The Panama canal
We had booked the canal tour a few months ago but you don’t know the exact start time until the day before. They tour company don’t know their place in the queue until the day before so that is why they don’t know the start time in advance. The tour starts at the flamenco marina at the end of a causeway. The causeway was originally built, using the rock excavated from building the canal, to serve as a wave barrier for the large ships going through. I guess if you have a lot of big rocks lying around you might as well use them for something. Now there is a walkway and jogging path along with bars and restaurants..it’s the hip and cool place to hang out by the canal
The tour
Our tour went from the Pacific to Atlantic direction. To make the canal they damned up the river creating a lake (Lake Gatun) which is 80ft above sea level. They then did most of the digging to make the locks to get up to the lake. There are two locks on the Pacific side of the lake and one on the Atlantic side. In the morning all ships go from an ocean to the lake. So all the ships meet in the lake and then in the evening all traffic is from the lake out to the oceans. So it’s always one way traffic. We went through two locks to the lake then got a bus back to the marina. That took about five hours. If you did the whole trip it would take nearly nine hours.
The facts
Some interesting facts from the tour. It cost $4000 for our ship to go through the canal. It’s done by size with ships under 125 feet having a fixed charge. Larger ships are charged on weight and types of cargo with humans being the most expensive cargo 😁 They expanded the canal to accommodate larger ships (neo-panamax) this year but before that the highest anyone paid to go through was $400,000. It was a cruise ship. Then this June another cruise ship paid $800,000💲💰🚢🛳️⛵
Although it seems expensive the cost of fuel for a large ship is over $100,000 a day and not using the canal adds 16 days to your journey. So if you do the math it is a no brainer. Incidentally, the lowest fare you can pay to go through is $8 but someone swam through in the 1920s and paid 36 cents 🏊
The Panama queue
You always see rows of ships hanging around in the water near the canal. Getting through is based on a first come first served basis and on average ships have to hang around for 24 hours before getting the call to move through. It seems like chaos but there is some order to it.
It was really cool to see all the activity as you go through the locks. A Panama pilot boards every ship and navigates it through the canal. At the locks people row out to the ship to throw up ropes which are used to secure the ship while in the lock. You hardly feel the level rising in the locks even though it is coming through subway size ducts, it takes roughly 8 minutes to rise ~25feet. There are no pumps involved at any stage, it’s all gravity doing the work. All in all it is still an amazing thing to see in action even though it hasn’t changed much in over 100 years.
