Panama Canal - Getting Underway

7-8 November, 2023

I've been fascinated by the Panama Canal since my grandfather first told me about it when I was a child. He told me about passing through the canal on a destroyer during World War II and conveyed the scale and magnitude of the project. He omitted the involvement of the French, Ferdinand de Lesseps, mosquitoes, malaria, the eventual U.S. takeover, and the secession of Panama from Colombia that led to completion of the canal. Transiting the Panama Canal is one of several noteworthy cruises on my list, along with going around Cape Horn, which we did in 2011. The rest of the list consists of transatlantic, transpacific, and crossing the equator. This cruise was booked when we were on our ABC Islands cruise in October of 2022.

On the way to Miami!

Sailing out of Miami again, we had grand plans to eat dinner at Versailles the evening before embarkation. Unfortunately our flights were delayed (again!) and our plans for dinner had to be scrapped long before we even left Charlotte. We stayed at the Hilton Tru again and enjoyed a nearly identical experience to the year prior. This time we did take advantage of breakfast, which (as I am fond of saying) was quite useful. A quick repack of the suitcases and another Uber ride and we were at the cruise terminal, ready to check in. Still waiting for ankle replacement, a RCCL team member assisted my wife with a wheelchair, making the boarding process as convenient as possible. The smaller Radiance class ship, coupled with a Tuesday departure, meant the cruise terminal was virtually deserted and there was ample staff to keep the boarding process running smoothly and efficiently.

All aboard!

We were a bit surprised that our cabin was in the bow of the ship, neither of us recalling making that selection. In retrospect, it appears that a finger-fumble went undetected and our choice of cabin 7600 was changed to 7500. Lesson learned! The cabin was perfectly acceptable, save the fact that the air conditioning was woefully inadequate. My suspicion is that the HEPA filters in the return were overly restrictive and hampered the air circulation. A few doors down the passage there was a server room and the air blasting from beneath that door could have stripped the varnish from wood. Unfortunately we didn't enjoy even a reasonable fraction of that air volume. Multiple calls to maintenance and repeated attempts by our steward to mitigate the problem proved unrewarding. We couldn't even get a box fan, as none were available.

As is our routine, we handled the muster station check-in, finalized our specialty dining arrangements, scoped out the Solarium, and enjoyed lunch in the Windjammer before grabbing a drink. For sail away (which was a bit early, as all the provisions and fuel were loaded and everyone was aboard) we staked out a spot in the Viking Crown Lounge and watched Miami disappear in our wake.

We headed to the dining room for dinner, which I think we've done on every cruise. (Well over thirty at this point.) We eat most of our meals in the dining room, so meeting our service team the first night tends to set the tone for the entire cruise. We make a point to communicate our first specialty dining reservation so they're not anticipating a late arrival for that evening and can move along with service instead of looking over their shoulder for guests who aren't going to arrive. "Our guys" were being pulled all over the place by a couple of high maintenance tables, thankfully the table full of Brits next to ours were of a similar mind as us and the angst from the other tables didn't overflow to our space.

Morning view

Wednesday was a delightfully relaxing day at sea. We were up and at breakfast early after a restful night's sleep. If you're surprised that I had Eggs Benedict then you haven't been paying attention to my previous posts. After breakfast I spent the remainder of the day reading about the Panama Canal project while sipping on various libations and nibbling snacks in the Solarium. A lifelong friend recommended the book and gifted it to me for my birthday. I was already a couple of weeks of light reading in, but really wanted to get much deeper before we passed the first lock on the way to Gatun Lake. This book digs deep in the diplomacy involved and the drastic measures de Lesseps took to try and secure the project. Unfortunately he attempted to replicated his wildly successful Suez Canal project in an environment that couldn't have been more different. The project was doomed to failure until the link between mosquitoes and malaria was determined, regardless of the progress that may have been made on the engineering side.