Our ship is too large to go through the original locks of the Panama canal; therefore, we get to experience the new locks which were built to accommodate the larger ships being constructed today. We are scheduled to begin entrance to the new locks on the Panama Canal at 5:00 AM. Here we are waiting outside the locks awaiting our turn – long before the sun comes up.
As a typical tourist, I awoke early to claim my viewing spot.
Unfortunately, there are no outside public viewing areas on the front of the ship other than the helipad, and they did not open the helipad area to guests until after 6:00 AM. I’m not sure of the rationale for that decision, but since the sun had not risen until then, I am guessing it was a passenger safety issue. Our ship waited near the entrance until it was our turn to traverse the locks. We are using the Agua Clara locks. The name comes from the community where these locks are located. The photo above was taken from our stateroom TV. There was a live stream of our progress showing on the TV.
The trip lasted about 2.5 hours. Tug boats are in front, back and each side of our ship centering it with the lock. There is little room for error. Our ship entered lock 1 and the gate closed behind it. The gates weigh about 4000 tons each!
Then, the recycled fresh water starts filling the second lock and raises the ship to the level of the water in lock #2. Due to the early morning hour and the cloudy skies, we could faintly see a container ship in front of us in the third lock. An alarm sounds and the gate is opened, and our ship moves into lock #2. Each lock had two gates. On this day, only one was in use for locks 1 and 2.
There is maybe a foot or two of clearance on each side of the ship as we enter the lock. There are bumpers all along the sides of the canal and a tugboat which will serve as a guide and as a padded buffer between us and the gate. Our ship sails all the way to the tugboat. This takes a while and the sky begins to get lighter. I was fortunate to find a seat near the window at the front of the ship in the buffet area as the sky started getting lighter. The chandelier was in my view, That’s probably why the seat was still available, but I could still see the process of the locks pretty clearly. and I just leaned forward to see and get a photo. The people in my photo are actually one deck below me in the observation lounge.
The clouds are just too full, and the rain starts pouring. I was glad I had not camped out at the helipad early in the morning after all. The photo below is taken when we are in the second lock. You can easily see how much higher the water is in the third lock coming up. Our ship would pull into the lock, and the back gate would close. The water level would rise until it was even with the water level in the next lock, then the gate would open and we would sail through.
This process repeated all three times except at the third lock where both gates were in use. The far gate served as a bridge for vehicles. A motor coach is crossing on top of the gate in the photo below. I would have thought that they would have a traffic crossing bar similar to railroad crossings, but they actually had a person placing traffic cones in front of the entrance as the alarm sounded to open the gates of the lock.
We sailed calmly into Gatun Lake. If we were traveling all the way through to the Pacific, we would continue on our journey and traverse three additional locks on the Pacific side. But ours is only a partial transit, so we turn around, wait our turn in the lake, and go back the way we came.
On the return trip through the locks, a Panama Canal guide gave commentary over the public speakers. We alternated between watching from our port-side balcony room and watching the transit from our stateroom television. Viewing from the side gave a definitely different perspective than our front view. Having a balcony on one of the higher floors gave us a great perspective. It was also fun to go all the way up to the lido deck and down to deck 5 which had an outdoor deck where you could be almost on eye level to all of the activity below. This is so much different to river cruising in Europe. When traversing those European locks, having a balcony just means you are seeing the wall of the canal as you traverse the locks.
After the partial transit, our ship sailed under a bridge and made our way to the port in Colon, Panama.
This bridge is lit up with changing colors at night.
Then we docked in Colon, Panama.
We took a ship’s excursion which included a stop at the visitor’s center where we could watch a video and supposedly see the workings of the Canal from land. Our itinerary included other stops in Panama and the visitor’s center was last. We got there just as the sun was setting and no more ships were sailing through. But seeing the canal from this vantage point was still impressive, and we viewed a video in the visitor’s center there all about the building of the Panama Canal
Click this link for my post about the rest of our time in Panama from the port of Colon
Wow! This was a bucket list experience for sure. Such an amazing fete of engineering. I highly recommend it to anyone who can go.