Further Panama Canal info and some 2008 thoughts

This is actually being written on 20 Sep 2008, but for completeness I will back-date it to appear above the postings of e-mails from the Zuiderdam cruise in 2006. Those postings themselves were made in 2008, back-dated to their original date and (roughly) time, without engaging in revisionism, but adding some notes where they were relevant. The additions are clearly identified.

In one of the posts below I mentioned a historical source for information about the construction of the Panama Canal. That is,

David McCullough
The Path Between the Seas

Originally published in 1977, the edition I have was published in 2002 for History Book Club by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, Inc. While probably not readily available in retail, you ought to be able to locate a copy in university libraries and good public libraries (yours may have to bring it in from another library).

But, if you are interested in all the facts about the canal's construction, this is the definitive book.

There is also a lot of on-line information available, google Panama Canal and you will be able to select from many thousands of pages with current facts, web-cams, whatever.

Since our transit of the canal in October 2006, much has happened. At the time of our trip, the Panama legislature was debating adding another set of locks at both the Caribean and Pacific ends to allow larger ships to transit than are presently able. At that time, there was significant opposition to this plan, both in the Panamanian people and some of their politicians, because of the opportunities for corruption such an immense project (billions of dollars) offers, an ever present reality in Latin America, but also in the rest of the world. That measure has since been passed by the Panama legislature, but I don't know when actual constuction would begin- obviously there is an immense amount of planning and engineering to be done before ever a shovel goes into the ground. Nor do I have any idea of a projected completion date.

Some thoughts however.

The ship in which we transited the canal, Holland-America's Zuiderdam is one of the largest ships that can make that journey, ie. is almost at the PANAMAX limit. I do not know if Holland-America's newest and largest ship Eurodam is able to transit the canal - perhaps so, because they seem to have mostly gone up, with an extra deck, rather than longer or wider, although looking through the current Holland-America catalogue of sailings (if you ever sail with them, you have friends for life, getting offers and catalogues almost weekly) Eurodam is notably absent from the list of ships doing canal transits.

The most significant limits seem to be length and width, with depth being a secondary, but not unimportant consideration. Thus, lengthwise, Zuiderdam was within a few feet of the length of the shortest of the locks (for reasons not entirely clear, at least not logically - there may be engineering reasons, but I can't think of any), the twelve locks in the canal (3 pairs at each end, although at the Pacific end there are 2 pairs at the Pacific level, and then 1 pair further inland) are not all of equal length (I am not sure about width). That means the shortest lock determines the PANAMAX length. Width is also important, and by visual observation, Zuiderdam was only a few feet narower at her beam than the locks. Depth (draft) is not observable, but obviously, when a lock is at its low level, the ship in it has to have some water (how much?) beneath its keel.

Thus, there are a large number of ships in current service, not just cruise ships, but tankers and cargo ships, that do not meet the PANAMAX specifications. (To be fair, the builders and owners kenw those specifications, and deliberately decided not to meet them.) However, more and more ships are being built that for economic reasons are designed larger.

The new locks will again be three sets of two at each end of the canal. Given real estate and engineering considerations, they will be some distance from the present locks (which will continue to be operated for vessels that fit them). The present shipping channel through Gatun Lake will continue to be the route from one side to the other, which will probably lead to interesting traffic control problems, given that many more ships will be travelling along a channel that is at times very busy. The biggest problem will be at the Gaillard Cut, a relatively narrow channel, which is continually subject to landslides.

However, environmentally the new locks will be better than the present ones. The present lock system requires 52,000,000 gallons of fresh water to move a large ship from one side of the canal to the other. All of that water has to be replenished by rain falling over the enormous watershed that drains into Lake Gatun. That puts a limit to the number of ships that can transit the canal annually, and apparently adding another set of locks, for larger ships (and hence needing even more fresh water for a transit), would exceed that limit. Thus, the proposed locks will "recycle" fresh water, using pumps to bring water in locks back up to Lake Gatun level, rather than simply allowing it to drain down to ocean level. The projected savings is that a transit through the new locks will require perhaps 50% of the fresh water it now does. However, considerable electrical poser will be needed to run the pumps; and interesting trade-off.

If you are fascinated by meg-engineering, this project will be one worth watching in the next years, even decade.