(Saturday, April 9th, 2016)
Thursday we anchored in Panama Harbor, bunkered, and had delivered to us some provisions and some spare parts. Off in the distance we could see the skyscrapers of Panama City. An excellent sunset capped our trip across the Pacific.
Yesterday, Friday, we transited (that’s the term they use) the Panama Canal. It was quite fun. I was on deck basically from 4:30am until 2pm with only a few minutes of other activities. I took a few photos. Captioned versions are in the “Cooked” section of “Raw Photos”.
Our “ticket” cost about a quarter million dollars. I hope Disney doesn’t hear about this.
If you look at a map, you can see that during Creation, God was doodling a yin-yang symbol in between North and South America. When He/She went on to other things, Panama was left as a result. Which for us, several years later, means that in order to go from the Pacific to the Atlantic (well, eventually the Atlantic), we never go West to East in the Canal. We go South to North, basically, and a little West. Ha.
For Canal purposes, Panama had this big lake as a natural advantage, the other natural advantage of course being Panama’s basic thinness. The lake is 26 meters above sea level. I’m not sure that the Atlantic and the Pacific are exactly the same level at Panama, but I’ll say that they are for simplicity’s sake. That means that ships must be raised 26 meters and then lowered 26 meters, after they’ve crossed Gatun Lake.
The locks are not that complicated to understand, but the scale is massive, especially for something designed and constructed 100 years ago.
When a lock must be emptied, that’s fairly easy to understand. Valves are opened to allow that water to run downward – if there is a lower lock in need of water the water is sent there, otherwise the water exits eventually to the sea.
When a lock must be filled and there is no nearby high water (from a higher, emptying lock), water from Gatun Lake is used, gravity being the power used to move the water.
So it works. It is a constant-loss system, as lake water is constantly used to fill some locks. But Panama gets plenty enough rain to replenish the lake water. Construction activities subsequent to the Canal’s creation included some dams, and created a new lake, Madden Lake. This all helps. If I understand correctly, there is no water pumped “up”, which would take a lot of energy.
I am sure that this explanation is simplistic, but I didn’t want to overwrite about the mechanics of a lock system.
We entered from the South. There are three Miraflores locks, which raised us to the level of Miraflores Lake. That’s only a kilometer or so long, then we came to the one Pedro Miguel lock, which raised us to the level of Gatun Lake. We cruised down a narrow channel called Gaillard Cut. That channel is probably something that the new construction, which is all over the place, will need to improve. The channel is only wide enough to support single-lane (and so, obviously, single-direction) traffic. The channel, not the locks (which are all pairs, thus able to handle two-way traffic), is one reason (there are others) why some ships must wait at anchor at Gatun Lake.
After Gaillard Cut we came to Gatun Lake. The whole trip up the Cut and across the lake was scenic. Panama is more hilly than I had imagined, of course quite tropical, and could be fun to visit. It was hot, though, in early April.
At the other side of Gatun Lake are the Gatun locks. We had been following an auto carrier so far, and continued to follow it right into the Gatun locks. We didn’t expect this – we were anticipating an anchorage at Gatun Lake. There were many ships anchored, and we cruised past them. I asked the Captain about that this morning and he had no clue, but wasn’t going to argue with the Canal Pilot: “Nah, we’d rather stick around here a while, why don’t you let those other blokes go through.” <– NOT our Captain’s style.
On the North side the Gatun locks are the only locks, but there are four of them, symmetrical with the four locks we transited to get to the elevation of the lake. I don’t know that all of the locks move ships in equal amounts of elevation.
Once through the Gatun locks, we were at sea level again, and sailed past some working docks at Colon, and then on into the Caribbean Sea.
Done! Open sea again, and in an hour or so, no land in sight. Houston next.
Here are some random observations.
Everything was slow. When we moved from one lock to another, it was slow. When the locks filled or emptied, it was slow. I had time for a quick breakfast while a lock was filling, for example. Even out of the locks, we kept our speed down, especially in the Cut. In the Cut, we had tugs assisting us, because at times our speed was too slow for us to have full rudder control. I think our speed in the Cut had two factors contributing to the slowness – the need to stay in a narrow channel, and the attempt to avoid shore damage from our wake. In the locks, of course, the amount of mass being moved for each ship meant that carefulness was of the essence.
Not that many people were out and about. I am sure that we were being observed from various control rooms and on various cameras. Outside, with the exception of people riding on the cable cars, and those helping with the lines for the cables, there weren’t as many people as I would have guessed.
There were few visitors in the visitor centers. I don’t know about the season or about the visitor centers – whether, for instance, they are even open to the public.
When in a lock, and with the exception of those huge slab-sided auto carriers, it would seem to me to be relatively easy for someone to leave one ship and get on another. I assume that the whole area itself is administered as some sort of “controlled access” area. I did not see any pleasure boats on Gatun Lake, but I know that the lake extends well beyond our view from the ship. I wonder how large the “controlled access” area is, compared to the overall size of Panama, for example, and how well it is guarded.
Going through the Canal was hugely interesting for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would like to do it again. But after two times, well, it would then lose its mystique for me. The Captain was “happy that I was happy” (his words). He said that he’s been through the Canal enough times that he’s only interested in getting through it as quickly and as cleanly as possible, with perhaps a hope that the Pilot who comes on board is fun to talk with, since they are going to be together for a long day.
Can a person who works on the locks be called a locksmith?