the transit begins

Actually that life boat looks awfully similar to the life boats on the Disney ships. Just stored in a thrill ride-esque position. It does look as if it's designed to be rocket propelled away from the ship once it gets filled up.

I've found the story this far interesting as well. In particular, I too thought the mules pulled the ships, and I had never heard of that nuclear power ship either.

And I've never seen a floating flexible pipeline like that before. Interesting technology.

 

those are the new style lifeboat mounts used whenever design makes possible, they have a release system based on using the weight/mass of the lifeboat and cargo, and yes they are very similar in hull design to the disney lifeboats, stable, hard to roll, self righting, propelled, radio alert beacon activated by use of the boat, many modern safety features, but you still have to have enough time to get some clothing, get up there and get into it before the ship goes down
the nuclear power plant mounted on a ship was a quiet secret, known to many living and working in the canal zone, but not talked about
the pipeline was familiar to me because i live on the coast and the dredges here use the same system, just smaller

 

so we are still in the gatun lake channel, pretty heavy amount of traffic going the other way so far, another container ship approaches at yet another bend in the channel, must make for some nervous moments on the bridge
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and all kinds of equipment is used in the dredging, loaders on barges, dredges, etc
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and another view, i think this might be used to pick up rocks and trees, when the lake was flooded the jungle was in place and is now under 85 feet of water, gatun lake was filled by rainfall and took 7 years to fill
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we are still our own attraction, more of a container ship crew on deck to watch us go by, if you zoom into the photo you see the little digital point and shoots in people's hands, esp the guy to the right sitting on the inflatable raft container
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even the cook has to come out for a look
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and looking aft from stateroom 8090, the arm belongs to my neighbor, a nice young man from denmark, with his wife and 2 litle boys along, he's probably taking a vertical, he's shooting nikon high end gear, full frame and a nice assortment of vr lenses, we'd occasionally talk photography on the verandah's
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starting to move into the cut

the gaillard cut, we are starting to see more maintenance activity, more signs of the business of running the canal
from an increase in the little worker bee boats zipping around, to more bankside buildings, etc.
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the bankside scenery is still the lushest, greenest, thickest growth i've ever seen, we just don'thave woods like that here in the northeast, not even in the pine barrens which themselves can be pretty hard to penetrate
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first view of a maintenance area, i remember hearing we are about half way through in actual miles, we had a running commentary on the pa system all day long, not too heavily accented so it was mostly understandable, i'm not sure if this was the assistant pilot or a narrator specifically hired by dcl,
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now approaching the maintenance complex, quite a bit of machinery, and many boats of different sizes all about
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check out this massive crane, i can't remember what the commentator said it was for, but on reflection, i'm thinking it has to be for lifting those 750 ton lock gates off the hinges for maintenance
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and we continue to be the star attraction wherever we go, people stopped all pretense at work and most had cameras in hand, you'd think they never saw a cruise ship before, i guess all the admin staff is outside, call back later if you need to speak with anyone
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continuing our journey through the panama canal



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Lovin' every minute of your trip report and pictures!

 

so we resume our journey where we left off yesterday, although withn this heat and humidity i feel like i'm typing live from the canal

so just past the crane was another facility, apparently for the servicing and maintenance of the tugboat fleet
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and another view of the tug facility
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and if my translation is sound, i'd guess this is the barge service station
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and the railroad is now a presence,it's been missing from view for awhile but now stays with us on and off for the remainder of the journey
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another lighthouse, i have no idea why, all i can think of is when the early engineers were laying out the canal they decided to make the navigation aids a familiar shape, it's not like this is warning of hard ground or rocks, you'll know pretty quick if you are straying from the channel, you'll be fast aground in mud, thick gooey, gumbo mud, you'll be paying the marine equivilant of a AAA tow in short order
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and here my curiosity was piqued, i could not get enough clear view to figure out, am i looking at private houses, canal authority buildings or some old kind of worker/military barracks, i lean towards that because the united states maintained a very large army presence right up until the canal turnover, and i can't see the us army letting the natives live that close, and that's another strange thing to wrap your head around, maybe the most important commercial shipping channel in the world run not by the navy but the army, army corp of engineers to be precise
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starting into the cut

