Gatun Lock tour
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 22 Jan 2014 13:18
Our latest shopping trip - the receipt is taller than me!
Yesterday we all went to the Gatun Lock Visitor Centre on the Panama Canal. Suzanne and I had gone shopping on Tuesday afternoon and had our first glimpse of the canal then as we crossed the locks.
The lock visitor centre
An overview of the Gatun locks. There are two lanes which are run on demand and can either both go in the same direction or in opposite directions depending on that days traffic.
The Canal is an awesome piece of engineering, constructed about a hundred years ago at vast cost, both in terms of money and lives. The French effort alone cost over $285,000,000 with 20,000 lives lost, more than any project ever, except a war. The canal was stopped at this stage for a few years until the Americans arrived in 1903 and put in another $400 million dollars to finish it off.
The canal has now been in constant use for the last hundred years with boats passing through daily.
There is currently a third lane being built to allow bigger ships to pass through and re-use of the water, but construction has recently been stopped due to financial issues.
The Canal is fed by the Gatun Lake, so the water is a mix of fresh and salt. The main problem is that the water is taken out of the lake at a rate of millions of litres a day, but hardly any goes back in. The Lake relies on rain water during the rainy season to remain full. The current water level is about what it should be in March, not January which is a potential issue as it is still early in the dry season. In the late 1990's transits were stopped due to the level of water in the lake being too low.
The cost of a transit varies according to the type of boat. Ships carrying containers are charged per container, ships carry fuel etc, by displacement, and cruise ships by the amount of beds. The cost of going through laden or unladen are much the same, one boat recently went through unladen at a cost of $398,000 and returned laden at a cost of $402,000. Whilst we were there, we saw about $1million dollars worth of canal fees float past!
Squeezing though the locks!
The old and the new - these are the trains used to take the big ships line along the side of the canal.
Currently, the locks are 335 metres long and 33.5 metres wide, the Panamax boats, made especially for the canal have a mere 60cm clearance on each side as they pass through - the pilots are very well paid and no doubt have a very stressful job making sure they get lined up correctly! The new canal locks will be 427 metres long and 55 metres wide, the size of four football pitches. Some vessels which are too big for the locks now, unload at either end and the cargo is transported on smaller boats through the canal. This is still a much cheaper and faster option than going round the long way around Cape Horn.
The new locks, as well as being bigger, will allow the re-use and recycling of water in the canal to protect the water levels in the lake which will still be the only source of water.
Now all we have to do is wait, we have seen what is in store for us on Saturday, maybe ignorance is bliss? The long lines and extra fenders, old tyres, wrapped in plastic, will be delivered later this week and we will be visited by canal officials, measured up and checked out for several safety items, as well as a few odd ones such as making sure the heads and galley are clean enough for the advisors to use! We have a final briefing on Friday night and then we are off. Hopefully we will get some good photos of the transit for the blog between everything else we will have to do!
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