Taking a Shortcut

The Suez Canal

So due to the unfortunate outbreak of Gastro on board we entered the Suez Canal a day early and met up with one of our sister ships the Queen Elizabeth as you will see later on.

The Suez Canal is something I had always wanted to sail through and now we were doing it.

The Suez Canal took 10 years to build opening in 1869 and cutting the trade routes by nearly 9,600 km. There are no locks on the canal which surprised me as I assumed there would be. The photograph below shows the southern entrance to the canal and the next one shows the Queen Elizabeth following us up the early part of the canal.

We were part of a convoy of 27 ships all of which were accompanied by a tugboat in case of difficulties etc. As we were sailing up the canal we were being given a tour commentary over the ship’s tannoy system explaining where we were along with the history of the canal and its new extension.

The convoys were synchronised originally so that they passed on the Great Bitter Lake, however this has been made much easier with a new bypass system. Early on in 2016 the Ballah Bypass was opened. It is a 35 km stretch of dual carriageway aimed 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. The bypass consists of a second channel built alongside the original. This 35 km stretch of canal was built and opened in just 18 months, bang on schedule. This was an incredible feat. Photographs below show us leaving the Great Bitter Lake and entering the first section where you can just see the two lanes of the canal.

The evidence of the newness of this section is very evident as there is still huge piles of the dredged sand on both sides of the new canal we sailed up.

Despite all this work, life has to go on and at various stations along the way local ferries still shuttle trucks and vehicles over the canal.

As we approached the northern end of the canal we prepared for the Queen Elizabeth to draw alongside as we both went on our separate ways; us heading towards Cyprus and she was going to Istanbul. The photographs below show me watching on in anticipation of Queen Elizabeth passing and also the top end of the Suez Canal.

After what to us seemed an eternity, primarily because even though we were in what appeared to be open seas, they were actually still a controlled shipping channel, Queen Elizabeth drew alongside. With both ships blowing their horns, and passengers to each other we passed like ships in the late afternoon!

It was an incredibly impressive sight looking out across the stern of our ship towards this other elegant ship.