PANAMA CANAL, Gatun Locks Visitor's Center

The best photographs from the Canal Transit were from inside the top and middle locks at Gatun. You could look over the lock gates and see down to the Caribbean Sea which gives a real sense of how high you are and how you really do go up and down to get across Panama.


These photos are from the Gatun Locks visitor's center which is also on the east side of the Canal. There is a bridge that crosses the Canal here somewhere but I didn't see it. We arrived at about exactly the right time. There were two ships in the locks and four ships arriving from Gatun Lake. Everything was traveling north, toward the Atlantic. In the first photo you can see two bulkers and behind them a container ship and farther back, a car carrier. I tried to go down to the lower visitor's level which would have allowed for a better photograph. A big policeman stopped me. Workmen were sweeping, or something. The ships in the next photos are ones that were in the locks when we arrived.

The bulker in this photo will give you a really good idea of just how much clearance there is between the Panamax
ships and the sides of the locks. The distance is actually two feet or so but it looks like inches. And when you have a 1,000' long ship that's about 105 feet wide and 80 feet or so tall, the two feet really looks small. If you look over the bow of this ship you can see the container ship ahead, entering the last lock. The bulker here is entering the middle lock.

No matter how spectacular these things look, when you get right down to it, they're just mechanical structures and they need greased on a regular basis. This worker went out onto the top of the doors with his grease gun and gave everything a little shot while the water was being let out of the top lock.

The next photo is of the container ship that is ahead of the bulker. It fills the west side lock about as full as it can get and it isn't even fully loaded. The water ahead is the Caribbean Sea (actually Lego Limon) and it is about 55 feet lower than the ship is now. Unlike on the Pacific side of the Canal, there are only minimal tide shifts on the Atlantic side. The tides are as much as 20 feet between high and low tide on the Pacific side.

You can get an even better perspective from the next photo which shows both ships and Lego Limon. The container ship is entering the last lock and the bulker is in the middle lock. Both of the locks are filled to their maximum height.

The Extras on Facebook show several more photographs of these two ships plus even more great stuff. I think this is about the last photo of Panama Canal Locks that I will post. You are probably already wondering how you can get along without more and you might have to re-visit some of the earlier postings.

At any rate, you now know more about the Panama Canal than nearly anyone else I know. There are several more postings to follow that show the old City (Casco Viejo), some countryside scenery, some buildings and sights in Panama City, and maybe even more. Stay tuned.

JCE