Cristobal (Port)

Latest news

Gatun Locks lane outage

Beginning at 0001 hours on Tuesday, August 14, 2018, until 2359 hours on Thursday, August 23, 2018 (10 days), the West lane of Gatun Locks will be out of service for scheduled dry chamber maintenance. As a result, and in accordance with the rules governing the Transit Reservation System (OP’s Notice to Shipping No. N-7-2018), Condition 2 for the Panamax locks will be in effect from Tuesday, August 14, 2018 through Thursday August 23, 2018. Source: GAC

High-tech US stealth ship ZUMWALT (DDG 1000) breaks down in Panama Canal

America's newest warship, the super high-tech USS Zumwalt, broke down in the Panama Canal just a few weeks after the vessel was commissioned, the Navy and reports said Tuesday. The guided missile destroyer needed to be towed Monday to a nearby former US naval station after suffering an "engineering casualty," the US Naval Institute's news site reported. The Zumwalt was en route from Baltimore, where it was commissioned on 15 October, to San Diego. Navy spokesman Commander Ryan Perry said in a statement that "the timeline for repairs is being determined now." "The schedule for the ship will remain flexible to enable testing and evaluation in order to ensure the ship's safe transit to her new homeport in San Diego," Perry said. An unnamed defence official told USNI News that repairs to the Zumwalt could take up to 10 days. The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt’s port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, he said. The AIMs are the electrical motors that are driven by the ship’s gas turbines and in turn electrically power the ship’s systems and drive the shafts. The $4.3 billion Zumwalt is the first in a new line of revolutionary guided missile destroyers. The ship is roughly 180 meters long and weighs nearly 15,000 tonnes, making it the largest destroyer in the US fleet, and its angular, unconventional shape to make it difficult to detect with radar.

New Panamax ships total 11 percent of canal transits

One of every nine oceangoing ships that transited the Panama Canal during October was a New Panamax vessel too wide to fit through the canal’s old locks. The canal’s new, larger locks handled 108 ships with beams wider than 107 feet during the month, the Panama Canal Authority reported. That was an average of 3.48 transits a day, or 11.1 percent of the month’s average daily total of 31.39 oceangoing transits. Oceangoing transits by ships of all sizes during the month totaled 973, compared with 1,047 a year earlier. Vessels spent an average of 27.14 hours in canal waters. That was a sharp improvement from October 2015, when heavy fog caused lengthy delays and vessel backlogs, and pushed the average time spent in canal waters to 62.67 hours. A sign of the smoother operation was reduced demand for advance bookings to ensure passage through the canal. Of the 168 slots available last month for New Panamax vessels, only 97 were taken. Ships with beams of 91 feet or wider took 317 of 527 available bookings. In October 2015, more than 90 percent of booking slots were used. A total of 346 New Panamax vessels transited the canal between the opening of the new locks last June 26 and Oct. 31. Primary users of the new locks have included container ships, car carriers, and liquefied natural gas carriers. http://www.joc.com/port-news/panama-canal-news/new-panamax-ships-total-11-percent-canal-transits_20161114.html