Two Sea Days on our way to Haifa, Israel

Thursday and Friday were both sea days.  So not much to tell you about.  We left Aqaba and headed south to round the corner and head into the Red Sea.  We reached the entrance to the Suez Canal at around 1 am but could not enter until 6am.  The canal is only one way and we were in a convoy of 19 ships but we were lucky to be ship number 2.

The Suez Canal is not like the Panama Canal.  There are no locks to go through.  It is just a narrow canal with one way traffic.  There is a lake in the middle area where the ships going south enter and wait until the ships going north pass by.  And there is not much to see along the way.  Lots of sand and desert.  And soldiers every so often.  Not the best duty in our opinion.  Hot and dry.  It takes the entire day to transit the canal.  So at around 4pm we reached the Med.

A little history lesson about the canal.  Construction began in 1859 and was done mostly by hand.   It took 10 years to finish the canal and the grand opening was in November of 1869.  A French and British consortium managed the canal until 1956 when President Nasser expelled them from Egypt.  After the British were expelled they joined the US in refusing to lend Egypt funds to build the Aswan High Dam.  Nasser nationalized the canal and combined the income form the canal with loans from the Soviet Union to construct the dam.  On October 29, 1956, after several border clashes, Israel invaded Egypt.  Great Britain and France then attacked Egypt  a week later in an attempt to restore international control over the canal.  After the UN interventions, the canal was reopened in 1957 under Egyptian management and was policed by the UN.

It was closed again by sunken ships in 1967 during the Arab-Israeil war and did not reopen until 1975. Three years later Egypt lifted the ban on Israeli ships and in 1980 a 10 mile long tunnel was built under the canal to facilitate the passage of motor vehicles into and out of the Sinai.

It cost our ship $300,000.00 to transit the canal.

We got to swim both days and found the water getting cooler.  Might need to turn on the heater.

The rest of the days were much like before.  So next I will be telling you about Israel.