On Monday morning we arrived at the entrance to the Panama Canal to begin our passage to the Atlantic Ocean. We began our passage about 7 am and would be more than 12 hrs in passage. The canal is 82 km long and each ship passing through the locks requires on average 52 million US gallons of fresh water.
There are locks at both the start and the end of the canal. The first set had 3 locks. We were passing through the most recent enlargement of the canal, opened in 2016, and accommodates the large ships. This is the first time for the Queen Anne to pass through the canal.
In order to go through the locks, our ship had to bring their lifeboats in and partially onto the promenade deck since they aren’t allowed to have anything outside of the sides of the ship. It takes about 2 1/2 hrs just to get through the first 3 locks. Then we made our way through the canal unti we were in Lake Gutan. as we made our way to the far side of the lake, we had a couple hours wait for our pilot to arrive and take us through the last set of locks to the Atlantic Ocean.
We have another day at sea before we reach Willemstad in Curaçao.
Following Joyce & Paul's Travels in Retirement 