Gatun Lake — Attraction in Cristóbal

Security alert! With the vital asset of the canals, if America doesn't protect this asset, get ready to tack on nearly three weeks of maritime travel for trade and military assets. Wake up, DHS! We lose this asset to terrorism and the looming war will be much more challenging than necessary. If we don't get our heads out of the sand, watch out as the shipping lanes go, and so does the food and oil supply.

Protect our nation by doing the proactive expansion of military level security with aptly trained specialists to reduce possible costs greater than money and freedom from our enemies abroad.

Let us not become too relaxed, trusting in high-tech weapons. Tech fails and lasers under certain circumstances can be easily disabled using relatively or even very low tech countermeasures.

We fell asleep at Pearl Harbor, costing us more than money. 911 was caused by American government security agencies failed to have the foresight to pay attention to who we train, who we allow to fly a potential man guided missile they can bring our nation to it's knees.

America, let's get our act together and protect our nation and the region from our enemies abroad.

Dependency on this and other canals are vital transport of trade and military assets in a timely manner at a fraction of the cost of time and money, not to mention the price in human lives lost when war breaks out and this is one of the first major target to disrupt trade and military response...

We went through varying degrees of sun, clouds, light, dark on out trips through the lakes. The waters turned a vibrant green probably due to the vegetation from the 1'000s of streams that run into Gatun Lake. I spent much of my transits on the lookout for Crocodiles, but did not see any, although others claimed they did. This is the area of the Canal where the ships heading in the other direction pass by, which can be quite alarming the first time it happens. All of a sudden there is a ship coming around the corner from the other direction, it turns and heads toward you, and then slips by maybe 100 feet away. Big vessels like these don't tend to get so close in the ocean so this was new experience. Once you get out of the Chagres River passage, areas of the lake open up although there are more channels within it due to the islands. You are surrounded by jungle...

Gatun Lake is a large artificial lake to the south of Colón, Panama. It forms a major part of the Panama Canal, carrying ships for 33 km of their transit across the Isthmus of Panama. The lake was created between 1907 and 1913 by the building of the Gatun Dam across the Chagres River. Gatun at the north end of the lake. Its dam (completed 1912) and spillway, a key structure of the Panama Canal, operate at a range of 5 feet (1.5 m) between water levels of 87 and 82 feet (26.5 and 25 m) above sea level. The lake’s main function is to hold sufficient water in the Gaillard Cut to the south, a gorge blasted through the Cordillera, for canal passage and for use in the canal’s locks during dry spells. In the centre of the lake is Guacha Island, a...