This is my second time going thru the Panama Canal, but this time I don’t have a cold bad enough to force me to stay in bed. Therefore, I got to see more stuff. We stopped in Colon the day before crossing to the Pacific, so I took the “Canal Expansion” tour. I jumped on a bus and made the 90-minute trip to the other side of the canal, as that is where the museum is.
People forget that Panama is very much an east-west oriented country. You cross from the Caribbean to the Pacific heading south-east. With the below image, we entered at the 11-oclock and exited at 5-oclock. The schematic on the wiki page does a great job showing this.
Quick refresher:
- Panama Canal opening in 1914, being run by the USA
- Panama took over control on 31-Dec-1999
- The original locks supported “PANAMAX” sized ships
- About 950-feet length, 106-feet wide, 40-feet draft
- In 2016 Panama opened new “NEOPANAMAX” locks
- About 1200-feet length, 168-feet wide, 50-feet draft
To help explain the different, you can carry about 5000 containers on a Panamax ship, but 14,000 on a New Panamax. Larger ships = more profit. Our canal guide (same guy as 2023) said the ships typically pay between $500,000 and $1.5M to use the canal. But it saves an 8000 mile trip around South America.
The museum was decent, with a well produced IMAX movie (narrated by Morgan Freeman). Some of the things I learned:
- While “sea level” is the same at both sides, the Pacific side has far larger tides. The lock system helps deal with that, with the side benefit of reducing the amount of digging needed along the 50-mile canal
- While being strong enough to hold all that water back, the lock doors are neutrally buoyant and hollow. The engine that moves them is smaller than a moped motor.
But to heck with all this academic stuff, let’s get driving.
Here is a view of the locks. Each has two sets, which allows for one to be maintained while allowing the canal to continue operations. You can see guard rails on the one to the right, where workers cross over as needed. Before bridges were constructed at both ends, this was the only was across if you didn’t take a ferry.
For visual proof of how locks work, while at the Canal museum a cargo ship was being lowered. Use the roof of the nearby control tower as a gauge to the ship’s containers. It takes about 10 minutes to fill/empty a lock and it’s all gravity driven – no pumps are used.
The Canal Authority has a series of webcams on the internet, so here is my ship making it’s way thru. Note the other cruise ship behind the Silver Dawn.
At the first Pacific Locks the other cruise ship is next to us, as we are using both lanes. If you look closely you may see we have some guest just in front of the ship.
Here’s a close-up of you guests at the final locks. Small craft are allowed to use the canal with some restrictions. They cannot make reservations, so must wait (possibly weeks) for another ship short enough to allow them to double-duty the locks. They pay about $5,000 for the passage.
Takes about 10 hours to get to the other side. Here’s a close shot of the electric “mules” that help us within the locks. They do not pull the ship at all (the ship moves under its own power), but assist with side-to-side control so the ship doesn’t “bumper car” its way in a lock.
We are now in the Pacific, making out way the western coast of South America. I depart the ship soon for a five-day journey to Machu Picchu. To save space, I’m not taking my laptop – you may not hear from me until I return. There is a mobile interface to my blog site, so I’ll try to add a picture or two.