Gatun Locks, Panama Canal, Caribbean side
The Sea Voyager departed the Caribbean Sea at 6:30AM and arrived in the Pacific Ocean after a quick eight-hour transit. We’d left one ocean and arrived in another, fifty miles away, but the morning’s rain remained . . . strange weather for dry season!
The Panama Canal opened its doors to the world on August 15, 1914. It was built on time and under budget, at a total cost of about $398 million. Since it’s opening, more than 700,000 ships have transited this great waterway. Improvements are constantly being made to keep abreast of world shipping demands. Currently the canal handles about 40 ship transits per day. The Culebra Cut is the portion of the waterway that passes through the continental divide . . . and it is the canal’s bottleneck, limiting traffic. The enormous project of widening the canal will increase its daily capacity to about 60 ships. The cost of this improvement project will be about $200 million, half of the original construction cost!
As we relaxed with cocktails after our comfortable and speedy crossing of the isthmus, Ged reminded us of how long man has harbored a dream of a path between the seas. He read the gripping account of the Isaac Strain Expedition of 1854, when 28 men fought the jungle of the Darien searching for a possible route for a canal. The survivors returned emaciated and disillusioned; this route would never be viable.
Luckily for us we did not end like Strain . . . we just had rain.
The Sea Voyager departed the Caribbean Sea at 6:30AM and arrived in the Pacific Ocean after a quick eight-hour transit. We’d left one ocean and arrived in another, fifty miles away, but the morning’s rain remained . . . strange weather for dry season!
The Panama Canal opened its doors to the world on August 15, 1914. It was built on time and under budget, at a total cost of about $398 million. Since it’s opening, more than 700,000 ships have transited this great waterway. Improvements are constantly being made to keep abreast of world shipping demands. Currently the canal handles about 40 ship transits per day. The Culebra Cut is the portion of the waterway that passes through the continental divide . . . and it is the canal’s bottleneck, limiting traffic. The enormous project of widening the canal will increase its daily capacity to about 60 ships. The cost of this improvement project will be about $200 million, half of the original construction cost!
As we relaxed with cocktails after our comfortable and speedy crossing of the isthmus, Ged reminded us of how long man has harbored a dream of a path between the seas. He read the gripping account of the Isaac Strain Expedition of 1854, when 28 men fought the jungle of the Darien searching for a possible route for a canal. The survivors returned emaciated and disillusioned; this route would never be viable.
Luckily for us we did not end like Strain . . . we just had rain.
