Even longtime sailors - this is electrician Milan Cojic - burn up SD cards as we near the first two locks of the Panama Canal.
About forty vessels a day use the canal. Three are already in the locks as we approach.
Captain 'Boni' and pilot consider steering Amber - a 'Panamax' ship - safely into the lock. Panamax means Amber's the maximum size that can transit the canal.
The captain checks our fit as Hyundai Goodwill enters the parallel lock.
A crewman on Goodwill takes a break.
Wide shot of Goodwill and Amber.
One of the electric locomotives or 'mules', which assist ships through the locks. In the old days, first timers were advised to have carrots to feed the mules.
Goodwill's stern in the Miraflores lock shows the squeeze.
It's not original to say how impressive it is that a system a hundred years old can still take some of the world's larger ships.
The U.S. handed the canal over to the Panamanians, a process completed in 1999.
This is one of the huge shovels the Americans used to dig the canal.
From Amber, we catch glimpses of the $5.2 billion canal expansion, expected to open in 2014. Although the new locks will be wider and longer, some container ships - designed only for the Asia-Europe run via Suez - still won't fit.
These pictures give some idea of the close quarters.
I'd like to claim this splendid display was for us, but suspect they were merely testing equipment.
By the way, it cost CMA CGM about $165,000 for Amber to go through Panama, but it did save us a voyage under South America.
