Nine Hours Through the Panama Canal with the Pilot in Command — Epoche B1
New job, week one. Today they sent me through the canal itself — a full transit as an observer, Pacific side to Atlantic side. My notes from a very long day. 🚢 05:10. Pilot boat out from Balboa in the dark, alongside a container ship taller than my apartment block. The pilot goes up the rope ladder first; the rest of us follow. 05:30. On the bridge, the part that makes this waterway unlike any other on Earth. In ports everywhere else, a pilot advises and the captain stays in charge. Here it is the reverse: under the canal's rules, the pilot takes control of the ship's navigation for the whole transit. The captain of a vessel he has brought halfway around the world stands aside, on his own bridge, and watches a Panamanian direct it. 07:00. Miraflores locks. The famous "mules" — electric locomotives on rails beside the chamber — take our cables. People think they pull the ship. They do not; the ship moves on its own engines, and the mules hold it centred, because in the older locks a big ship can have less than a metre of water on each side. 11:00. Crossing Gatún Lake, which is fresh water. Every transit sends roughly two hundred million litres of it out to the sea through the locks, which is why, in a dry year, the canal cuts the number of ships allowed through each day. 16:40. Down the Gatún steps to the Atlantic. The pilot signs the papers, hands the ship back, and climbs down to the boat that will take us home to Colón. Nine hours. The captain brought the ship from Shanghai; a Panamanian took it across Panama. #PanamaCanal #Panamá References Wölfflin, H. (1964). Renaissance and Baroque. Cornell University Press.