Passage Through Panama Canal Is Voyage Imbued With History : Central America: The planned U.S. hand-over of the waterway in December brings a sense of anticipation mixed with anxiety for navigators.

As the sun rises over the Caribbean, the multinational crew loads one last container of cargo from the port of Colon and steers this ship toward the Gatun Locks for its first voyage through the Panama Canal.

Capt. Karsten Jepsen sits on the bridge, binoculars in hand, barely containing his excitement. In his 19 years at sea, the blond, round-faced sailor has seen much of the world, but, like his ship, he has yet to pass through this legendary man-made waterway.

With good humor and mostly feigned trepidation, he turns over command to the two veteran pilots who will guide the 683-foot Cyprus-flagged container carrier on a daylong journey through the 50-mile canal.

More than 700,000 ships have passed through the canal since it opened Aug. 15, 1914, a few days after the start of World War I. The main reason for going through the canal is the same now as it was then: It’s a shortcut. A ship can trim thousands of miles from its voyage by going through the Central American isthmus rather than around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

A Sense That Things Are About to Change

But a trip through the Panama Canal is not just business. There is a sense of history here, a look back at the time of Teddy Roosevelt, when engineers still proudly declared that they were out to conquer nature. Increasingly, that is tinged with nostalgia for the waning days of U.S. control.

More tangible is a large dose of anticipation mixed with anxiety for the scheduled Panamanian takeover of the canal at the end of this year. Officials here have pledged that they will run the waterway more efficiently and with better service.

That has meant privatizing the ports, introducing new technology and kicking out some old, sentimental tenants, such as a yacht club, that will no longer have a place in the commerce-driven canal of the future.

Somehow, passing through the canal now is like seeing Hong Kong while it was a British colony or visiting Cuba before Fidel Castro dies. Both U.S. and Panamanian officials are publicly committed to a seamless transition, but there is a sense that here something is about to change irrevocably.

The Cap Norte officially enters the canal when it glides into a sea-level channel flanked by mangrove swamps. Because the crew finished loading at dawn and the ship’s size requires a daylight passage, the Cap Norte will go straight through the canal without any delay. Fog or bad timing sometimes forces vessels to wait nearly a day.

Dispelling Myth About the Canal

The ship will be crossing from Atlantic to Pacific, or north to south, at exactly the point where the isthmus dividing the two oceans is narrowest. Built to travel at 21 knots--about 19 mph--on the open sea, the Cap Norte will slow to a maximum speed of 13 mph in the canal.

The channel segues into the first of three step-like chambers that form the Gatun Locks. Once the ship is inside, the chamber fills with water, raising the ship high enough to enter the next step.

Two sets of locks, side by side, permit two ships to pass through at the same time.

The Cap Norte now climbs the three steps of locks and is raised 85 feet, to the level of Gatun Lake. Sailing onto the lake dispels one of the myths about the Panama Canal.

It is not a huge ditch, as many first-time visitors expect. Rather, the canal is two connected artificial lakes. Gatun is the larger one, covering 163 square miles.

The lake is dotted with islands that were hills before the Gatun Dam was finished in 1912, flooding the valleys. Sailboats dart between points along the tree-lined shores, and sportfishing boats search for the day’s best spots.

Because of the rich tropical wildlife, the Smithsonian Institution has a research center on the western shore, but rumors abound that the center will be closed when the U.S. pulls out.

The lakes provide far greater flexibility than a narrow channel would have. Ships can pass in a lake, and those carrying explosives can wait at a distance from other vessels.

Still, guiding a ship the size of the Cap Norte through Gatun Lake is not an easy task, even for a pilot with nearly 25 years of experience like John Moralis.

“The toughest part are the long hours,” he says of his job. “Sometimes I work as much as 16 hours because locks break down or fog [reduces visibility]. But it’s challenging, and it’s out in the open air.”

A California Maritime Academy graduate, Moralis became a pilot in 1974, after 17 years at sea. He is one of 90 Americans among the 280 pilots who guide ships through the canal.

