Panama Canal Transit – Part 2

The photos in this post are of the Navigator’s transit of the Atlantic Ocean side locks.

The French Cut

The queue ahead of us and the tugs coming out to guide us into the locks

The most efficient way to get the lines from the ships to the pier is by using two men in a row boat, they have apparently tried everything else, powered boats, using some sort of air power grappling hook, but that are just not as good as two men in a boat.

To guide / pull the various ships through the locks locomotive tugs are used.

The Captain, Staff Captain (Executive Officer) and Pilot

I took these photos from my balcony

Back up to the upper deck for the transition through the third lock, it was at this point that we noticed that the Norwegian Jewel was stuck in the second lock.

There was a problem with the ladder from the walkway on the top of the lock up to the pier. I have no idea why their only solution was to try and pull the ladder back into shape by hand, would have expected some sort of tools, an oxy cutter or similar, that they could have used to cut away the problem. Fairly certain that this took around an hour or more to resolve.

We made it through with no problems, the Navigator was now 85Ft above sea level.