Cruise through the Panama Canal

Day One

Day one of our Cruise began a little differently than planned.  I thought I was organized, washed all the clothes, made reservations at the Hacienda Hotel for the night before and put Yoshi in the kennel.    All that was left was to pack and clean the house.  It didn’t matter what time we reached LA because we were just spending the night and needed to board between 12:00 and 3:30pm the next day.

Upon waking on Sunday, Hal asked to see the itinerary for the cruise.  I gave him a copy of the tickets but he wanted the booklet describing the trip.  I had printed it out the night before so I went to the printer and got it for him.  He looked at it and immediately said “ This says our ship leaves TODAY.”   He was right!  How could I have gotten this so wrong?  By now it’s about 7:30am.  We through clothes into suitcases and flew down to LA.  Hal drove while I cancelled reservations and packed bags in the back seat.  We arrived at the Hotel about 1:30, dropped off the car and took a cab to the ship.  Needless to say, it was not a restful departure. 

Once on board we were able to calm down and start enjoying the trip.  We have a lovely balcony stateroom and really enjoy sitting outside.

As we were eating dinner  the first evening,  the boat started to vibrate.  It became more and more violate until the dinner table and everything on it was jumping around.  Then quite.  Then nothing.  For about 20 – 30 minutes we were dead in the water.  Finally we started up again.  Hal thinks that the vibration was caused from the engine being thrown into full reverse.  Maybe we were about to collide with something???