In Panama, a Man, a Plan, a Mini-Canal


News from Panama / Tuesday, June 14th, 2016

mini ships

As the Panama Canal nears the end of a nine-year expansion to accommodate larger ships, the Canal Authority plans to train roughly 250 pilots to operate them. They’re using miniature replicas of tugboats and massive cargo ships .

Daniela Hernandez covers the story in the Wall Street Journal.  Read the story and see the video in the article linked below.
On a recent Tuesday morning, Captain Fernando Jaen was piloting a cargo ship through the Panama Canal’s new set of intimidatingly narrow locks.“The times we’ve had conversations, we ended up crashing,” Capt. Jaen said. “You have to concentrate.”Moments later, a tiny miscalculation sent the ship’s midsection on a course to brush the wall. If the impact were severe, Capt. Jaen knew that he, and possibly the entire crew, might be plunged into the watery abyss below—which, in this case, might have required everybody to take a break and change their socks.
AdvertisementThe Panama Canal evokes romantic images of seafaring precision and derring-do. Here, at a new $8 million training facility for freighter pilots, the only outsize thing is the potential for embarrassment. Experienced Canal pilots climb aboard miniature battery-powered ships with little engines, little rudders and little anchors all meticulously constructed to match the dimensions of real cargo vessels in 1-to-25 scale. They traverse a scale replica of the canal where the water ranges from about 2 feet to six-and-half feet deep.
Before navigating ships through the newly expanded Panama Canal, some pilots practice maneuvering miniature models at a new training facility.Photos: Arnulfo Franco/Associated Press

Read the entire article here