Crossing the Panama Canal on MANA our Catamaran Privilège 5 скачать в хорошем качестве

Crossing the Panama Canal on MANA our Catamaran Privilège 5

Crossing with MANA the Panama Canal was an emotional moment, the history, the legend, the nature, the massive giant man-made construction allowing us to pass with mega-ship from East to West is a mind-blowing expérience. We did it twice, first on a friend boat "Falcon" and then with MANA. The idea of the Panama Canal dates back to 1513 when Vasco Núñez de Balboa first crossed the isthmus of Panama. The narrow land bridge between North and South America was a fine location to dig a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The earliest European colonists recognized this, and several proposals for a canal were made. The 1848 discovery of gold in California and the rush of would-be miners stimulated US interest in building a canal between the oceans. In 1887, a United States Army Corps of Engineers regiment surveyed canal possibilities in Nicaragua. By the late nineteenth century, technological advances and commercial pressure allowed construction to begin. Ferdinand de Lesseps led the initial attempt by France to build a sea-level canal. Beset by cost overruns due to the severe underestimation of the difficulties in excavating the rugged terrain, heavy personnel losses to tropical diseases, and political corruption in France surrounding the financing of the massive project, the canal was only partly completed. Godin de Lépinay's plan was to build a dam across the Chagres River in Gatún, near the Atlantic, and another on the Rio Grande, near the Pacific, to create an artificial lake accessed by locks. Unfortunately, his innovative plan received no serious attention from Congress. Had it been adopted, the Panama Canal might well have been completed by the French instead of by the United States. By 1885 it had become clear to many that a sea-level canal was impractical, and an elevated canal with locks was preferable; Work continued under the new plan until May 15, 1889, when the company went bankrupt and the project was suspended. After eight years the canal was about two-fifths completed, and about $234.8 million had been spent. The company's collapse was a scandal in France, independence for Panama and the right for the U.S. to lead a renewed effort to construct the canal. Colombia's response to the Panamanian independence was tempered by an American military presence American success hinged on two factors. First was converting the original French sea-level plan to a more realistic lock-controlled canal. The second was controlling the diseases which had decimated workers and management alike under the original French attempt. One of the greatest barriers to a canal was the continental divide, which originally rose to 110 meters (360.9 ft) above sea level at its highest point. The effort to cut through this barrier of rock was one of the greatest challenges faced by the project. The scale of the work was massive. Six thousand men worked in the cut, drilling holes in which a total of 27,000 t (60,000,000 lb) of dynamite were placed to break up the rock (which was then removed by as many as 160 trains per day). Landslides were frequent, due to the oxidation and weakening of the rock's underlying iron strata. Although the scale of the job and the frequent, unpredictable slides generated chaos, Gaillard provided quiet, clear-sighted leadership. On May 20, 1913, Bucyrus steam shovels made a passage through the Culebra Cut at the level of the canal bottom. The French effort had reduced the summit to 59 meters (193.6 ft) over a relatively narrow width; the Americans had lowered this to 12 meters (39.4 ft) above sea level over a greater width and had excavated over 76,000,000 m3 (99,000,000 cu yd) of material. On 7 January 1914, the French crane boat Alexandre La Valley became the first to make the traverse, and on 1 April 1914, the construction was officially completed with the hand-over of the project from the construction company to the Canal Zone government. But the canal officially opened to commercial traffic on 15 August 1914 with the transit of the SS Ancon. After construction, the canal and the Canal Zone surrounding it were administered by the United States. On September 7, 1977, US President Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaty setting in motion the process of transferring control of the canal to Panama. The treaty became effective on October 1, 1979, providing for a 20-year period in which Panama would have increasing responsibility for canal operations before complete US withdrawal on December 31, 1999. Since then, the canal has been administered by the Panama Canal Authority (Autoridad de Canal de Panama, or ACP). Check our sailing and diving vidéos on:    / sailingmana   and follow us on Instagram:   / sailingmana