Transiting the Suez Canal

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Day 59, Friday, March 16, 2007, In the Suez Canal

Latitude: 30 degrees, 12.46 minutes N
Longitude: 032 degrees 33.74 minutes E

WOW! This transit through the Suez Canal has been incredible! We haven’t left our cabin today as our eyes have been glued on the shoreline! We are leading a convoy of thirty ships through the canal! At around 8:00 pm last night we entered the Gulf of Suez from the Red Sea, through the Straits of Gubal. Throughout the evening we continued North West through the Suez traffic lanes and oil fields. At around 2:00 am we reached the approaches of the canal and waited for the second Northbound Convoy to begin at 6:00 am. The Suez Canal pilots boarded our ship very, very early in the morning to get us into position with our convoy and we began our transit shortly after 6:00 am. By noon we had reached Lake Timsau and the Suez War Memorial which marked the halfway point of our transit. We have seen and heard so much in the last several hours! We have seen the sands of the deserts blowing, the lush areas of land irrigated by the Nile river, bustling villages, towns and cities, we’ve seen the previous summer residence of Anwar Sadat and the mosque adjacent to it, World War II memorials, huge cargo vessels waiting in “holding areas” for their southbound transit, the largest swing span train bridge in the world and the great Suez Canal Bridge both which link Africa and Asia. The sights just keep coming…..We’ve heard the rumble of passing passenger trains, small fishing boats filled with fisherman calling out to us, the wails of prayer calls from the mosques, the yells and whistles to us from the Egyptian soldiers standing at their posts along the canal and now, the howls of the wind. It is around 3:30 pm now and we are in the midst of huge winds and dark skies, but in the distance we can see sunlight cast on the buildings in the city that lie ahead of us along the canal. By 4:00 pm we should be clear of the canal and that will mark the end of one of the most remarkable and memorable days of our trip so far. It has been truly amazing to witness these sights and sounds!

Photos to Come!

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