(Wired) Sailing the Panama Canal is tricky. The journey between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea can take ten hours and involves navigating through a series of locks and waterways, and it’s best left to professionals. That’s why every ship crossing the famous waterway—from a retired couple’s pleasure yacht or a 900-foot container ship that fits with just inches to spare—is … [Read more...]

(The Star Online) ROCKS and earth aren’t the only things being moved around during the Panama Canal expansion. Animals, birds and even a few insects – rare ones – have been trapped and relocated before the excavators and earth-moving equipment arrived. Thousands of seedlings have also been planted in communities around Panama to take the place of trees that were felled to … [Read more...]

(The Maritime Executive) August 15 was the 100th anniversary of the official opening of the Panama Canal. SS Ancon was the first ship to pass through the canal on that day. However, the First World War meant there was almost no commercial traffic on the canal for its first six years. Today, jokes The Economist, canals are worse than buses: wait 100 years and three come along at … [Read more...]

(Bangkok Post) The governments of Panama and Spain scrambled Friday to resolve a dispute with a consortium threatening to halt expansion work on the Panama Canal over a $1.6 billion cost overrun. File picture shows a ship carrying four new gates for the Panama Canal heading for the port of Colon, west of Panama City, on August 20, 2013 Panamanian President Ricardo … [Read more...]