Thursday Jan 15, 2026
Hi Gang! We went thru the Panama Canal today! Did you know the construction of the Panama Canal took more than a decade and cost nearly $400 million? When completed in 1914, it created a more economical route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The full Panama Canal crossing takes an average of 8 to 10 hours. For our journey from Atlantic to Pacific, we first entered the three Gatun Locks, which raise the ship 85 feet from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake. After navigating across Gatun Lake, we entered the Pedro Miguel Lock where it was lowered 31 feet. The two Miraflores Locks do the rest of the work, moving the ship 54 feet back down to sea level.
We started off early in the morning watching our ship enter the first lock on the bow of Deck 7. That area is normally only for crew, but the Captain gave all the World Cruisers exclusive access to that area to view the crossing. That was soooo cool!
After that we were so fortunate to be invited up to our good friends Colleen and Steve’s suite (we met them on last year’s World Cruise) to watch the rest of the crossing from their rear deck. Their friends Don and Terri (who we met yesterday), and Marcie and Jim (who we met on the first day and play lots of the passenger games with) were there as well. It was so special to watch it from that vantage point!
After that we had a late (light) lunch and watched the rest of the crossing from our balcony. We got lucky with the weather in the morning when it was actually partly sunny and not real hot with a nice breeze. From about Noon on it pretty much rained hard until the last lock. But I think the first lock where you enter the canal and the last lock where you leave the canal are the best so I was glad we had good weather for each of those!
We chilled in the late afternoon and went thru our hundreds of pictures we took. We even got a cool pic of Captain Abi on the bridge giving us a thumbs up as we left the canal! I’ll do another update tonight after dinner. Happy Thursday to all!
The Wandering Italian 