Thursday 26th January 2012  Shelter Bay Marina 9 22.17N 79 57.0W  

Today’s First Blog by David

We will transit Panama Canal over the next 36 hours. We have read about it, been to see it, been briefed and are now waiting on our berth for the signal to slip our moorings and leave.

The scale of things is impressive. There are six locks: three up, three down. Each is 300 metres long; the minimum depth is 15 metres and the water rises 10 metres in each lock. There are three at the north end: Gatun Locks which we visited yesterday.

Where we watched ships come and go:

The locks were finished in 1913 when they were large enough of any shipping of the day. These days they build ships as big as possible but if they are to go through the lock they must be kept to the maximum size that’s will  go through the lock. Cunningly, these ships are called “Panamax” carriers or freighters.  They are currently building a new set of locks – wider and deeper – for bigger ships; these should be ready in 2014.

If you look at the left hand ship above you can see a couple of “railway engines” on the dockside.

Their job is not to pull the ship through, but to keep the ship centred in the channel. There is about half a metre gap on either side of a Panamax vessel.  

Because the tolerances are so small ships have to agree to a Panama Canal Pilot taking control of the vessel and he brings with him a team of about 20 men to manage the lines between the boat and the shore. These guys also have a cunning name: “Linehandlers”!  The pilot works from a platform on the extreme starboard side of the ship’s bridge:  

Once the lock has been emptied, the open the gates and the ship moves on to the next lock.

.

Everything is rigidly controlled. The pilot tells the Captain how fast to go and in what direction; if there is no canvas cover over the fly bridge then the pilot will not move the ship.  If he doesn’t get a hot meal, he doesn’t move the ship.

All of these seems a far cry from the San Blas Islands where we could zip around in our dinghy at speeds approaching Mach 2 (or so it would seem from Peter’s face!):

And so we wait ………