Suez Canal

We entered the queue for the Suez Canal about 3 this morning. I was not awake at the time. I did wake up at 545 to see us sail thru post 156 at Port Suez. We are inching our way north in the canal at 8 knots an hour. There is absolutely no wake. We are the first ship in a convoy of 14 other ships.

The canal is a one way "street" with northbound traffic sailing from 3 AM to 3 PM and southbound traffic sailing the opposite times. The canal is not straight, as it makes it way thru some lakes (Little Bitter Lake, Great Bitter Lake) and a by-pass on its 193.3 km path to the Mediterranean Sea. I wonder if it was a 2 way "street' when it was finished in 1869?

I took a bunch of pictures up to KM Post 148, then I went inside for breakfast and I've just emerged at Little Bitter Lake. Here the canal is wide but still flat. I can see the other ships behind us and they look like they are floating on sand. It's a good illusion. I can imagine that's how we look to folks on either side of the ditch.

There are pontoon "bridges" along the way. I put quotes on bridges because they are portable. If there is a problem the bridges can be put together and floated to the east side. There are also ferry boats to bring vehicle traffic to the other side. The ferries are loaded, and when there is a break in the ship traffic, they squirt to the other side. The ships in the convoy are placed about 10 minutes apart in order to allow room for an emergency stop, and the ferries take advantage of that space.

As we sail north, the left or port, or west side of the canal is quite built up, while the east side is barren. Along the banks there have been villages, guard posts, pontoon bridge emplacements, and a few ferry terminals as well as dunes and "junk" leftover from earlier days. (Not ancient Egyptian ruins, just junk.) In Little Bitter Lake there is a peninsula and there are some fancy homes on it! They remind me of the homes you see as you drive to El Alamein on the Med.

We are now cruising in Great Bitter Lake. While I can still see land on both sides of the ship, it's very wide. (Not Gatun Lake wide in Panama, but still wide.) There is a peninsula in Little Bitter Lake that has some really big homes built along the shore. It's one the few places where I've seen something that resembles a private home. Most of the other buildings look like they belong to the military. There are armed guards walking along the canal, constantly watching. Every so often a helicopter flies by too.

Later

We went thru Great Bitter Lake (both Bitter Lakes are dry lake beds, but when they designed the canal, the engineers figured correctly that the dry lakes would fill and they would have less to dig) where we saw lots of ships waiting for us to travel thru, so they could exit when they were given the go ahead. At the end of Great Bitter Lake there is a large community. (I took so many pictures my battery ran out of juice...so now in working with my second camera.)

The next wide spot in the canal is Lake Timsha. The community here is called Ishmael and is even bigger than the last one. I talked with someone who was here before and he said 20 years ago, there were no communities alongside the canal, now there are many.

This morning started out as very pleasant. It's now 1230 PM and too hot to be outside. We have retreated to the Viking Lounge on Deck 11 where we can enjoy an air conditioned view of the canal.

We are past the Lake and heading for to by-pass and the Egyptian-Japanese Bridge that spans over the canal where Africa and Asia meet.

Later still
After the bridge we sailed another 2 hours at 8 knots when we started seeing signs if civilization. A ferry boat was taking trucks across the canal...there was a container port with lots of cranes, but none of them seemed to be working. Then we saw Port Said. A big city. A pilot boat came alongside and before we knew it we were in the Mediterranean Sea! It took just over 12 hours to make the crossing. If we had to go around Africa, it would have taken 9 days!

It's been a good day. I'll post some pictures later. While we are in a more populous area, I'm going to wait until we get to Alexandria where there might be a stronger wifi signal or even a FREE wifi. That would be a treat!