In my rush to catch up ca 4-5 days message boards in a short time,I made a couple mistakes in the message I'm "replying"
to.
Since the shallowest part of the Panama Canal passage is 41 feet(in a lake which either cannot be modulated further or they have not yet chosen to do so),and Ensenada is dredged or being dredged to 15 meters(ca 49 feet),then Ensenada would qualify as a deep water port by Panamax vessel standards also,and I have now found Manzanillo in a list I didn't see before,(but of course it isn't in Baja,so Wikipedia's statement that Ensenada is the only deep water port in Baja would still stand)and I think Bullitt or somebody said it was approx the same depth.
Since Panamax vessels are manufactured(limited to)to specs that allow them to transit the Panama Canal(probable max of 40 feet draft),they certainly can berth at Ensenada, which is dredged ca 8 feet deeper than that portion of the Panama canal.
To avoid any confusion,because I know Ris. gets confused(and I was laughing real hard at one of his posts and my reply to it as part of the reason for these mistakes)CWRN iron does not transit the canal-it goes straight west to China(notwithstanding technicalities re the international date line)-a much shorter distance than east coast iron which transits the canal to China,as well as West African iron,which probably goes around Cape Horn(though I haven't done the math on that-Ive seen shipping charts and think such goes by way of Cape Horn to China).
This is only important in reference to the contention (by somebody who believes the pictures are fake too)that Ensenada is not a deep water port-the contention/point of the one I'm talking about being that somehow Ensenada could not handle the shipments.
The Panama canal limitations really impact the Panamax manufacturers,so there are plans to deepen the canal by 2014,though as we all know in such projects there are often delays.
In my prelim research some ports claim to be super deep or true deep water ports of 50 feet,even though some of those "true" deep water ports claims are known to not be true for various reasons.
