Today we finally got to go through the Panama Canal. This is, as you know, one of the seven wonders of the world, and deservedly so. The journey begins exactly the same way it did 110 years ago when a rowboat, with actual oars, meets the ship and picks up the line to go to shore. Today everything becomes different than 110 years ago where now we have electric locomotives guiding the ship instead of mules. There are approximately 21 transits every day in both the old and new locks. It takes a nearly unimaginable 52,000,000 gallons of water to complete a single transit. Let’s see how much that is - try 2.184 to the ninth power. That’s a lot of water, and so it’s good that it rains a lot in Panama.
At the Miraflores locks, there is a large building that houses an IMAX theater, museum, and a viewing deck. Hundreds of people congregate here to watch the ships go through the lock. And it’s almost like being a star. People on shore are waving to the people on the ships, and of course we are doing our best parade wave back.
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| Hundreds of people waving the ships through |
The new locks accommodate ships much larger than those that can transit through the 110-year-old original locks. The largest container ship they can go through the original locks holds about 5,000 containers while the largest ship they can go through the new locks holds an astonishing 17,000 containers. It cost about $1 million for a transit of one of those ships but when you think about it and divide that by 17,000 containers with each container may be holding $1 million worth of merchandise it’s actually nothing. The canal is approximately 50 miles long. The transit begins with three locks on the Atlantic side and then a sail through Gatun Lake and then three more locks leading to the Pacific side and then it’s over. The whole experience takes about 8 to 10 hours. the alternative is to take the boat around the bottom of South America, which takes about two weeks — no contest which route shippers choose.
I have some very cool videos, but I am unable to upload them at this time. The Internet is extremely slow so I will try and upload them when we have better service.
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| Electric mule |
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| Entering the locks |
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| I spent most of the day knitting |