23.03.26 Post 10 – The Suez Canal

Travel through the Suez canal was remarkable. The Island Princess was leading the northbound convoy flanked by two tugboats. Convoys start from the north and from the south and are timed so that they overtake each other in the part of the canal where there are two channels. We left Suez around 5:30 in the morning and didn’t make it to Port Said until about 4:30 in the afternoon. The whole day was spent going 8 to 10 knots making sure we didn’t get stuck in the canal like the container ship Ever Given - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction

Ingrid and I went to the bow on deck 15 just to check out the passage and we didn’t leave for about 4 hours. It was just fascinating watching the desert pass on the starboard side (right) and all the civilizations pass on the port (left). So many small, oar-powered boats would wait for us to pass and then fish to the side where the fish were scared from our wake. They said many a small fishing boat had been swamped by the next ship passing in the convoy – about one mile astern – unable to paddle fast enough to get out of the way. You could see that the canal is heavily guarded with watch towers looming every few hundred yards. Some of them even had guards in them. (Now there is a job). The temperature was very pleasant for our passage, probably 70 F, but can you imagine sitting in those guard towers when the temps. top 120 F! Yikes.