Suez Canal

Suez, not just the end of the Red Sea but the end of a long, arduous and dangerous journey.  It had been a very rough trip up the Red Sea with it's stiff headwinds, square waves and constant bashing but now it  was over and the Suez Canal and Mediterranean lay ahead. We had arrived about 5:00AM and were slowly picking our way through the harbor since it was still quite dark and the navigation lights that we saw did not match up with those depicted on the chart.  Fortunately, we were in contact with the Prince of the Red Sea Agency who would handle our passage through the canal and they immediately proved their worth by meeting us in a boat and guiding us to a mooring at the Suez Yacht Club.  Suez was a large city, run down and dirty as most in Egypt but a very pleasant change from El Tur where we were forcibly detained only three days before.  We quickly found the most important things, an ATM, an international  telephone, a internet cafe and some restaurants.  The people were friendly and helpful and made the 5 day stay enjoyable.  Our agents handled the paper work for the transit,  the measurer and engineer inspected the boat and arranged for the pilot and departure time. We filled up with fuel since no sailing is allowed in the canal and also because we could drop our pilot off and continue into the Med. without stopping again in Egypt.

The Suez Canal unlike the Panama Canal has no locks and is basically just a large ditch dug through the desert.  The canal was lined with guard stations, small sun baked structures about the same color as the surrounding desert.  A soldier would be hiding in it's shade complete with it's pedestal mounted machine gun, a reminder of how volatile this region is.   Our pilot, Hussein, was pleasant, arrived pretty much on time and didn't demand gifts and gratuities as many of the pilots do and are famous for.  The canal had many large ships making the transit but it wasn't much worse than a busy day in New York  Harbor,  just a little less room.  The speed limit was 7 knots which no one obeys and we kept up a constant 8 knots since there was no wind for a change and little current.  The pilot will always want to go faster and will have you turn your engine into a pile of molten cast iron if you let him.  Just saying that this is as fast as the boat will go seemed to satisfy him and kept things smooth.  The trip is a two day affair with a compulsory overnight stop in Ismelida.  The next morning a second pilot came aboard and we were off to finish the trip. We would drop the pilot off in the town of Said before venturing into the Mediterranean for our 2-3 day leg to Turkey, our final destination.

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