Once a cruise ship has entered the first set of locks, it generally takes about 7 hours to complete the transit. However, ya gotta be in position at least one hour prior to your actual time. They move one ship right after another, no goofing around.
You can see how much room we have. It should be about the same on the other side. That is the tour boat that I highlighted earlier. There could be another craft (sailboat) along side the excursion boat. I believe that payment is figured by length plus weight (they need to figure how much water would be necessary).
Immediately after taking the previous photo, I turned aft and took this one. There is a bit of water seeping though the lock mechanism.
As we pass out of the last lock, you can see all the mules lined up to go the other way. There was a cargo ship already making its approach as we completed our transit.
You can get a better sense of the different heights that are involved. As you can see, once that last lock closes, there is a bridge created to allow vehicles to cross.
For those who cannot wait for the locks to close, or those that are too big for that bridge, this ferry operates on a regular basis. I have no idea about costs either way of crossing.
However a new bridge is being constructed to make things easier. I am sure that it will take a while to get this completed.
This was off to the side in the basin immediately outside the locks. It was not going anywhere. My guess is that it broke down, the owners said nuts, got it towed to the side and then collected insurance. There are many ships like this in most ports of call. Based on what I could determine, the cost of salvage it too steep to even make an attempt.
This completes my commentary for our May 2016, 17-day cruise. We did make one more port, Aruba. I got off the ship for five minutes to buy Pepsi and a souvenir shot glass for our cat sitter. According to my count, that was my 11th time in Aruba. Ho-Hum!
NEXT SCHEDULED CRUISE: A repeat of one from 2013. 42-days from Ft. Lauderdale to the Mediterranean and back to Ft. Lauderdale. That will commence October 28 and return on December 9. Lots of sea days and somewhat port intensive in the Med (Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Azores, Gibraltar, Madeira, Sicily, Sardinia and the Bahamas). I will still get at least 15 books read. On this just completed cruise, I read 10 books, some on my Kindle, but most were from the on-board library.
anneliese32
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