At Sea - Suez Canal - Mar 24, 2013

Welcome to the amazing Suez Canal, yes another wow factor of our journey! The Suez Canal, west of the Sinai Peninsula, is a 101 mile (163 Kilometer) maritime canal in Egypt between Suez on the Red Sea and Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea. The Canal allows for two way north-south water transport from Europe to Asia without circumnavigating Africa. Before the construction of the canal, some transported goods were conducted by offloading ships and carrying the goods over land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The canal, which began construction in 1859 and completed in 1869, is comprised of two parts, namely the north and the south of the Great Bitter Lake. The canal has not locks because there is no sea level difference and no hills to climb. It allows passage of ships of up to 150,000 tons displacement, including cargo, with a maximum draft of 53 feet (16 meters). Some 25,000 ships pass through the canal each year, which is about 14% of world shipping. The canal is too narrow to accommodate more than one ship at a time, except at two points, at Bitter Lakes and Al Ballah, the two places where the lanes widen slightly. In an average day, only 50 ships make the single-file journey where the north bound go uninterrupted while the south bound ships need to pull over at the two noted spots at specific times to allow for a smooth transit. Ships are charged according to size, purpose and weight. The average transit fee is in the neighborhood of about $210,000 USD, for our cruise ship this cost weights in at about $150,000 USD. Our time through the canal today was just over nine hours, entering just before 6:00 am, exiting at about 3:00 pm, I am writing this at 3:10 pm so we have just completed our incredible transit. Highlights for me were really along the entire route, no seminars or talks today, only on the outside decks today, I did have to dig our a sweatshirt to keep warm it was chilly this morning - a sign of temperatures to come. A few things to note as shown in the pictures; the military presence here is very evident, they have floating pontoons that they could put across the canal in very short period of time - the pontoons also act as a floating bridge to transport troops back and forth. A few of the monuments here are huge and incredible - one is a monument of an AK47 assault rifle, complete with bayonet. Last note of mention is when the southbound freighters pull over at the Al Ballah bypass, they look like they are stranded in the sand dunes - cool to see. Hope the pictures do our transit justice. We are now in the Mediterranean headed to Athens after one more sea day, time to pull out all our cool weather clothes.