Locks, Lakes and Channels

Panama Canal
Monday, May 1, 2006

We entered the Panama Canal at 8:30 AM to begin the 80 km journey from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic ocean (Carribean Sea). The skies were clear, it was 80 C and humid, which wasn't too bad because there was a breeze on our verandah when the ship was moving and we have an overhang on our verandah that shaded us from the sun.
After we passed under The Bridge of the Americas, from which you can drive on the Pan-American Highway all the way to Alaska, we began the first stage of the Panama Canal crossing. Our ship, the Amsterdam, squeezed into the two Miraflores Locks that raised us 54 feet to Lake Miraflores. After crossing Lake Miraflores, the ship was raised the remaining 31 feet by the Pedro Miguel Locks and we entered the Gaillard Cut, a winding 8-mile channel (big ditch?), that takes us to Gatun Lake which is 85 feet above sea level. Gatun Lake is the third largest man-made lake in the world, after Lake Tahoe in Nevada and one in Egypt, although it was the largest when it was built in 1914.
The locks are like elevators for huge ships. The ship enters each lock and the multi-ton gates close, using a 40 horsepower motor, which is possible because the gates are hollow. Next, gravity is used to fill the lock with fresh water, or drain the water when you're going down, raising or lowering the ship to the next level.
The scale and magnificence of this engineering achievement is astounding, even more so because it is still an amazing feat nearly 100 years after it was built. It was achieved at the cost of 30,000 lives lost due to malaria, yellow fever and hard labor in daytime temperatures as high as 50 C. It is hard to imagine that 152.9 million cubic meters of material was removed. This is enough to fill railroad flatcars that, placed end-to-end, would circle the globe four times. The Panama Canal operates today using the same system and lock gates it opened with in 1914.
The Panama Canal eliminates the need for the 9,000 mile trip around South America and navigation of the treacherous Cape Horn to go from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice versa. At 4:30 PM we left the last of the three Gatun Locks and entered the Carribean sea as we sipped an ice-cold drink on our veranndah.