Friday 26th April – Suez Canal
Durng the night the pilot came on board and the inspectors who check things like lights. We were then given our position – # !
And waited for the convoy to head off. It was planned to leave at 4.30 am but joy, oh joy we didn’t enter the canal until around 7am, so a full daylight passage. 10 wonderful hours of running around watching.
I had breakfast in the Golden Lounge then went out onto the Golden deck. Top deck at the very front of the ship. Fantastic. Spent nearly three hours up there watching then had to head in for trivia and our fancy lunch!
The Red Sea is 4 feet higher than the Mediterranean end. So technically we were sailing uphill all of the way through. This effects the tides in a weird way.
In summer the canal flows to the Mediterranean. In winter it flows toward the Red Sea. The Bitter Lakes in the middle do the work of locks and allow this to happen without draining one ocean, Weird as!
At the entrance one side is lush and green. Not what you expect Egypt to be. That side is the edge of the Nile River Delta and is rich silt soil with a good water supply. The other side is dark sand and mud flat.
Over the next hour the sand changed to yellow – less silt.
Fisherman were out in tiny boats. Some had the horn blown at them.
The Al Salam Bridge or Friendship Bridge joins the two sides of Egypt, also connects two continents. It was built by the Japanese in 1995. It’s a cable stay bridge (my favourite), 3.9ks long. What a stunning beast!
Not much later we took the right hand fork of the bypass. This is one of the original passing places.
We travelled at around 9 knots down the canal all day.
There was a fancy lunch for some of us in the Teppanyaki restaurant. The Japanese meal where they cook it in front of you on a huge hot plate. So much fun and so much amazing food.
After the food they took us upstairs to another private function where there was a desert extravaganza. And a photo – of our big fat bellies!
We left the canal at around 4 pm and headed off into the Gulf of Suez. A strong wind was blowing out in the Sinai and sand was whipping up. Maybe I will get to see my much wanted sandstorm this evening.
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