Senior pilots like Moralis are an important part of the 6% of Americans left in the Panama Canal Commission work force. Such senior pilots earn an average of $155,000 a year with bonuses. That pays for comfortable houses in both Panama and Florida and enough money for him and his Panamanian wife to travel between the two each month.

Still, a recent study for the commission found that, given the demands and stress of the job, pilots here are underpaid by 12% or more compared with their counterparts elsewhere. Americans are paid a 15% “tropical differential,” a sort of hardship pay, but that will end with the turnover.

“They want to take us down to Panamanian standards in pay and workload,” Moralis frets. “If they do anything like that, I’ll leave. . . . I can retire.”

Moralis listens to New Age music to calm his nerves as he navigates the ship past submerged trees and other hazards. The pilot must also be aware of the suction created when a ship this size passes another big ship.

To help pilots with traffic control, the canal commission recently introduced a sophisticated satellite-signal traffic system. The pilots “will be able to see on the computer screen exactly where every vessel is, how fast it is moving and what kind of vessel it is,” said Canal Administrator Alberto Aleman.

Such precise control will become indispensable soon, when the widening of the narrowest part of the canal--the Gaillard, or Culebra, Cut--is completed. Now, ships as wide as the Cap Norte can’t pass other vessels in the 8-mile-long cut, which has become a bottleneck, the maritime equivalent of a one-lane bridge.

Winding its way through the cut, the Cap Norte is under the command of Oscar Soto, who has taken over for Moralis in a normal shift change needed because of the stress of guiding a ship longer than 80 feet. After little more than four hours, the ship is halfway through the canal.

As the ship glides through the curving pass, Soto watches for shoals and gives wide berth to the two dredges digging away at the edges of the cut. When the dredges are finished, they will have widened the cut enough for two of the largest ships--called Panamax--that will fit in the locks to pass, increasing the canal’s capacity by 20%, Aleman said.

In June, two Panamax ships safely passed each other for the first time in a part of the cut that has been widened, but pilots are not convinced.

“Sometimes the fog through the cut is so thick that you can’t see,” Soto says. If ships see fog rolling in, they stop outside the cut. But there isn’t always time. “The fog can fall in seconds,” he says.

And even with computerized plotting screens, the fog can create a dangerous situation. Such worries are indicative of canal employees’ concerns about the upcoming Panamanian takeover of the canal.

“I would not want to be here in 2000,” says Soto, a Panamanian. Mainly, workers worry that when Panama takes control, the canal management will try to cut costs by postponing maintenance and trimming the work force.

Canal Minister Jorge Ritter, the top government official overseeing the canal, dismisses that notion. He says that the 1977 treaty pledging to give Panama control of the canal requires that pay scales and working conditions be maintained. Both are important to keeping the highly skilled workers who operate the canal.

One example is the skilled laborers who handle the ropes that help center the Cap Norte as it goes through the Pedro Miguel Lock. Their dead-accurate throwing is the product of hours of practice and competition.

When the ship is centered, a gate closes behind it, and the water in the chamber empties. In 15 minutes, the ship is 31 feet lower, at the level of Miraflores Lake.

Although smaller than Gatun Lake, Miraflores appears more bustling, its shores crowded with activity: The two-story Pedro Miguel Yacht Club is on its eastern shore, and the Visitors Pavilion is on the west. Ft. Clayton, among the last of the U.S. military bases in Panama, is south of the yacht club, and the towers of Panama City are visible over the hills.

Soon, the linemen are casting to their co-workers at the Miraflores Locks, and the Cap Norte is descending two more steps--a total of 54 feet--to the level of the Pacific Ocean.

From there, the ship glides past the Port of Balboa, newly privatized and undergoing a $105-million expansion, then under the majestic Bridge of the Americas.

Nine hours after the Cap Norte entered the Gatun Locks, Soto turns command back over to Capt. Jepsen, who has observed the day’s maneuvering with the look of a man watching his wife dance with John Travolta.

“This was beautiful,” Jepsen says, “but I am ready to go out to sea again.”