Suez Canal

Suez Canal

Our itinerary was to anchor in the Gulf of Suez near the city of Suez last night and be refuelled overnight before taking our place in the convoy to travel through the canal starting at 7.00am.

After dinner, the ship stopped and so we went out onto the deck to watch the activity – the anchor was dropped and two smaller boats/tugs came out to the ship and there was quite a bit of shouting back and forward between them – what was happening??

We went back to our cabin and prepared for bed so we could be up early to watch the passage through the canal – we thought we could hear the anchor being raised and wondered what was happening. An announcement came over the speakers (it is very unusual for any announcements into the cabins and especially at night - unless it is essential, so we were a bit concerned.

The announcement said that we had been ordered to proceed through the canal immediately because there was a tugboat which had sunk ahead, and the canal was going to be closed for 24 hours while it was removed – if we didn’t go through now, then we would be stuck for another day.

As you can imagine, there was lots of speculation and rumour as well as disappointment – the passage through the canal is one of the highlights of the cruise, and if we went through at night, we would basically miss the experience. We went out onto our balcony for a while and watched the first part of the passage and then decided to go to bed.

We woke up at daybreak today and went out onto the balcony to watch the sunrise - to find that we were anchored and surrounded by lots of other commercial shipping – all at anchor – and we were unsure of where we were until we turned on the TV map – we had only passed through the first section into the Great Bitter lake.

At 7.00am, there was an announcement that we were getting into our place in the convoy, so we went upstairs and spent most of the day watching and taking photos – in between getting in and out of the pool cause it was very hot with lots of flies.

We have been through the Suez in 2011, and this time, and the greatest change that we noticed was the increase in armed military patrols along the banks on both sides, and the increase of large bunkers along the way. Despite the political unrest in Egypt, we were told that both sides wanted to keep the canal open because it is a vital part of the economy – our ship paid about $250,000 to pass through. The soldiers and the local inhabitants were generally very friendly – waving and shouting “welcome to Egypt” as we passed by.

Unfortunately our three ports in Egypt have been cancelled for security reasons – so now we are headed to Crete – a port which wasn’t on our schedule originally.