There Is a Huge Backlog of Ships Waiting to Pass Through the Panama Canal
If your ship is planning to cross by the Panama Canal anytime quickly, be ready to attend.
Looking at AIS information of the anchorages at each the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the canal, you will notice an enormous backlog of ships, principally tankers and cargo ships it appears.
We reached out to Marine Traffic Control on the Panama Canal, who advised us there have been a complete of 129 ready vessels between the 2 anchorages as of Thursday afternoon, with ready occasions proper now of 5 days for unbooked vessels – that’s vessels that didn’t pay the premium to order an area.
On Thursday, non-booked northbound vessels scheduled to cross by the canal have been ready at anchor since Oct. 16 and 17. For non-booked southbound vessels, the wait time is even worse. Those vessels arrived on Oct. 14 and 15, seven and eight days in the past.
Marine Traffic Control mentioned the backlog is primarily attributable to climate situations, together with a number of days of fog on the canal. But we spoke with a canal insider, who mentioned that in his a long time of expertise he has solely seen it like this when there may be another problem happening – not one which’s climate associated.
For oceangoing vessels, the purpose is for 24-30 hours of what they name Canal Water Time, which incorporates arrival, wait time and transit, however the each day common rose to greater than 37 hours in September, with a excessive of greater than 80 hours. Transit usually ought to common 10 to 12 hours, so you’ll be able to see that’s lot of hours and generally days to attend.
We’re additionally advised that reserving slots, the place you truly reserve a selected time and day for a charge, aren’t even out there for a number of days out proper now, so even vessels keen to pay additional want to attend a number of days. In truth, we’re advised that there are hardly any open slots left and what’s out there is being auctioned off to the very best bidder for astronomical quantities – a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars}, we’re advised.
Update: A press release offered to us Friday from the Panama Canal Authority mentioned {that a} excessive degree of arrivals over the last in September coincided with schedule dry-chamber upkeep. The ACP says due to the backlog, it has determined to postpone upkeep work and has assigned further crew members to extend capability. It has additionally began a short-term discount within the variety of reserving slots for sure kinds of vessels.
AIS screenshots offered by MarineTraffic.com.
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