Panama canal: its ships and locks

An unlikely couple: a container ship on a date with a tug.

Havana - Panama City (Panama)

Thursday 19 May 2011
Time 1130
Flight time 2hrs 25mins




We join a chartered cruise ship for our transit of the Panama Canal.  We enter the Gatun Lake, then sail into the canal itself through the Galliad Cut, one of the narrowest parts of the Canal.

A container ship for cars, or, as one wag said: a floating car park

Our tiny cruise ship is made all the more tiny by passing traffic of massive container ships which loom like floating mountains, complete with their own weather systems.  They gently giant by us, intent on their mission to cross from one ocean to the other. 

Our chartered cruiser

Panama cranes - at attention

Canal traffic is one way only.  Until noon, it is in one direction and then, noon until 6pm, it is the opposite direction.  If your ship does not make it through in time, you wait your turn.  Entry is first-come, first-served.  

Some cargos, such as perishables (eg bananas) or people (cruise ships) are given priority - at a price.  They must book a year ahead and pay a hefty fee in advance, which is forfeit if they do not turn up on the day.

On an ordinary day, ordinary container ships have to hang around between locks, allowing them time to polish the fo'c'sle and vacuum the containers.  

Once inside a lock, the bigger container ships have only 30cm to spare on each side.  They squeeze in like toothpaste in a tube and are instructed to keep very very still as the waters rise.

By comparison, our tiny cruise ship rattles around our lock with room to spare, so we share it with three yachts, two of which fly Australian flags. 

They are tethered together, then tethered to the wall of the lock, as is our cruise ship. 

The Panama Canal has operated since 1914, and is, I feel, an engineering wonder.

A lock, full to the brim

We keep our distance

The water level drops...

...and drops...

and drops

like a giant bathtub...

when someone pulls the plug

the gates swing open

They are massive steel constructions with rivets from a past era

These gates, and indeed the entire system of locks, are enormously over-engineered.

They fold into the wall of the lock.

The ship in the adjacent lock rises as we fall

...looming larger and larger.

These yachts shared our lock, and two were Australian.