The Panama Canal has 80 kilometers in length from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It crosses of the northwest to the Southeastern; its entrance to the Atlantic is to about 50 kilometers to the north and more than 43 kilometers to the east, in relation to the entrance of the Pacific. The distance by air between both entrances is of 69,1 kilometers.

A boat average requires of eight to ten hours to complete the transit by the Panama Canal.

The route was excavated through one of the closest places and in the lowest part of the isthmus that unites to North and the South America. The place by where it crosses dividing the continental one of waters.

The Channel is of the type of sluices and has three games of this system; those of Gatún, that at their moment was the concrete structure of greater of the world, they have almost two kilometers in length; those of Miraflores and those of Pedro Miguel. The cameras of these sluices have 33,53 meters wide and 304,80 meters in length.

The three sluices were constructed in pairs, so that two ships can journey simultaneously in the same direction or opposite senses.


Operation

In spite of its apparent complexity, the operation of the Channel is a simple operation, thanks to the talent and inventiveness of its producers.

The water to raise and to lower the ships in each game of sluices, in fact one species of stairs, whose steps to ascend or to descend fill or drain of water, is obtained by simple gravity of the Gatún lake.

The water enters through a system of main sewage systems that have he himself size of the pipe in the Hudson river of the Central Railroad of Pennsylvania.

Of these main culverts, 10 games extend below the cameras of the sluices from lateral walls, and 10 games from the central wall.

Each culvert has a game of five holes of 4,5 feet of diameter. As the water within the main culverts is spilled, the same one is distributed by interval of 100 holes in the floor of the camera. By each ship that journeys the Channel 52 million gallons of fresh water are used about, which flow by gravity through the sluices and they are spilled to the ocean.

The ships in transit by the Panama Canal are towed from a camera to another one in each game of sluices by means of electrical locomotives (mules), specially designed for this intention.

The Channel uses about 240 practitioners to journey the ships that use their aquatic route. The practitioners assign themselves of way to compare their qualifications with the type, size and other characteristics of the respective ship in transit. The captains of the ships that cross this route have to yield the control of the same ones to personnel of the exclusively made responsible Channel of this phase of the transit. It obeys to the necessity to observe to the maximum the security norms that impose the displacement of the ships by the Panama Canal.

Cristóbal: A ship average will take around nine hours to journey the Panama Canal. If it does from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it will sail from the port of Cristóbal - by a stretch of more than 10 kilometers in length and a wide one of 152,40 meters, which cross to manglar that it is in many places until the sluices of Gatún.

Gatún: The ship in transit will ascend up to 26,52 meters through the three cameras of the sluices of Gatún.

In the Gatún lake, the ship will sail almost 37,8 kilometers from the sluices of its name to the North end of the Gaillard Court (Snake). One is one of greater the artificial reservorios of water of the world. It covers an area with 423 kilometers square.

Gaillard court: This section of the Panama Canal, particularly interesting by the challenges that imposed to the accomplishment of the route and the fact that devastating landslides were registered in her during the time of construction, has 13,7 kilometers in length. Here the main excavation of the Channel took place, works these that were in charge of the engineer David Du Bose Gaillard, in whose name was red-baptize until then known like Court Snake.

This passage, like no other of the route, shows the Panama Canal as an immense ditch. Before arriving at the following sluices, the boat will pass (to the left) to a flank of the hill Gold, the highest elevation (203,7 meters on the level of the sea) in all the Channel. The Hill of the Contractor, in the opposed shore, originally had an altitude of 125 meters, but in 1954 it was reduced to 115 meters to stabilize it.

Pedro Miguel: The ship in transit now enters the sluices of Pedro Miguel the South end of the Gaillard Court. There it descends about nine meters in a single passage to the level from the Miraflores lake that separates the two sluices in the Pacific.

Miraflores: The ship lowers the last steps, until the level of the sea, in the sluices of Miraflores, whose floodgates are highest of all the system of the Panama Canal due to the noticeable variations of the tides in the Pacific. The boat in transit will cover just a short time in the distance that, at level of the sea, separates the sluices of Miraflores of the exit from the Channel to the Pacific Ocean.