The panama canal

[Doc Vernon]

Capture P Canal.JPG

Wed May 10^thPanama Canal: Beganpassing through this engineering wonder (now 103 years old) at 8:15am (andfinishing by 5pm).Always exciting, always slightly different& always a setting for photography.Record breaking: Last week, the largest ship yet – a 14,000-container capacity Chinese ship –became the largest vessel yet to pass through the Canal, but through the new,$2 ˝ billion new locks. Even its toll established a record; $1,000,000. Today, as we pass through, it is business as usual: 36-37 ships a day use the Canal. 13,500 ships a year and earn $2.3billion annually for Panama. Currently, 50% of the shipsusing Panama are containerships, often very big containerships. Ourtoll today (for the 50,000-ton Crystal Symphony and just in case youwanted to know) was $200,000.Thu May 11^thCartagena (Colombia): Daybreak:Early morning arrival for2-day, overnight stay in this skyscraper-lined port. The Monarch,the former Royal Caribbean Monarch of the Seas, is here as well. Now operating for Spain's Pullmantur, she was offloading and then re-loadingSouth American & European passengers for a 7-night southern Caribbeancruise. Some people have enjoyedvery diverse travels – and in particular sea travels. Now in his80s, Marco Roccalia was born in Switzerland and as a teenager and young manjoined his professor-father in making long journeys by sea – and on some veryvaried ships. His father knew lots about passenger ships back inthe 1950s & '60s and closely followed their itineraries andschedules. Together, they'd make long summer trips, sometimes completelyaround the world. Marco's father would map the connecting ships inthe various ports. He recalled, "When we lived in northernItaly, we would sail from Genoa. We took the North German Lloyd comboship Frankfurt from there out to Hong Kong. The ship wassmall but very beautiful, could carry over 80 passengers, but there were as fewas 25 on our trip. With lots of stops, it took 5 weeks from Genoato Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we crossed to Japan, Hawaii andfinally San Francisco on the President Wilson. An American ship, Irecall it being immaculate – shining everywhere! Afterward, we crossedAmerica by train and eventually took the Leonardo da Vinci home from NewYork to Genoa. The entire trip took almost four months.""Another trip fromGenoa took us back to the Far East, an area which interested my father,"recalled Marco. "The East was still quite different, quiteexotic even and not as modern nor as busy as today. We left Genoaon the Guglielmo Marconi and sailed through the Suez Canal toSydney. After a week or so in Sydney, we caught the Mariposaand sailed up to San Francisco. From there, we took P&O's Chusanacross to Yokohama, Kobe and Hong Kong. At Hong Kong, we laterswitched to the Cathay, another combination-style passenger-cargo shipcarrying only about 200 passengers, which took us back to Australia, toSydney. From Sydney, we returned home to Italy on the AchilleLauro."Marco, his father andfamily later moved to New York City. From there, he and his fathermade three other, long sea trips. "We took the Argentina fromNew York to Rio de Janeiro and from there we boarded a Dutch ship, the Tegelberg,and sailed to South Africa, Southeast Asia and finally to HongKong. Afterward, we crossed from Hong Kong to San Francisco on the PresidentCleveland. That trip, as I remember, took 4 ˝ months."The two other tripsfocused on Africa and then South America. Marco remembered,"We crossed from New York to Southampton on the Queen Elizabethand from there caught the Pretoria Castle to Cape Town and Durban in SouthAfrica. Then we switched to another Union-Castle passenger ship, the RhodesiaCastle, and sailed along the East African coast, passed through Suez andthe Mediterranean before finishing in London. We finally came home fromSouthampton to New York on the Caronia.""The South Americantrip took about 2 ˝ months," he concluded. "We sailed from NewYork to the Panama Canal and then south to Valparaiso on the Santa Isabel,a Grace Line ship that could carry about 50 or so passengers, but had only 14onboard our trip. From Chile, we later crossed over to Argentina andfinally landed at Buenos Aires. We were supposed to sail north tothe USA, from Buenos Aires to New Orleans, on the Del Mar, another shipwith about 100 passenger berths. But there were some last minute changesand instead we sailed to New York instead and on the far larger Brasil."Marco has kept scrapbooksof his trips and to date has since logged 50 or so cruises – on the likes ofHolland America, Cunard, Silversea, Regent and Crystal. Hefinished: "I keep up my father's tradition and travel by ship. I still love ships & the sea!"

[Derek Overton]

I remember the excitement when told as a18 year old ass, steward we were going through the Panama canal with coal from Norfolk Virginia to Japan. I was told keep the crusts of bread to feed the donkeys, I was the donkey when we arrive and I found out what the donkeys were, it was a fabulous experience to see

[robpage]

I've been through the Panama a few times for some reason we would get swapped from the Angola to Texas run on to the Ecuador to California run I think an awful lot depended on whatever import duty the USA was placing on foreign oil at the time we never stopped it was just a continuous passage if we had to do any waiting we seems to wait doing very slow speeds through the lakes I remember it vividly has been the most humid sweaty place that I never been to and we didn't have the pleasure except on one occasion of getting the run ashore