Suez Canal

The Suez Canal

Thursday night we left Aqaba and did a short reverse back down to the south where Friday morning we rounded the tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It’s pretty narrow here, even before the canal, with Egypt (Africa) on our port side and the Sinai (Asia) on our starboard side.

We reached our anchorage location at the southern entry to the Suez about 5pm, and remained there until the convoy formed up, formalities and payment for the transit was made, and then we seem to have been arranged by size and began to move about 4:30 am on Saturday.

About 17,000 ships go through the Suez each year, and we are told the revenue from this is over 3 billion dollars a year. That works out to over $176,000 per ship. I have a feeling we, as a passenger vessel, pay a bit more.

The canal was built in 1869 by the same fellow who started (but disastrously did not finish) the later Panama Canal. Today the Suez measures 120 miles long, 79 feet deep, and 673 feet wide. The ship is 105 feet wide, but from the deck, it feels like we take up the whole thing.