The night before our Suez transit began we went on the uppermost deck (11) to meet it the Navigational Officer to talk about the stars. The cloud cover was too great to see the stars but he gave us many details about our Suez journey. He told us that 5 days before they had notified the canal authority that they wanted to transit and they were assigned a specific area to anchor the night before. He emphasized that we must be at that anchorage by 11pm or we would not be able to transit the next morning. He also said that presently transit is only during daylight (although we had read and heard in a lecture that transit occurs 24 hours a day.) We suspect that heightened security due to the risk of terrorism has caused the canal to operate only in day light. As we approached our anchorage we passed MANY large container ships already anchored. Marco, the staff captain, told us he suspected we would be # 1 as cruise ships most often go in the front but this is not verified until they are told in the morning.
 |
| The lights are at of our nearest vessel at anchorage. |
 |
Not wanting to miss a thing we were up around 5am.
This was sunrise over Port Tewfik at the southern entrance of the canal. |
 |
| The entrance at Port Tewfik |
 |
| The city of Suez on the western side of the entrance. |
No comments:
Post a Comment