Southern Caribbean Cruising — Panama Canal; Agua Clara Locks at Work

Today we continue with our exploration of the Agua Clara locks at the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal expansion. I’ll be paying particular attention to the action of the locks themselves, as they are quite a departure from the pivoting locks used in the original system. In this first photo you can see the locks retracting into their side bays:

It’s not a fast process. Here are the same locks just one minute, forty-five seconds later:

In the distance you can see ships transiting the original lock system to the west:

The goal in either system of locks is to either raise or lower a ship from sea level to the level of Gatún Lake, seen here:

Here are some photos of the process. In the first photo the ship has entered a lock, and water is raising the ship to the next level:

Same ship nearly four minutes later:

Once the ship is raised, a tugboat pulls the ship along to the next lock or out of the canal:

Here once again here is my YouTube video of the process:

Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini!)