Day 6 - Tuesday January 3, 2024 Panama Canal Transit

Today was the Daylight Transit of the canal from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. An East to West transit.

We arrived at 08:30 outside the canal entrance to await the pilot and a local expert who would provide commentary of our transit.

The Panama Canal was a feat of engineering marvel for its time. Construction commenced in the early 1900s and completed ten years later in 1912. The total cost of the project was $400 million, a huge amount for the day. In today's dollars the project would be billions of dollars.

The Canal is made of three locks as you make your way from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific. These locks are Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores. Once through Gatun lock you come to Lake Gatun.

During the transit the lecturer provided a question and answer presentation. Alot of the questions dealt with security of the canal but some also asked about the cost to transit. As an example Oceania Insignia cost was $300,000 while the Ruby Princess cost was $500,000 to transit the canal.

Ships are charged a fee based on their total tonnage and the average cost is $150,000 to transit through the canal. Here's an interesting trivia question - what is the cheapest fee ever charged to use the canal? The answer is $0.36 in 1928 by Richard Halliburton who swam the canal. The lecturer also indicated that the highest fee was in the range of $1.5 million.

The length between the two openings is 48 miles with 11,000 ships navigating the canal each year. It was mentioned that the canal generates $2 billion in revenue annually with approximately $800 million going directly into Panama's treasury. The United States of America had control of the canal for most of the 20th century but the canal's control was turned over by the US to the goverment of Panama in 1999.

The locks operate on a 24 hours basis. Construction of the third lock commenced in September 2007 and was completed in May 2016 to meet the growing demand.

A term called "mules" is used for the electric locomotives which guide the ships through the locks. The ships use their own propulsion but the mules keep the ships in the centre of the locks through the use of ropes. It is the job of two people in a row boat (see above photo) to collect the ship's rope thrown down to them, attach it to a second rope which is then pulled out of the water and attached to the locomotives. Very antiquated system however it still works.

A very sad statistic is that during construction 30,000 Frenchmen died mostly from Yellow Fever. France was the original country to begin the project.

Three bridges were built over the canal, the Atlantic Bridge, Centennial Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas at the Pacific Ocean entrance to the canal.

We commenced the transit at 9:30 and completed the journey at 16:30.

Sailing under the Bridge of the Americas I counted at least 30 ships waiting their turn to transit the canal from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.

Although this is our third transit, this amazing engineering feat never ceases to amaze us.

Today we received another change to the itinerary. With Acapulco still recovering from the hurricane damage, Oceania has postoned our port visit on January 9. In its place we will have another sea day but the sea day for January 10 has been replaced by port visit to Puerto Vallarta.

Tomorrow is a sea day as we make our way to Puntarenas Costa Rica.