29 - 30 July

Sunday 29 July – Caribbean Sea.

Panama Canal.  This marvel of engineering took 34 years to construct at a cost in lives of over 25,000 people who died from either tropical diseases or landslides. The Panama hat isn’t made in Panama at all it originated in Ecuador but was worn by the balding Ferdinand de Lesseps during the building of the canal.  They were imported from Ecuador to be used by the thousands of canal workers to protect them from the intense tropical sun.

At 0500 everyone was up on deck as we slowly leave the Caribbean Sea and proceeded along jungle covered banks, through the channel towards the Gatun Locks.  The whole process is truly amazing, we travel through two locks, we approach the first lock and move up to the lock gate and the gate closes behind the ship and the water rises, we rise 9 meters in 8 minutes and the water is gravity fed.  We have been held in place be mechanical ‘mules’ on either side of the ship, these mules travel with us to the end of the lock. 

The ship paid $400,000 to pass through the canal.

It is quite strange standing on the deck and feeling the ship rise so quickly, the gates open and we then move into the next lock and the process begins again, 9 meters in 8 minutes, we are now towering over the land below, we then carry out the same process of 9 meters in 8 minutes, twenty seven meters higher we enter the Gatun Lake. 

  

Gatun Lake is a man-made lake and it is huge and ships anchor up each end of the lake while they are waiting for their turn to go through the locks, we waited over 40 minutes until we could move into the lake.

We passed under the Centennial Bridge and at 1400 hours arrived at the next set of locks which are the other end of the lake and we had to commence our decent into the Pacific Ocean.  Pedro Miguel lock, the first of the last two locks was entered at 1430 hrs and we proceeded to drop 9 meters and we then moved on to Miraflores Locks where we moved through two locks and dropped a further 18 meters. 

At the end of the last lock was a lovely surprise, a very large group of about 200 hundred Panamanians from the nearby city of Panama City  were there to welcome us to the Panama Canal and of course we had to yell “Aussie, Aussie, Oye, Oye” at least twenty times as we went through.  It was great fun and we were having a great time and then the afternoon monsoonal rains came and we scattered inside and they hid under the verandah.

We passed under the Bridge of America and into the bay of Panama, we then anchored at the Balboa Anchorage for approximately four hours to bunker fuel oil, before continuing on our passage to Puntarenas.

The Panama Canal was truly one of the manmade wonders of the world and very different from the Suez Canal, both canals enable thousands of miles to be saved by sailing ships travelling around the world and of course save many weeks of travel.  Some of the passengers said that they saw monkeys in the jungle during the day and it was truly primitive in some places, I am sure that it is where you would find ‘The Ghost who Walks’.

Monday 30 July – Pacific Ocean. The weather is nice, the seas are calm and I spent a lot of time lying in a deck chair and reading today.  Tonight was a Formal Night and fortunately I had one outfit left that I hadn’t yet worn although I had to risk my life by going into the laundry to iron my trousers.

Everyone knows that I am reasonably tough and will do most things but to date I have not been to the laundry preferring to wash in my hand basin than risk being ripped apart by some of the women who use the laundry.  You have no idea the stories I have heard and I have even met a women who was banned from using the laundry because of the trouble she caused.