This morning with stealth like maneuvering our captain raised the anchor and we entered the Suez Canal. I say that because we are the front of the ship and did not hear a thing, well we did hear the pilot pull up but not the anchor. So welcome to the amazing Suez Canal, this time our transit is southbound, in 2013 we cruised this in reverse, northbound.
The Suez Canal, west of the Sinai Peninsula, is a 101 mile (163 Kilometre) 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 20,000 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 $400,000 USD, for our cruise ship this cost weights in at about $350,000 USD. If you were following us in this blog back in 2013, our transit on a sister ship was $150.000 USD, so more than doubled. Our time through the canal today was just over nine hours, entering just before 6:00 am, exiting just after 3:00 pm. Highlights for me were really along the entire route, no seminars or talks today, only on the outside decks today. 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. Our narrative also included the marked spot where the Ever Given was stuck in the canal 6 days, causing some major back ups in good transport. There is now an active project going on to widen the canal by 40 metres. Last note of mention is now we in the southbound ship and unlike 2013, we need pull over at the Al Ballah bypass, makes for great pics of ships looking like they are floating on the sand dunes. Hope the pictures do our transit justice. We are now in the Red Sea and heading to Egypt.
Our pics of the day, hope you enjoy…
Quote of the day, “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world”. - Mary Anne Radmacher
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