Panama - Everyone waves to MINDI
Panama -The Panama Canal is a complex system of artificial lakes - natural, man-assisted, and artificial channels - and three sets of recently expanded locks. To state that its undertaking was immense is putting it lightly. Construction took place in two stages by two completely different groups, first French (1881 – 1889) then American (1904 – 1914), at an estimated cost ranging from $375-$400 million with almost 30,000 lives lost mostly to disease.
The fleet required to complete the early 20th century dig was immense; to fill the need, a number of American heavy-machinery companies were enlisted to custom-build dredgers, dredger engines, and other dredging equipment. Baltimore-based Ellicott Machine Corporation crafted six of these machines. Ellicott’s products proved their worth and their lasting power since the dredging of the Panama Canal is a proverbial work in progress. Their cutter suction dredger MINDI joined the Panamanian maintenance crew in the 1940s. Well known to mariners who have transited the Panama Canal, the 125-meter-long vessel has been in active service since 1943 (often more reliably than some newer larger dredgers), working in and around the Culebra Cut — the narrowest stretch in the Panama Canal — most recently to widen a turning radius for new bigger ships expected by 2017. Here she is moored in Gamboa, just shy of the canal’s midway point south of Lake Gatun.
Panama - Everyone waves to MINDI
Panama -The Panama Canal is a complex system of artificial lakes - natural, man-assisted, and artificial channels - and three sets of recently expanded locks. To state that its undertaking was immense is putting it lightly. Construction took place in two stages by two completely different groups, first French (1881 – 1889) then American (1904 – 1914), at an estimated cost ranging from $375-$400 million with almost 30,000 lives lost mostly to disease.
The fleet required to complete the early 20th century dig was immense; to fill the need, a number of American heavy-machinery companies were enlisted to custom-build dredgers, dredger engines, and other dredging equipment. Baltimore-based Ellicott Machine Corporation crafted six of these machines. Ellicott’s products proved their worth and their lasting power since the dredging of the Panama Canal is a proverbial work in progress. Their cutter suction dredger MINDI joined the Panamanian maintenance crew in the 1940s. Well known to mariners who have transited the Panama Canal, the 125-meter-long vessel has been in active service since 1943 (often more reliably than some newer larger dredgers), working in and around the Culebra Cut — the narrowest stretch in the Panama Canal — most recently to widen a turning radius for new bigger ships expected by 2017. Here she is moored in Gamboa, just shy of the canal’s midway point south of Lake Gatun.