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Published: November 7th 2005
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November 3, 2005 (Miraflores Locks, Panama)
Sean: Today we went to Miraflores Locks, the first (from the Pacific side) in a series of three sets of locks that enable ships to bypass sailing around South America in order to get commerce from the Pacific to the Atlantic (and vice versa). At Miraflores there are two locks and just a short distance away at Pedro Miguel is another lock. These three together raise the ships up to the level of Gatun Lake where they travel to the other side of the country to be lowered again through three locks at the Gatun Locks.
Miraflores has the big visitor’s center where you can stand out on the viewing platform, then wander through the museum. The museum was nice, written in both Spanish and English, and it covered the history, from the early days of the canal until the handover at the end of 1999. It also covers the ecology of the canal’s water system and how the ACP (Panama Canal Authority) is addressing water conservation to ensure successful future operations. It’s interesting to note that the locks don’t operate on a pump system, but rather all the water used is gravity
fed from the lake, which means that every time a lock opens, fresh water drains into an ocean. They seem to be doing a banner job managing the system and exploring solutions to future problems.
I can’t help but feel proud, though, of the accomplishments of my countrymen (and our taxpayers) that made this one of the greatest engineering feats in history.
(Note from
Shannon: I was a bit disappointed in the Miraflores visitor’s center, actually - at least the museum part of it. I was expecting it to have quite a lot of information on the construction of the canal, and though there was some, it was an abbreviated history at best. This visitor’s center was built by the Panamanian’s in 2000 - and while I didn’t expect them to trumpet the accomplishments of the U.S. - I thought that they could have spent a bit more time detailing the construction of one of the greatest engineering feats of modern history, regardless of who built it. The museum is located on 4 small levels - each level devoted to the topics of construction, flora and fauna, water conservation, and shipping. I’m as big a fan of butterflies
and insects as the next person, but to devote the same amount of space to them as to the construction of the Panama Canal,
come on…)
Sean: We got there right at the tail end of a wave of Atlantic bound ships, so our timing was perfect to see the system in action. We saw a couple of sister ships, the NEW CENTURY 1 and the FELICITY ACE (both, coincidentally, registered in Panama but I suspect it’s just a Flag of Convenience). These are pretty big RO-RO’s (probably ferrying new Kias to the east coast) and you can see, as there’s not much room to spare on either side, they were probably built with the dimensions of the canal in mind.
Some interesting facts (straight from the brochure):
• During fiscal year 2004, there were 12,518 oceangoing transits. This represented $757.7 million in toll payments.
• The average price to transit the canal is $100,000.
• The lowest toll for transiting the canal was paid by Richard Halliburton who paid $0.36 to swim across the canal from August 14, to August 23, 1928.
• The average time for a ship in Canal waters is approximately 24 hours
(including time spent at anchorage awaiting transit). The average time spent in transit is approximately 8 to 10 hours.
• The limiting dimensions of a ship wishing to pass through the canal are:
o Length: 965 ft
o Beam: 106 ft
o Draft: 39.5 ft
Shannon: As with any lock system, it takes a while for a ship to enter the lock, have the lock fill with water, and exit into the next lock. They said that they get an average of 30-34 ships through the canal each day, though, which is pretty impressive considering the size of the ships we’re talking about it. Each ship is guided into the locks by a system of locomotives - the ships are under their own power, but the trains keep them from bumping into the sides of the locks. At Miraflores, where the locks are the deepest (due to the more pronounced tidal fluctuations in the Pacific) the scale of the whole operation is impressive.
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Laura
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Just to let you know, Nicolas' class was just studying Guatemala the other day so your blog was incorporated into their lesson. Each kid had a laptop for the day and Nicolas prepared and graded an assigment based on your adventures. By the way, one of his questions was how many times did Sean touch the shower head