Blake and Deb Far Away

Even before embarking on our Panama Canal cruise, Deborah and I looked ahead to its conclusion and expressed our reluctance to hurry back to the dreary winter weather of Olympia.  To remedy this we rather decadently booked another cruise that was to leave from Fort Lauderdale just two days after our Panama Canal cruise was to end. We spent the two days in Fort Lauderdale between cruises doing laundry, visiting friends, and catching up on computer tasks thanks to our Airbnb’s Wi-Fi.  Our second voyage was a 7 night Caribbean cruise with stops in Half Moon Cay, Bahamas; Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos; Amber Cove, Dominican Republic; and Key West, Florida; before returning to Fort Lauderdale. Both of our cruises were on Holland America Line (also same as for our Alaska cruise last year), which has a reputation for a somewhat older clientele. The Caribbean cruisers were a bit younger than the Panama Canal ones, but actually seemed in worse shape. Not sure I’ve ever seen that many pot be

High winds and rough seas hit us shortly after exiting the Panama Canal.   This resulted in not only many a queasy stomach, including our own, but also forced the ship to slow down to the point that we had to skip our scheduled stop in Aruba.   An extra sea day wasn’t the end of the world since we’ve found the entertainment on board surprisingly good. There have been a couple of different comedians who were actually funny, some vocal groups that were pretty good, and a quintet of talented young classical musicians associated with the Lincoln Center.   Even former Olympic gymnast Lance Ringnald had an unexpectedly entertaining show where he acrobatically swung around on aerial silks while cracking the occasional joke. In a different show he gave a talk about another facet of his post-Olympic career – that of memory improvement. Lately feeling somewhat lacking in this department, we not only attended his talk but also bought his memory improvement program that was downloaded onto a fla

The focus and highlight of this cruise is sailing through the Panama Canal, which is on the bucket list of many people, especially former engineers like myself.   Considered one of the seven wonders of the modern world, the canal saved ships sailing between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans a 13,000 km (8,000 mi) trip around South America and the often treacherous waters around Cape Horn.   Due to the serpentine shape of the Isthmus of Panama, the canal does not connect the Pacific to the Atlantic from west to east, as one might expect, but rather from southeast to northwest. (That’s right, the Atlantic entrance is further west than the Pacific entrance!)    A direct sea level cut of 82 km (51 miles) long wasn’t practical because of the intervening topography, which would have required the excavation of an unrealistic amount of dirt and rock.   Instead, a huge upper lake was formed by damming the Chagres River, and locks were added at each end to make up for the 26 m (85 ft) differ