Panama Isthmus transit

Hi Guys,

Panama Canal – 1 April 2011

(Latitude: 9 34’North   Longitude: 79 58’ West)

(Time -4 GMT)

The Panama Canal

We spend a fabulous day from about 5 am when the pilot came aboard and we went under the Bridge of the Americas It took about 9 hours completing the 47 mile transit of the Isthmus of Panama. It takes two sets of locks (Miraflores Locks and the Pedro Miguel lock) to climb from Bilbao in the Pacific Ocean up the 85 feet through the Calebra or Gaillard Cut into the Gatun Lake and then down 2 stages of the Guan lock to the Caribbean Sea at Colon. Everything was quite dignified with us taking tea in the morning up in the Crows Nest and gin and tonics on the fantail during the afternoon. Friends have a cabin with a balcony which they invited us over at lunchtime. You could almost touch the lamp posts as they went by.

 It is a deceptively simple design but the construction was fraught with 33 years of troubles (1881 to 1914) beyond anything that anyone could have planned. Some of hazards in this day and age towards the end of the 19^th century could not be imagined.

Susan at the Bridge of the Americas

M

Miraflores Lock Pacific side

These $500K mules get no carrots

De Lessops built the Suez canal between 1859 and 1869 and signed up for the Panama Canal 12 years later. However, the French started in 1881 built a railway across the isthmus but abandoned the project in 1889 following huge problems, suing de Lessops for non-completion of contract. The Americans bought the French company for $40 Million (a knock down price because the French had sunk F1.5 Billion into the project). Roosevelt put the project under the American Army who immediately rebuilt the railway to remove all the soil that was heaped at the edges of the canal and kept falling in, did some more land survey and built a couple of dams. 

Electric Power from the lock dams.

Drained the swamps where the yellow fever mosquito lived and identified the malarial mosquito which is a different species. It was actually brought in on time and under budget of $97 million.

24,000 men perished because of diseases (yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, TB, even bubonic plague) and the harshness of the equatorial rain forest environment. In fact the number of people who died is probably far greater, as the black workers were not counted and they died at a rate 3 times higher than the white workers. Perhaps 100,000 people died building this canal or 5 men for every 2 feet of the canal.

The Gatun Dam at the north end of the canal near to Colon created Gatun Lake. The locks, at either end of the canal raise any ship up 85 feet to enter the huge Gatun lake so that the ships can freely move. A ships movement when moving through the canal from south to north is vaguely NE to SW. There is a further dam up in the mountains to the east at Lake Madden which provides all of the water to fill the locks. The locks and the 350 ton lock gates were originally designed by Gustav Eiffel from Paris.

The mechanism of moving through the lock is fairly quick as the ship moves into the channel of the lock. I suppose the beam of a new ship built is limited by its requirement to transit through the Suez or the Panama Canal. Larger vessels would necessarily have to go around.

The ship’s engines are used for propulsion but on either side, on the dock is a cogged track with rail tracks on both side and an electric “Mule” that is connected to the ship with hawsers and either drag or brake that sucker in the lock. They are made by Mitsubishi and cost $500,000 each. The boat in front had 4 mules on either side or $4 Million of nudging going on. I  now understand why the cost for the Aurora to go through the Panama Canal  $322,321.89. It is not clear how they got to the 89 cents as the cost is dependent upon $115 for an occupied bed and $92 for an empty bed.

One of the pictures shows “Titan” one of a series of the largest cranes in the world at 350 metric tones. It was built in Germany and became one of the spoils of WWII

This was not April fool