Don's Travels: A Big Step in the Yangtze.

My mentioning of the Welland Canal in my last posting reminded me about my trip to China.

While there in 1994 on a Yangtze river cruise I had my first experience of sailing through a lock. Our cruise ship had to navigate through the Gezhouba Dam at Yichang on the Yangtze river.

The dam is at the end of Xiling Gorge, the last of the famous ‘Three Gorges’. In 1994 the big Three Gorges Dam, 44 kilometres upstream, was only in the early stages of construction. However , the Gezhouba Dam was impressive. This dam 70 metres high, has 21 power generators with a capacity of 2.7 million kilowatts per hour and three shipping locks of various sizes. All shipping must pass through one of the locks at this point. Here more than 1000 miles inland the largest lock is capable of taking a 10,00 ton ocean going ship.

The first photo shows the dam at Yichang with three locks-one on the left and two on the right. The turbines and spill ways are in the centre.

The next photo is an enlargement of the locks on the right. We travelled through the larger lock on the left in the photo.

As we approached the lock several barges were waiting. Our cruise ship being larger entered first.

The smaller barges followed us and shuffled and maneuvered until the lock was full and tightly packed. This required some of the barges to exit and re-enter the lock several times. There appeared to no one person directing the process except for the barge captains themselves. It was really amazing how smooth the whole operation was.

Once all the boats were organized the lock gates were closed, and the water was slowly pumped out lowering us to downstream river level.

Here looking towards the upriver lock gate with the other boats to our right as more of the water has been released and we are now about half way down.