Suez Canal

Suez Canal

We arrived at the entrance to the Suez Canal at around 6pm the night before our passage. The plan was that we would anchor there until our Pilot boarded at around 5am. Our passage of the Canal was expected to take 13 hours.

We set the alarm for 5am thinking that would give us time to be up on deck minutes later to see us enter the Canal.

Well good laid plans don't always happen the way they are supposed to! At 4am I woke to what seemed like the starting of the engines.... not a lot of noise just a bit of vibration.... On looking at our window we were not moving so I thought we were just adjusting our position at anchor.

Sometime later I thought I had the sensation that we were moving so on looking out the window again we had just entered the Canal half an hour early at 4.30am. I was up and dressed and up on deck a short time later.

The sun was just started to peep its head up and the temperature was perfect if not a bit cool for some as they were rugged up.

When the sun was fully up the heat of the day was evident and sunscreen and hats were the order of the day.

All in all it was a long day of standing and walking from the front to the back and from one side to the other. Thankfully we were the first ship in our convoy of around 25 ships and the passage was much faster than predicted as we got to use the newly built second channel. The second channel allows the south and north bound ships to pass each other whereas before you had to anchor in the Bitter Lake to wait for the passage of the ships in the opposite direction to be completed. Our passage was completed by 2.30pm which gave a total time of 10 hours instead of the estimated 13 hours....

Our Captain was awake from 1.30am waiting for directions and instructions! Hope he managed a catnap...

Some interesting facts:

The Suez Canal is an artificial waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez. It was officially opened on November 17, 1869. The canal offers ships a shorter journey between the North Atlantic and northern Indian Oceans reducing the journey by approximately 7,000 kilometres. It extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km, including its northern and southern access channels. In 2012, 17,225 vessels traversed the canal (47 per day).

The original canal was a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake. It contains no locks system, with seawater flowing freely through it. In general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez.

The canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

In August 2014, construction was launched to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km to speed the canal's transit time. The expansion was planned to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day. At a cost of $8.4 billion, this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals. The "New Suez Canal", as the expansion was dubbed, was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony on 6 August 2015.

On 24 February 2016, the SCA officially opened the new side channel. This side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal. As the East Container Terminal is located on the Canal itself, before the construction of the new side channel it was not possible to berth or unberth vessels at the terminal while the convoy was running.