ok so there is also another interesting type of navigation aid in use, these large striped triangle things,. per the pilot you are looking at them and if the stripes look centered and equal width, you are dead center in the channel, nice low tech pre-gps
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cruising along, something looks familiar, i can't quite put my finger on it
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let's see, all men, basketball court, barracks looking structure, razor wire, double fencing
oh i got it now, it's a minimum security joint, the centro de rehabilitacion, man jail looks the same everywhere, where they going to run, into the jungle??, or right down the center of the only road out?? the train goes by too fast and irregular to plan on catching, and we are such an unusual sight that the convicts even stopped the hoops game to watch us go by, either that or discussing how much easy loot there was for the taking from the tourista
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so now we start into the actual cut, notice the sides start to be terraced, this is all man made, dug out of the jungle hillsides, we are now about to cross the continental divide, smaller scale than the rockies but the same principal, water on 1 side flows east to the atlantic, other side west to the pacific
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and here comes the first of some very interesting passing vessels, very high tech, large, well funded, professionally crewed ocean racing yaghts, these are the big boys in the world of sailing, right up there with a berth on an america's cup contender, only with more danger as these cross oceans under whatever weather the racing brings
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although they don't sail with a crew of 20, looks like everybody brought a friend along for the party passage
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so now we are into the gaillard or culebra cut,extending from gamboa to the pedro miguel locks, pretty narrow, manmade, and those sailboats are still coming at us,
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we'll cover the things in the above photo a little more in depth, first up that multiple pile driver looking thing just ahead, at first i did not know what it was, but since they are widening the cut i did eventually figure out what it is for, it's for drilling blast holes into the bottom, where it's too hard or rocky to just dredge out
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and a few minutes later my suspicions were confirmed, here comes the explosiva boat, bringing in the dynamite for another shot, so we've passed the floating bomb, and now the high explosive stuff goes by, and who thought it would just be watching the jungle go by all day?
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and some more of those sailboats
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and of course i have to show one of the home team
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and more info, these are clipper class boats, taking part in an around the world race,the clipper 07-08 round the world, done in stages,10 month time frame, glasgow, scotland with style just took 2nd place in the new york to halifax leg, race 12, judged by officials and boats called in short of the finish due to light air on 6/7/08
the prior 2 legs were santa cruz, to jamaica, that was the leg they were headed for, and then jamaica to new york, the leg won by the new york boat





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I'm running out of superlatives...

 

The drilling rigs are huge, this has been a great thread

 

What about the explosives boat? I can't see it well enough to be sure, but it looks like it might be Diablo II.

 

moving right along

the cut, and thanks everyone for the kind words, i'm glad to be posting something that many are enjoying, these trans panama cruises are not the cheapest cruises, but it's worth every penny, this is a bucket list type of thing, and i for one am very very grateful to have been able to cross it off the list
so here is where you get a real sense of how this thing is cut through the earth, and look how far back they had to terrace to prevent slides from happening, don't forget, 200+ inches of rain per year
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and it's being widened, due to the international economic pressures of the biggest container ships, a lot of cost to drive those things the long way around
so here we have men at work, and when i zoomed in, i spotted the little picnic area/tent up on the top, under some shade trees
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and machines at work, digging it out, jackhammering it out, breaking it up whatever way is necessary
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hauling it away, 1 load at a time, and i wonder where it's going to??
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and here we are approaching the mountaintop, what's left of it, they couldn't go around it, it was easier to just go through it, and ok i admit to a little laziness at this point in the day, i'm getting sloppy, upper deck overhead, veranda railing in the lower right, and trust me, this was the least sloppy of the choices, but i plead innocent of intent your honor, it was just after a nice heaping plate of barbecue ribs from up on deck 10, brought down and eaten in the shade of the veranda overhang,
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and a little closer view, this is another photo with a lot of elements we'll be checking out a little closer, middle right, yes that's part of a bridge, the centennial bridge, we'll see more of that later, top of the hill, yes that's a building and some little army guys, way up there, bottom right, yeah that's a plain white box truck, like you'd rent at ryder, we'll be finding out a little later what it's unloading
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stay tuned for more of this epic journey

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This is just great, great stuff!!! Thanks so much for taking time out of your vacation to post the pictures!

 

going through the mountain

so we are approaching the bend leading to passing under the centennial bridge, soon to be approaching the pedro miguel lock
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so now a full frontal of the mountain, note how terraced the sides are, and the second terrace from the bottom, has a guardrail, implying a roadway of sorts, maybe how they get up to the top, which has a small building and some sort of transmitter towers
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the jungles are ful of wildlife, but this is all we saw that day, flights of brown pelicans, in this particular case hundreds of them in many small 20-30 bird flights
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building at the top with army guys looking down at us
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remember that white box truck, well this was shoved up against the bank being loaded from it
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yes it's another explosivo barge, nice to see the minimal security for the dynamite, a couple of guys in a pickup truck, that's it, and yes dan, they do have names, this one's the chame II, no dock, just ram the front against the bank and get a load
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double post today

to make up for missing yesterday's daily, most of this post is the centennial bridge, very pretty, the cables look like spiderweb in the right light
starting under the bridge, starboard side view
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and here are those silver thread cables against the sky
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some sort of a small dock just under the bridge approach, never did figure out what it was for and why this lone ship mis docked there, with no signs of life on board
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and another view
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and we are going under the bridge now
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and here is the tropics version of the break room, i figured out this must be a change point for the line handler crews, since our crew came on board at about 0600, it would make for a long day, and maybe unsafe from fatigue by the late day
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