Ocean Wanderer boat schematics

• Before the canal, ships journeyed 8,000 nautical miles around the tip of South America.
  
• The initial efforts to actually build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama started with the French in 1880. It would take another 34 years for it to be completed and opened in August 1914.
  
• More than 80,000 people took part in this unprecedented construction project and some 30,000 lost their lives in the endeavor.
  
• The 51-mile waterway has a work force of around 9,000 employees and operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing transit to over 14,000 vessels every year. More than two-thirds of these ships are headed to or from the U.S.
  
• The Miraflores Visitors Centre includes four exhibition halls of historical objects on canal operations, interactive modules and video presentations.
  
• Each passage through the canal requires 52 million gallons of freshwater to float the ship through the locks.
  
• Passage tolls through the Canal vary with the size of each ship. On average, a vessel will take between 8 to 10 hours to transit.
  
• New ships are up to 40 feet wider than the canal. Within 10 years most new ships won't fit through the locks.

Resources

Miraflores Visitors Centre information
www.pancanal.com

Panamal Canal information
www.panamacanal.com/map

Canal Locks history and information
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_lock