World Cruise 2025 – TRANSITING THE PANAMA CANAL

We have a day at sea before experiencing the Panama Canal. It’s a day of sunshine and calm Caribbean Sea to relax and enjoy. After reading the HORIZON we have the usual 10am deck quoits for myself and at 10:45 Andy has his bridge session. We will fill our time with relaxing and reading. Taking a dip in the pool. A walk around the promenade deck. We joined in the quiz in the Rising Sun (The pub onboard) before heading to lunch in the MDR.

AT 3pm we joined in the Baggo competition being held by the Neptune pool. Andy was very happy to win and received a P&O sticker (These are collected over the whole cruise and exchanged for prizes) It’s all for fun and the prizes are just small tokens from P&O. Pens, key rings etc.

After dinner in The Rising Sun was A night at the races. This is an interactive video horse racing evening. It started at 9:30pm and we arrived late due to chatting with our waitress after dinner. She is such a lovely, cheerful girl and a joy to chat to. So we just watched all the fun at the races without actually backing any horses!

Then it was off to bed for an early start in the morning. Excited for the transit of the Panama Canal.

A few facts about the Panama Canal
It was completed in August 1914 and it operates 24 hours a day, all year round.
The total length is 77km and since it opened well over one million vessels from across the world have transited the canal.
Without the canal it would take cruise ships an extra 23 days to sail from the Atlantic side of Panama to the Pacific side via Cape Horn on the southern tip of South America.
It takes a cruise ship about 7 hours to transit the canal but large cargo ships can take up to 24 hours!
Each lock chamber contains around 100 million litres of water.
Here is the route we are about to experience. We shall witness this epic transit and know that few people get the chance to do so. It is one of the world’s grandest feats of engineering and construction.

Once we were dressed and out in the morning at 6am. We found a viewing spot at the front of the ship on deck 6 as the doors had all been opened for this spectacle. It was already hot but we were expecting it to be over 30 degrees later. Lots of sun lotion and drinking water was the order of the day.

We took so many photos from so many positions on ship, there will be lots of editing and sorting to do.

Lunch was a bbq on deck by the Neptune pool and as usual the food was superb and in abundance!
To all our KISC friends, Just look at the use of this pan! It was so easy to serve the dessert from. Also what amazing sauce containers!