A blog post like this can only be done from a few dam locations around the world! I believe the last dam post we blogged about was our dam visit a few years back in Amsterdam. Today we can add another dam visit to our travels. Let us introduce to you the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, nearly six times the dam size of the Hoover Dam....the Three Gorges Dam.
I know....I know.....enough with the dam nonsense!
The Three Gorges Dam is designed to serve three main purposes: flood control, hydroelectric power production, and navigation improvement. Due to the dam construction on the Yangtze River, ships must be lifted or lowered over 300 feet to move either upstream or downstream through the dam. To account for this, they constructed a five-step ship lock system....each individual lock raises or lowers the vessel by approximately 65 feet....and takes roughly three hours to complete the five lock transit.
In the photos below you will see our boat enter into a lock (chamber). The large doors enclose behind your ship after entering the lock. On our cruise, going upstream, the water level rose the ship 65 feet in each lock. If you look closely at the pictures you will see where the water level begins when we enter the lock (look at the doors) and in the second photo you will see how high the water level gets in relation to those gated lock doors. After this happens, another door opens and we enter the next lock. We could see this entire five-step lock system take place while eating dinner in the upper deck dining room of our ship. Pretty "dam" awesome!
