Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

2020 Shipping Movements

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
TRITON ACE has about 60 miles to run to the entrance of the Panama Canal.
If she behaves true to form she will anchor up to the right of the channel and wait until she is called forward for her transit which is likely to be in the the small hours of tomorrow morning. (RCC ANTWERP anchored in the area on the other side of the channel which was very unusual)
She will have paid a fee to jump the queue.
A canal pilot will board prior to this - no vessel of any size can transit without one.

The Panama Canal provides a shortcut for shipping travelling from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and vice-versa. Instead of having to route to the south of South America and then back up, a distance of about 10,000 nm the canal offers a mere 50 mile transit. This comes at a big (well into 6 figures) price, calculated by a complicated formula, designed to maximise revenue to the canal operators. The original canal opened in 1914 and was an immediate success. In the first year it handled about 1000 ships and by 2008 it was handling nearly 15000. These figures alone don’t tell the whole story because ships were getting bigger and bigger and one of the limits to the size of ships being built was the size of the locks in the Panama Canal. Ships that were built to fit (just) into the locks were described as Panamax ships. That is why so many cruise ships, container ships and car carriers are 32.3m wide and have a draft of under 12.6m.

The expansion of global trade and the increase in shipping meant that the canal was becoming a bottleneck with frequent delays and queues of ships waiting to transit. Fees for queue jumping became ever more expensive and ever more necessary to avoid delays. Alternatives to the canal were seriously being considered eg the NW passage and a number of alternative canal routes that avoided Panama completely. Panama relies on the income from the canal and could not afford for any of the alternatives plans to be viable and so a plan for the expansion to the existing canal system was commenced in 2007 and completed in 2016. This introduced two new sets of locks built parallel to the existing locks. Significantly, they now allow ships up to 366m long, 49m wide and with a draft of up to 15m to transit the canal. The new locks are of a modern design which use less water and are regarded as safer and more reliable too.

So a Panamax ship like TRITON ACE can use the old locks - Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun locks to transit whereas bigger ships like GLOVIS SUMMIT have to use the new locks at Coccoli and Agua Clara.

The canal is big business and so is generally a pretty slick operation entirely dependent on how much you have paid. The Tesla ships are normally booked in several weeks in advance and are given a pretty high priority. Delays of more than 24 hours are rare and normally we can expect the ships to start their northbound transit in the small hours of the morning and be in the Caribbean around 8 hours later.

There are webcams at the locks so you can watch the ships going through. The link to the webcams is here
Sadly the webcam covering the Pedro Miguel locks has been dislodged.

For TRITON ACE, I expect her to be at Miraflores around 6 am UK time tomorrow and Pedro Miguel locks around 8am UK time. By the time she reaches Gatun locks it will be daylight. I expect her to be in the Caribbean around 3pm UK time.

cfabbfa9-7989-4d9f-82b9-fdbe12efee8a-png.582713


Thanks to @Mister J for providing the above graphic.
 
Last edited:
Not all the ships anchored off the entrance are waiting to transit, some like the 5 Carnival Corp cruise ships are anchored 'waiting orders'. Panama is a strategically convenient location that has the added advantage of a scheme for crew rotation during the current pandemic. Traditionally, individual crew members could join or leave a ship at almost any port in the world when required but travel restrictions introduced to restrict the spread of the coronavirus created havoc with scheduled crew changes with some crew members spending many extra months at sea. It also led to crew members who were at home being unable to rejoin their ships and the financial stress of no income often in countries that had no financial safety net to assist. Panama established a scheme with KLM/Air France to facilitate crew changes in Panama. This is a very shrewd business move as it means that ships that use the scheme are likely to also refuel and victual there too providing a welcome boost to the local economy.
 
Is it just me or are the Panama locks webcams very unstable? Some times I get all the images/refreshes, some times none (for days). Now I get nothing, in either browser (Edge or Chrome). I guess I have to track Triton Ace and Grand Aurora as well... :)