Sailing in the Suez - Phew!

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PP:
20th April: Well, we didn’t really see any sewers, it actually seemed quite clean. The second half of the canal run was quite interesting, and fairly close to the Bitter Lake there was an airfield that looked very military, long runways, no aircraft movements, but plenty of sand covered mounds (bunkers and hangars) with big doors onto taxyways.

There was then a very interesting visual phenomenon where the early ships in the convoy going south (we were about halfway in the convoy) were around corners and therefore over the sand from us. This looked for all the world as though ships were washed up in the desert - except they were moving?! Talk about “ships of the desert” and no camels in sight! John the Pom at one stage pointed out to me a “factory” some distance away in the desert, before realising that it was a ship’s superstructure ahead of us in the line, the only part of it visible at the time. I must say it also took me a little while to realise that it was so. My small camera wasn’t up to the task of capturing this visual oddity, the ships were too distant. It may be appreciated a little only by expanding the image to the maximum on a large screen.

As CS and I had noted on an earlier trip to Egypt (while ferrying a Twin Otter from Devon in the UK to Vanuatu) - the desert changes dramatically from sand to green wherever water has been added. The eastern side of the canal (Sinai) was desert with occasional clumps of buildings and trees, but the western side (once we passed that airfield and what seemed like military housing around the base) had very large areas of trees, grass, grain fields, settlements and large towns leading to the city of Suez at the end of the canal. We saw soldiers posted regularly down the eastern side, at small sentry boxes, plus a couple of military camps. Soldiers were also scattered occasionally on the western side. Large crowds were on the waterfront of Suez as we passed into the Gulf - looked like they were just promenading, talking and seeing the ships pass. Some people were jumping into the water (not really swimming, just splashing). I would have thought that the locals would be sick of watching the constant parade of ships - but I guess it can be a focal point for otherwise social activity.

21st April: Once into the Gulf of Suez, it quickly became normal routine again, with not much to look at. We reached the Red Sea in the early hours. The weather is fine with a following wind, and smooth seas. The only drawback is that it is now quite warm aboard (since the last part of the Mediterranean), and the ships air conditioning seems unable to maintain the usual 23 or 24 degrees - the Chief Engineer (Alex - who replaced the outgoing Xenon at Livorno) told me that they are almost out of Freon and can’t charge the air-conditioning system until resupply in Jakarta or even Singapore. So it seems it will be quite tropical aboard for the rest of the trip.

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