes and then using a lock system based on gravity.  Since we last came through this canal, they have made another new canal next to it.  Two pilots boarded the ship at about 6 am.  We then entered the first lake, the Gatun Locks at about 7.30 am  It took a couple of hours to clear this lock and then we were put in a holding bay for about an hour because one of the two lanes in our passage was being cleaned and so had all the water drained out of it.  At about lunch time we entered the Pedro Miguel Lock followed by the Miraflores Locks,, which we exited at about 6 pm.  There is a viewing platform at this exit and many Panamanians and tourists had come down to see us exit the Canal.  The guy in the cabin above us had decorated his balcony with a boxing kangaroo and Australian flags.  We watched most of the day from our balcony.  We had a champagne breakfast delivered to our room.  There was so much food that we ended up eating half of it for lunch on the balcony as we watched the rainforest drift by.  Our ship is what is called a Panamax ship.  This means that it just fits into the locks with only about 25 cm to spare in each direction.  The ship uses its own power to move forward but there were three mules attached to each side of the ship to prevent sideways movement which would cause scraping of the vessel.  The mules are not animals but rather vehicles made by Mitsubishi.  Cables link these mules to our ship and guys in rowing boats row out to attach the cables to the ship.  Evidently they have tried all techniques to do this but the rowing boats have proved the most efficient. Our destination lecturer Hutch gave a running commentary over the ship's PA on the Panama Canal from 7 am to 7 pm - an incredible effort.

After a most interesting day we had a Canadian magician, Jean Boucher, to entertain us.  He was very good and related well with the audience.  How do they manage such sleight of hand.  He gave one lady a red ball which she had to hold in her closed fist.  He said some magic words and her eyes opened in surprise when two balls were there.  A moment later her expression was classic as the two balls turned into twenty balls dropping all over the stage.