I planned to get up early and watch us enter the locks.  But I slept late and when I looked out the sun was high and we were in the locks.  Coming out of the locks we entered the first of tw o lakes that make up the canal, Lake Miraflores and Lake Gatum.   The canal is about fifty miles long and runs from southeast to northwest, so it is cutting back on itself going from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  It takes about eight hours for a ship to get through the canal.  Larger cruise ships are too big to get through.  Our ship was 950 feet long and 105 feet wide, the maximum for the canal is 106 feet wide.  Tight fit.  Cruise ships  are charged about 100 dollars per berth to go through the canal, so the Statendam has 1250 passengers and 700 crew or 1950 beds for people to sleep in and pays a fee of 195,000 dollars. By four o’clock we were out of the Gatum Locks and in the beautiful  Caribbean.  Blue water from here on out.