Panama Canal Transit - Part 1

Thursday, 31 January 2019

We had an all-day transit through the Panama Canal on the small tour boat, the Islamorada.

The Islamorada is a small tour boat that can have up to 51 passengers; fortunately, our tour had only 36 participants.  The lower deck is enclosed and serves the breakfast and lunch buffets and has several tables that are out of the wind.

     The boat has a storied past. Older than the Canal, it was commissioned in 1912 as the Santana by the financier JP Morgan. Al Capone purchased the yacht in the 1920s, renamed it after his favorite Florida Key, and used it to illegally transport rum during Prohibition. Eventually the yacht was seized by the US Government and used as a Navy training vessel during World War II. It came to Panama in the 1960s as a floating boutique hotel. Now it has been refitted for day tours of the Canal. It has made more Canal transits than any other vessel.

Overview of the Canal

An overview of the Canal from Wikipedia. Source: By Thomas Römer/OpenStreetMap data, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19678675

The locks are one-way traffic. In the morning, ships travel from both oceans up to Gatun Lake, where the two directions cross. In the afternoon, ships travel from Gatun Lake out to the oceans. The lake is the only area of the canal wide enough for two large ships to pass.

Pacific Entrance

As we sailed toward the Canal along the Amador Causeway, the "New City" skyline was in the background.

The Biomuseo as seen from the water.

The Bridge of the Americas with container ports in the background.

Container port

Southern Locks: Miraflores, Pedro Miguel, and Cocoli

A "Neopanamax" container ship enters the new Cocoli Locks. The new locks use tug boats to position the ships in the locks.

As a ship enters the old locks, a rowboat crew catches the cables that will anchor the ship to the mechanical engines that help guide it through the lock. A ship can take between 6 and 8 engines to hold it in place.

It's a tight fit with about 2 feet of clearance on either side of a Panamax ship. Here you can also see the one of the engines that keep the ship centered in the lock.

The engines ride on a cog railway that provides good traction and is shaped to keep the engines from tipping sideways.

As I said, it's a tight fit.

Rubber "knuckles" at the entrance to each lock prevent damage to the ship and the locks.

Once the large ship is in the lock, smaller ships and boats fit in behind it. We traveled through the canal with both the large tanker, and the tour boat, Tuira II.

The ship's pennants give important information about the vessel. Every ship flies the Panama flag while in the canal. The red pennant means the cargo is flammable, The red-and-white pennant means that a Canal Pilot is on board. Every vessel going through the canal requires at least one Canal Pilot to be on board. The large ships may have as many as three to help guide the ship. It takes decades of experience to guide the largest ships through the locks.

Looking back at the entrance to the Pedro Miguel Locks (left channel) and the Cocoli Locks (right channel). We've now reached our highest elevation, about 85 feet above sea level.