We left Port Said at 9 in the morning and soon passed the Suez Port Authority building with its three green domwa.We watched the port go by with its six magnificent great cranes on the quayside, backed by the container straddlecarriers running over the dock and supplying huge stacks for the large cranes to load. It took a good twenty minutes to leave this large city of 1 million behind.
What a stange experience it is to be sailing down the Suez canal by day and watching the surrounding banks float by. It was reminiscent of sailing once with Albina down the Nile from Aswan to Luxor, although the view is actually more varied. The canal is just short of 200 kilometeres long and mostly just 200 metres wide. The journey takes you from the busy port of Port Said, past the same green fertile fields on the western bank that I had experienced yetserday on my way to Cairo, but with mostly desert and dunes on the eastern side. Albina spent most of the time on our private little deck, reading and sunning herself, and then resting from that arduous activity by dropping off to bed for a snooze. While the eastern side is largely barren it does come to life occasionally with newly built walled settlements and the occasional ferry stop. Where the canal broadens into two passges, one north bound and one southbound these ferry stations are normally accompanied by a small perfectly formed mosque with the appropriate small dome and minaret. We also passed the point where the Evergreen vessel had blocked the canal for 6 days in 2021 and caused a massive blockage before it was eventually floated and removed. There was fear of a similar incidennt just the previous day. It had caused delay on the Canal and was the reason for our departure from Port Said being delayed by a full 12 hours. The advantage of that, however, was that we passed through the canal during daytime.
At one stage we passed under a huge bridge and you had to sweep your eyes way over to the far land horizons on each side to see the long climbing approach to the bridge at the centre. It was a simple design but seemed like a spectacular piece of useless, albeit impressive, engineering erected in this wasteland. As we sailed under it we could not see a single vehicle using it. This is not the only crossing of the canal as there is also a tunnel and, at Ismailia, a swing road bridge.
There were two lakes to cross along this route, consecutively the Smaller Bitter Lake. and later the Larger Bitter Lake. These had been largely salt flats before the canal was built, but had now become navigable. The latter lake was like a huge holding tank for upto 50 or so freight vessels just standing idle as we passed them by. It gace the feel of a ships' graveyard as there seemed to no visible life on those sufficiently near to us. Were they waiting their turn for passage while the priority vessels such as the Borealis passed by, or were they ships that had failed to pay their transit fee? I know that after the Six Day War in 1967, when the Israeli army occupied the Sinai peninsula up to the Suez Canal, there were 14 vessles stuck in the Great Bitter Lake that came to be known as the yellow fleet because they were covered in time by desert sand drifting in the wind. They remained there for 8 years and remaibed there for another 8 years, until they were rescued after the conclusion of another war which ended the Israeli occupation. The ships' crews set up an Association, led an active social life during that period, and even issued their own stamps, recognized by the Egyptian postal authorities.
As we continue that night into the Red Sea, we were all partying at the pool for an Egyptian Deck Party. Albina bowed out although she helped me dress in to my Jelaba and helped me locate my red slippers and the fez which I bought yesterday. However, Ranald and Sharon had dressed up as the Pharoah and his partner, Helen had an Aran head-dress and Tony stayed in a T shirt and was circulating the pool area taking pictures. There was roast pig on offer along with rice and vegetables. Some of the staff had worn the most colourful of costumes, mostly pharaonic in tradition. Much to my pleasant surprise nobody nobody dressed as a mummy. We enjoyed our food, did some dancing and took photos of each other. Later we agreed to meet at 10pm for another quiz event.
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