Posts Tagged ‘Suez Canal’
Dangerous waters ahead
December 4th, 2009
Tags: pirates, Suez Canal
Posted in Journeys | 3 Comments »
After leaving Alexandria, we set out for Dubai, which is over 9 days of sea travel away. Right now we are in the middle of the Red Sea, approaching the south end that lets out into the Gulf of Aden. We have Saudi Arabia to our port side, and Sudan to our starboard.
Two days ago we passed through the Suez Canal. That was really interesting. The canal is only wide enough for a single lane of traffic, so we had to anchor at one end and wait for oncoming traffic to clear out of the canal. When it was time, we entered the canal with a convoy of other ships (mostly container ships) and sailed slowly along. There was land within throwing distance of either side of the ship, mostly desert. About two thirds of the way along, we reached Great Bitter Lake, a passing point in the canal system. Here we waited again for oncoming traffic to clear, and then led the convoy through the final stretch of canal and into the Red Sea.
