A
man, a plan, a canal; Panama!
Who doesn't know this
famous palindrome? Until yesterday that was all it was to me, but I was lucky
enough to be able to travel through it! Our vessel is currently doing its
3-week repositioning from Greenland through the Panama canal to Puerto Montt in Chile.
This is done without guests, so it is a time where the pressure is off a little
bit and I am treated to seeing my colleagues in their
civilian clothing. It is very strange to see the Captain walk around in
shorts (combined with his uniform shirt for the short stint of actually being
in the canal, because Panamanian officials were on board) and unshaven. Unfortunately it is
not a time where I can just slack off, because I have lots of projects to do,
which are very hard to do with passengers are on board.
Some quick Googling
has taught me that the Panama canal cuts through Panama (big surprise) saving
mankind lots of time and money (and lives) because now ships don't have to sail
around the dangerous tip of Argentina to reach the other ocean. Construction began in 1881
by the French and abandoned again by them in 1894. Their workers were dying in
such big numbers (at some point 200 per month) that "the high mortality
rate made it difficult to maintain an experienced workforce" (!) Conditions were incredibly hard because of
the debilitating climate, poisonous snakes, insects and spiders and worsened multi fold by yellow fever and malaria (mosquitoes were no suspects yet at that time).
It was the United
States that continued the work in 1904 and finished it in 1914. Panama got full reign of it on noon December 31, 1999.
The canal consists
of a set of 3 locks on the Atlantic side and 3 more on the Pacific side,
because there's a difference in sea level between the two! How is that
possible? Should that not even out, because the oceans are connected? I must admit that I
had to look that as well. There's a big variation in sea levels around the world,
something to do with the fact that the Atlantic is saltier (thus denser thus
will stand a bit higher) than the Pacific and because of the effect of wind and
currents which pull and push on water. The difference in tide is also
noticeable, with the Pacific having a much bigger difference between high and
low tide than the Atlantic. I stole this image from Wikipedia which shows the difference in sea level height around the world.
Excellent graphic showing the whole way from the Atlantic to the Pacific
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By Thomas
Römer/OpenStreetMap data, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19678675
Before entering the canal, we spent a big part of the day on the north side in Colon, to get our provisions (the contents of 6 containers, I believe), to say goodbye to leaving colleagues and welcome new colleagues. I had 2 technicians for the day, one who successfully helped me with a software migration and 1 one who unsuccessfully tried to get our backup frequency for the internet to work.
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| This is how the ship looks for a couple of days after getting so much stuff on board. |
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| Getting close to the first lock. |
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| Lock personnel has come on board to handle the lines that will connect the ship with on shore carts |
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| Still low water level while the doors are closing behind us. |
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| They pumped water into the lock and raised the level and now the doors are opening on the other side | . |
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| Losing daylight pretty fast so close to the equator, so "quick take a picture of me". |
Only one attempt needed to throw the line to our ship.
As the ship moves forward, the carts on each side keep the ship in the middle (as if our Captain would not be able to do that himself!) In fact with the pilots being on board and tied to the lines on either side, I don't think the Captain has ever had so little control over his ship as here. He has to hand over all controls.
Pumping the water into the lock, to raise the water level, and the ship.
Special birthday wishes for my dear niece Seneca and for her mom for just having braved an operation. Love you both. Oh, thanks Seneca for reminding to write about the costs involved. I could not find anyone on board who could give me an answer, but I've heard a figure of $200,000 mentioned, because you also pay for all the handlers that come on board and lines and equipment that you need to rent. I would have been more if we had guests on board. I've been told that the cheapest crossing was something like 20 cents when, long ago, they allowed someone to swim across.
