The “New Suez Canal”

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Transiting the Suez Canal 3rd April

We sailed the Suez Canal back in 2014 and didn’t realise the changes that were coming.

Since 2014 a new section has been built which I’ll come onto later.





Not a history lesson but a bit of background to the Canal.



It was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, officially opened in November 1869 and is a sea level waterway that connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea unlike the Panama Canal that has locks because of the difference in sea levels between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.



It’s length is just over 120 miles and takes approximately 10/12 hours to go through.

The original canal was a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lakes.

As I said it contains no lock system, with seawater flowing freely through it. The canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez.



We were coming from the Red Sea and berthed overnight at Port Tewfik to await the convoy in the early hours.





What has changed since we transitted in 2014 is that construction was launched to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km (22 mi) to speed the canal's transit time. The expansion was planned to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day. At a cost of 8.4 billion dollars, the expansion was dubbed the “New Suez Canal” and was opened in a ceremony on 6 August 2015.





On 24 February 2016, the Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel. This side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal.



Since the canal does not cater to unregulated two-way traffic, all ships transit in convoys on regular times, scheduled on a 24-hour basis.

Each day, a single northbound convoy starts at 04:00 from Suez, we were in a convoy of about 25 and I think we began our passage at about 5.00 am to time our arrival at the new section to synchronise with the southbound convoy.



Unfortunately travelling North you head into the right section and have the new banks on the port side, when we travelled in 2014 the port side for the 22miles gave views of rich fertile farmland and there are memorials to the conflicts that have occurred over the years including the Suez crisis and the 6 day war of 1967 when the canal was blocked by the Egyptians until 1975.



There is still a lot of ongoing construction going on, new ferry crossings and embankments seem to be the order of the day. Although the views have changed the ultimate use of the canal is to bring monies into Egypt and the increase in traffic does just that.

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