Panama Canal

January 8-9, 2008

When I realized that I would be sailing the Panama Canal for the second time, I initially thought that I might be less enthusiastic than the first…no way! Awaking before dawn I made my way to the upper bow where I soon experienced a warm and breezy sunrise, sipping a cup of hot coffee and munching on a “Panama Bun”…a yeast-like roll filled with a creamy sweet custard. A tropical mist slowly rose from the distant layered mountains and I felt my heart race a bit as I realized that, once again, I would soon enter the Panama Canal.

What an amazing feat of engineering. Opened in 1914, the canal has only been closed twice…once when a land slide filled the canal and closed it for eight months and the second time, for twenty-four hours, when the US invaded Panama seeking Noriega. Some 40 to 50 ships go from ocean to ocean twenty-four hours a day. Indeed, what an amazing engineering feat.

Gatun Lake, a man-made lake, is the key to the whole operation. Losing some 50 million gallons of fresh water with each ship’s passage, the canal is dependent on the more than 200 inches of rain that falls each year in the Panamanian forest. After almost a hundred years of operation, the lake thrives.

Plans continue for the new locks being installed on both sides of the canal. Scheduled to open in 2014…on the 100th anniversary of the canal…these new locks will be wider and deeper thus allowing the newer ships to pass thru the canal. Unlike the older locks, the new ones will have “re-cycling” basins that will help control the loss of fresh water. The new locks will also depend on tugs to control the ships in the channels. Today mechanical locomotives, called “mules” (assumedly because in the original scheme live mules were used) are used to stabilize the ships as they move thru the canals on their own power. (I was under the misconception that these mules actually pulled the ships thru the channels…but learned on this passage that the were there to keep the ship straight as it worked it’s way thru the six locks.)

Taking almost ten hours from the beginning to the end, we have a very pleasant passage. The weather co-operated and although we are very close to the equator we had a nice breeze with very pleasant temperatures. Rising a total of some 85 feet in three locks we spent most of the day navigating thru the scores of ships going in both directions on the lake awaiting their turn at the locks. It seems that many ships make their reservations as far as a year in advance and pay up to as much as $250,000.00 a passage. (The least ever toll was $.32 paid by a 140lb man who SWAM the canal!) Soon after we cleared the last locks at Miraflores we sailed into the Pacific Ocean dropping anchor just off the coast at Fuerto Amador. What a beautiful evening….the lights of the multitude of Panama City skyscrapers twinkled in the distance.

Early morning found me boarding the tenders as I made my way to the port at Amador. The three islands of this area, fast becoming a very popular resort area with scores of cafes and yacht clubs, are connected to the mainland via a peninsula that was formed from the rubble of the channels at Miraflores. As we rode thru the old US Panama district we soon came upon a tall four-story high-rise museum/observation platform overlooking the Miraflores locks. A very informative movie introduced us to the handsome museum which did a great job of filling in the gaps that the ship’s commentators had failed to mention. And with each level came another observation deck which allowed us to see ships passing thru the very channel we had be in just the day before…and offered yet another perspective of this fascinating place.

Upon leaving the museum, we rode thru the old Fort Clayton, the former US Army base which is now used for a variety of colleges and international offices. I saw a large Smithsonian office as well as one for the International Red Cross. FSU, along with other US colleges and universities, has a satellite branch here. We continued on to Albrook Air Force Base. It was interested to see how the houses of the former Air Force VIP’s have been sold and are being re-worked…all since the takeover on December 31, 1999 and all part of the treaty that President Carter negotiated in 1977. We continued to enjoy a great tour of the area with our wonderful guide, a fifth generation Panamanian whose great-grandfather came here in 1910 to work on the Canal….she now holds dual citizenship, but claims Panama as her first country….at lease we enjoyed our tour until our bus broke down directly in front of the governor’s mansion (governor of all of the Panama Canal operations!) The guards were not happy campers thinking, I guess, that we were a bunch of terrorist intent on taking over the stately residence. Not to worry…a rescue bus was soon on the way and we continued to explore the fringes of Panama City learning that the cost of living is very low here, thus the wages are low…but comfortable.

So…my second passage thru the exciting Panama Canal proved to be as equally interesting and informative as the first….I look forward to my next passage! And the next…and the next!!!!