We arrived at the break waters of the Panama Canal at about 7:30am. Seems all cruise ships want the early morning slots so the passengers can watch everything in daylight. The Canal operates 24 hours a day, so it’s all the same to them. We were met by several Canal Pilots who were in charge of guiding us to the Pacific Ocean.
There are plenty of great videos online about the Panama Canal, so I won’t get too much into the weeds. We got the inside scoop from one of our lecturers, who was the General Services Director of the Canal when the US was running it. He sat up in the bridge and gave us hows and whys all eight hours of the transit.
Here you can see the Atlantic lock. It takes three locks to raise us the required 87 feet (26 m) to the manmade lake that is the Canal. On the left two ships are coming from the Pacific, and on the right, there is another cruise ship in front of us that has already gone up one step.
A little later you can see the first of the Atlantic-bound ships getting free.
Here we are approaching the locks. There are three electric trains on each side that ensure we are centered in the locks.
The below video is at 3x speed and shows the closing lock gates on the Atlantic side.
The passing ship shows how close everyone is while in the locks.
Here is the tug that shadowed us the entire trip. It’s only there if a problem occurs, our ship provides all the propulsion.
There is one lock with three gates on the Atlantic side, and two locks with a total of three gates on the Pacific side. We will dock in Panama City tonight and get to explore tomorrow.