Canal - Lake of Port Revel

Port Revel's canal is taken from a portion of the (old) Suez Canal when it was still 16 m deep and 80 m wide on the bottom with 3 (hor.) in 1 (vert.) side slopes. Its length is nearly 7 km and it includes both a curve and a straight part convenient for meeting and overtaking manoeuvres. It is a real canal, which is very different from prismatic flumes used by theoreticians.

Exercises involving ships meeting and overtaking are performed in the canal. In addition, the canal is used for experimenting with tugs in case of a rudder failure.

This part of the course is definitely very impressive.

A drawbridge was installed in the straight part of the canal leaving a passage of 68 meter as shown in the picture above.

When the lake level is lowered, the canal is reshaped. The resulting accuracy is +/- 1 cm (+/- 25 cm at full scale).