Panama Canal Transit

Today, Feb. 24th, was the day the Norwegian Jade made its crossing through the infamous Panama Canal. We are currently on a repositioning cruise taking the ship formerly known as the Pride of Hawaii (now named the Norwegian Jade) over to Europe. We first started in Los Angeles, moved down through the Mexican Riviera (making stops at Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco) and through the Panama Canal. Without the Canal, we would’ve added days onto our cruise itinerary. The Canal was built in 1914 and after almost a century, it is still up and running today just like in the ‘ole days. The French first tried to build a passage through Panama, but were unsuccessful. Then, the Americans bought the right to begin construction on the Panama Canal and were successful…fighting heavy rains, mud slides, steep and treacherous quarries, dynamite explosions, train accidents...etc. It was a very hard and daunting task for the United States, but after tens of millions of dollars (this was in the early 1900s…a lot of money) the Panama Canal stood completed and ready for operation.

When we passed through, our ship which is 935’ long barely fit into the locks. There was about a foot on both sides of the ship and barely any room at the bow and aft. We passed through a series of 3 locks and it took us 12 hours to get completely through the Canal. We began at 5 a.m. when a pilot first came on board, we then went through the Miraflores locks, Pedro Miguel locks, across Gamboa (a stunning lake set in the middle of the rainforest) and lastly through the Gatun locks. This was so impressive how the locks first raised our ship up to become level to the Gamboa and then lowered us to the level of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, we were attached to 6 locomotives (3 on each side) that were nickname mules pulled us through the locks. The ship used little to no power through our transit and was piloted by a Panama Canal expert…not our captain…interesting.