Long Day at the Canal for the Island Princess

I ran across this on another website, don't have a clue why the transit was so long. The Island arrived at the North end (sea entrance) of Gatun Locks before 8AM...

In this next pic the Island is in the upper level of Miraflores Locks a little before 8PM... probably would not even clear the Bridge of Americas until after 9PM or so. Since an extra fee is assessed if the vessel wants a daylight transit... the clearing of the last lock after dark is not the norm.

Friend was on the Island in January. They were delayed two hours (didn't start the transit until 8am). Is the Canal super congested due to the West Coast port issues?

Hmmm. Carnaval is over ... I suspect dredging issue in Culebra Cut forcing single lane traffic. Most cruise ships pick up the pilot around 5 am, so it looks like it was late starting the transit. Regards, Richard

I looked at the traffic figures for December and January and they don't show anything out of the ordinary, I can't see February's numbers yet, don't know if they would show anything or not. While I wouldn't discount some traffic anomaly caused by the snarl on the West coast, I am inclined to believe there was some sort of snafu possibly at Gatun Locks or perhaps the morning traffic from the Pacific was not able to clear Gaillard Cut in a timely manner. That could be anything from too many ships scheduled, a ship with engine problems and needed to towed out of the Cut. The Canal did not have any major outages planned, at least not the type they publish in their Notice to Mariners bulletins. Ships the size of the Island Princess are designated "clear cut" which means they can not meet opposing traffic in Gaillard Cut. So if any ship from the morning's traffic from the Pacific was delayed exiting the Cut, the Island Princess could not proceed any further than Gamboa until the opposing traffic cleared the Cut.

Looking at approximately 8AM arrival at the sea entrance of Gatun, that time is not really late. From that point normal operations would have the IP clear Gatun by 10AM and conceivably arriving at the Gaillard Cut end (north) of Pedro Miguel Locks by 1:30-2PM. However the Island did arrive at Pedro Miguel until sometime around 5:30, much later than would be expected.

I looked over on the Princess board to see if anyone was reporting from the ship, but I did not see anything. Oh well, inquiring minds want to know!

We were wandering around Gatun Lake for several hours. Probably the Pacific traffic didn't clear in time, as Bill said.

We were wandering around Gatun Lake for several hours. Probably the Pacific traffic didn't clear in time, as Bill said.

At least it's a great place to wander:)! Guessing they did not offer any explanation why things were running so slow?

We didn't hear any.