When men were men
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2004
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18
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Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
Panama City,
Panama
Monday, January 24, 2005
eventually and had a fun day and a half cruising town. We strolled
along the seawall towards the banking district and stopped to buy a
flavoured ice from a stall where they hand shave the ice and then
drench it in flavoured 200% sugar syrup, we watched pelicans (who
have webbed feet you know) roosting in trees and more ships than
you could count queuing for the Canal, we bought jeans for USD 7.00,
we spent a fascinating hour chatting to an expat American petroleum
engineer who lives here on his boat and, miraculously, we sat outside
at a café and drank a glass of drinkable wine
01 Panama banking district
!And then we had the coolest day: on 22 January 2005 we did a partial
transit of the Panama Canal. Only partial, unfortunately, they only
do full transits once a month. But you can't have everything.
We started from Gamboa where Lake Gatún, which provides all the water
for the canal's operation, is located. We were the first southbound
transit of the day (these run 1200-1700hrs) and we had to wait as the
last northbound transit (between 0500-1200hrs), a fully laden
container ship, cleared the Gailiard Cut and passed within what felt
like touching distance (see photo).
We passed through incredibly beautiful landscape, the solid granite
of a hill split in two by men with shovels and dynamite and two sets
of locks, Pedro Miguel and the double step Miraflores, before
entering the Pacific Ocean
02 Really big queue
. The lock gates are the ones installed in1914, there are no pumps, they drain by culverts and gravity - 26
million gallons of water every time the gates are opened. The drop
is an average 30 feet in each lock. There's some way-cool
engineering here: the lock gates weigh 800 tonnes each and are so
well balanced that 75mm difference in water level across them means
they won't open. They're powered by electricity - the first large-
scale use of this new fangled stuff in a civil application: the
contract was the first big break for a start-up company called
General Electric!
Even standing on the deck of a ship on the reality of Panama Canal
the idea of a canal seems impossible - the physical difficulties,
engineer problems, financial disasters and the human tragedy of its
building must have made the idea seem more insane with every passing
month
03 Cruising the canal
. But back in the age of steam nothing was impossible: sailingthe canal in a small vessel really catches you up in the romance and
exuberant, confident belief of the time that men were men, natural
resources were free and inexhaustable and the world was entirely
shapeable.
[It is a requirement that all ships transiting the canal are under
the control of a Panama Canal pilot and they must have five crew
onboard (four to handle the ropes in the locks and one to steer -
yachts often hire locals to make up the numbers). Panamax vessels
(ships the maximum size for operation in the canal - this is the
default size for a container ship) also require a canal tug for
transit through the Gailiard Cut, which is the area with the tightest
margins for operation
04 Miraflores lock
. The cost of a transit depends on the size ofthe vessel and the type of cargo carried. An average transit costs
USD 130,000; the highest ever paid was USD 230,000 for the Pacific
Something cruiseliner on her maiden voyage, the lowest was USD 0.36
for Richard Halliburton who swam the canal in 1928 (swimming is no
longer permitted in the locks), we paid USD 1,500.]
We docked at Flamenco Island which is one of a chain of three islands
linked back to the mainland. The 4km causeway forms a wind and
current break which protects the southern entrance of the canal and
was entirely built by (about 10% of the total) canal debris. We
strolled down the causeway to the Smithsonian Institute Marine
Research Facility where they let me stroke an anemone, annoy a conch
and have a sea urchin walk across my hand ... and then we had a very
presentable dinner outside on the island with drinkable wine. Panama
loves its expats.
