Halfway Through the Suez

Blue Magic
Mark & Chris Dewey
Sun 14 Oct 2012 09:15

Position 30:35.096N 32:16.342E

 

13th October 2012

Our rude awakening was at 3.45am when our grumpy pilot arrived on board and ordered us to leave.

So our transit of the Suez canal began in darkness and we watched the sunrise over the Sinai desert as we led the convoy of yachts towards Ismalia.

 

 

 

We were surprised to see local fishing boats dotted all the way along the canal, with only oars for propulsion.

When our pilot wasn’t moaning at us to go faster, he shouted angrily at the fishing boats to move out of the way.

 

 

 

It was amazing to see the contrast between the two sides of the canal, miles of desert and sand dunes on the Sinai side whilst the other side was lush and green.

You can see a number marker, this indicates that we have travelled 37 kms through the canal , our trip was a total of 77kms to Ismalia.

 

 

 

At several places there were links across the canal, a huge bridge was the most impressive, there were also swing bridges and floating bridges that are rolled into the water and linked together once the shipping has stopped for the day. A constant stream of ferries also linked the two sides, you can see two ferries passing below the bridge in the first photo.

 

 

 

 

 

We saw no shipping until the flow of traffic reversed and huge container ships began passing us from South to North at close quarters.

As you can see the fishing boats are still floating about in the middle of the canal, presumably they are used to dodging the traffic !

 

  

 

  

 

One of the ships looks to be on route to home.

 

 

 

 

We had a couple of worrying moments when the engine revs faultered. We stopped the prop and put it into reverse to see a lot of debris kick out of the stern.

It was difficult avoiding the huge islands of weed, see the photo below, and we think we may still have some debris attached but the water is a rather dirty to take a good look.

 

 

We arrived safely and were glad to join the other yachts moored in Ismalia.

 

Our pilot left with10 dollar Baksheesh (tip), an amount that we all agreed in advance since they always ask for more.

He also tried to leave with various bits of my fishing equipment in his bag but I confronted him and told him firmly that it was mine and that he couldn’t have it.

We had read a lot of stories about how bad the pilots are and to some extent that was correct however we didn’t let his continual moaning detract from the enjoyment of  our day.