The Kiel Canal or Nord-Ostee-Kanal (North Sea Baltic Canal) as it is known in German, is the shortest link between the North Sea and the Baltic.

The original Canal, the Eider Canal, was built in 1784, but was eventually deemed too shallow to accommodate the increasing number of larger vessels. The Kiel Canal was completed in 1895 at a cost of 157 million marks, and has been progressively widened over the years. It is now 97km/53.2 nautical miles long, 12 metres deep and 164 metres wide.

The Kiel Canal is also the busiest manmade waterway in the world. Over 60,000 ships pass through every year, as well as around 25,000 private yachts during the summer. It therefore comes as no surprise that the canal is very precisely organised to ensure a faultless flow of traffic.

Locks and boat lifts allow lifting or lowering of a ship to a higher or lower water level. Today, typical lock heights extend to approximately 30 m. For economic reasons, one objective is to construct as few locks with large heights as possible as opposed to more locks with smaller heights. See Artical