Canal I

Now for the Panama Canal itself. It is pretty much a full day's journey. I think it took eight hours.We sailed into what looked like a big bay, went under a major bridge, then it began to narrow a bit but still pretty wide. We came to the first set of locks. Things becomes very narrow at this point. There were literally inches of clearence on each side. 

I wanted to see this in action, but there really isn't alot going on. The boat has to move extremely slowly then finally comes to a stop at a giant iron gate. Water is pumped in from below. There were a couple of announcements as to what was happening, otherwise you ight not even be aware what was going on. The boat slowly rises. You could only tell that by looking at a fixed object on the shore. It finally gets to where the water level is the same as the other side of the gate. Then the gates slowly open and the boat slowly goes through. The gates are huge but they say they're pretty much hollow so it doesn't take much energy to open them.You go from one right to the next lock. It's kind of like going from one bathtub to another. I think there was a set of 3, then later, on the downhill side, a set of 2. So, we make it through the first set and come to a giant manmade lake. When the United States took over the building project, they decided to dam up a river to create a huge lake and then not have to do so much digging. Also, the dam supplied electricity to operate the lock system.