After a long day of crossing the Panama Canal, we are finally through and back out on the open seas. I’m not sure any of us really grasped the scale of the canal itself before we saw it with our own eyes. The locking system that was dreamed up by brilliant engineers over 100 years ago is astounding.
For those of you who are not familiar with how the canal system works, here is the simple explanation. The Panama Canal is not at sea level and in order to make it across, ships must be elevated through a series of locks. These are basically compartments where the water level can be raised to elevate ships or lowered to bring them back down. Once a ship is in the lock, its gates will be sealed and the water level will be adjusted to bring the ship to its appropriate height. Engines running along the side of the canal on tracks then pull the ship through the lock until it is back in open water. There are three locking systems that ships must pass through in addition to a number of both natural and man-made waterways that carry ships most of the way through.
Altogether, the Panama Canal is about 48 miles in length but that is nothing compared to the 14,000 mile journey around the Cape Horn that it replaced. We entered around 8:30am this morning and we were probably out by about 4:45pm. It is estimated that about 14,000 ships pass through a year and there were quite a few out there with us today.
There has also been a lot going on aboard the ship. Yesterday marked the last day of finals and there was one exam in particular that caught the shipboard community’s attention. All semester long, Aniseh Burtner’s World Dance class has been studying and learning different styles of dance from around the globe. For the final exam, students prepared their own dances and performed in the Union for all of us. There were performances based on styles from all of the countries that we visited over the past three and half months.
This afternoon, there was also an Academic Gallery to showcase exemplary work during the semester. Faculty were given the opportunity to nominate students from their classes, who were then recognized during a brief ceremony that was followed by presentations from the students themselves that gave us a chance to see what they have been working on.Grace Nixon, a student from Santa Clara University, has been conducting interviews with locals in every port for a project for her geography class. The assignment was to choose a topic in sociology to research and Grace chose to compare the different views on death and dying around the world. “It was fascinating to see different views around the world,” Grace remarked. Natalie Elghossain of Cranbury, NJ has been studying immigration issues as she traveled around the world with Semester at Sea. The focus of her research has been the main factors that cause people to emigrate.
Visual art was on display as well. Rebecca Braun of Tenafly, NJ and a student at the University of Michigan has been enrolled in an arts class aboard the MV Explorer. Her sketches and drawings combined with a written journal captured the spirit of our journey and of the people and places that we visited. Elyssa Tanenbaum, a student at the University of Florida chose to show us some pieces that she created for her digital photography class. There was some amazing work on display and all of the students aboard the ship have a lot to be proud of.
Photos #2, 4, and 5 by SAS Photographer John Weakley
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