15th, 16th March Suez Canal, 17th

Thursday, 15th March. Today we awoke to a cooler breeze than we have had since leaving Fort Lauderdale, it was almost too cool to sit out, but we managed an hour. The sea was rougher than usual but not enough to effect the ship. Alan went to a lecture with Cunard Historian, John Langley, (who had been at the captain’s table with us,) the talk was on Charles Dickens’ notes about his transatlantic voyage to America in 1842, which Alan found very interesting. I strolled around the ship and found interest in the corner of a bar where a group of passengers from Tahiti had began playing their traditional music and singing. I gather the Commodore sat and listened to them yesterday so it must be a daily occurrence! After that I joined the quiz team and sat with a couple from the UK, we scored 12 out of 15 and the three we got wrong were ‘his’ answers! I’ll play on my own if there’s a next time! Throughout the morning we continued on our north north-westerly journey through the Red Sea paralleling the coast of Saudi Arabia to the east and Sudan to the west. Then shortly before noon we sailed 70 miles from the border between Sudan and Egypt as we continued to steam toward the Gulf of Suez. I met up with Alan for lunch and we decided on a lazy afternoon, so I put on a DVD, which lasted three hours forty minutes, so that was the rest of the day gone! Our evening was relaxed too because after dinner we went to the theatre to see Brenda Cochrane sing. During the evening there were two ‘Strangelings’ wandering around the ship, (actually buskers from Covent Garden – again!) The clocks went back a further hour so we are now only 2 hours behind the UK. At 2.15am we arrived at the Suez Canal and took our place in the waiting convoy until our 6.00am start.
Friday, 16th March. At 3.00am Alan woke me up shouting “Quick Marion, come and look at the whales”, I leapt out of bed and fumbled around in the dark until I heard Alan say, “Sorry love, I was talking in my sleep!” Thank you Alan!! He was up early enough to see the ship commence its journey through the Suez Canal at 6.15am. (I looked out and saw miles of sand so turned over for an extra hour.) There were 30 ships including ours in the convoy, and passenger ships take precedence, so we lead the way. It was however, a very interesting day and we spent all morning on the balcony enjoying the sights, but it was a bitterly cold wind with temperatures around 16 degrees all day and no sunshine. Here’s the entrance about 6.30am. The canal was started in 1858 and completed in 1869. There are no locks because the sea level is the same at both ends. On a typical day three convoys transit the canal, two southbound and one north bound and there are passing areas where convoys await their turn. One is Bitter Lake and the others are Lake Timsah and Ismailia. The scenery changed as we progressed, but on the starboard side, the east bank, where there were still many signs of earlier wars, it remained very much a desert, the Sinai. The military presence was very much in evidence with tented outposts spaced at regular intervals. The lookout, which was manned by a lone armed soldier, resembled a tea chest supporting a flag that had been perched on a higher sand bank. The port side, the west bank, developed into a very green and highly populated area, which is due to water being piped a hundred miles from the Nile, mainly for irrigation purposes. There were several ferries across the Suez Canal linking Egypt’s east and west bank. First we saw the Gebel Mary Am World War 1 Memorial on port side. Then around mid-day we were able to see the Camp David Memorial on starboard side, this was erected to commemorate the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which was brokered by America at Camp David. The memorial is bayonet shaped and there is a parade ground to one side. To Alan’s great delight we approached the El Ferdan railway bridge, which is the longest swing span bridge in the world. It was completed in 2001 with a span of 340 metres . The previous bridge was destroyed in 1967 during the Arab Israeli conflict. Around 1.30pm we approached the Suez Canal Bridge, also called the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge. This is a high level fixed road bridge at El Quantara. It has a 68 metres clearance over the canal and was started in 1999, it was completed in 2003. The QM2 had only a 5 metres clearance. We went for lunch at 1.30pm and after more sightseeing we were leaving the canal at 4.00pm and entering familiar territory, the Mediterranean Sea, which was when our pilots disembarked the ship. At this I escaped to the gym to get warm! We had an enjoyable evening dining with our friends, Kay and Peter, and their daughter and her friend who joined the ship at Dubai. We went to the Lotus Asian restaurant again.
Saturday 17th March. We were awakened by the Commodore at 7.00am when he announced that due to strong north westerly gales no shipping was able to enter the harbour at Alexandria. We circled around 35 waiting tankers until 10.00am when the Commodore announced that it was not practical for us to wait any longer as the tours booked for Cairo, the pyramids and Nile cruise would not now be able to complete their journeys. Everyone was most disappointed as it was to have been their big day for many who had not visited Egypt before. I presume the Egyptian salesmen who travelled with us through the canal must have departed with the pilots. We set sail for Greece in a north westerly direction with new plans to arrive in the port of Piraeus around noon tomorrow (18th) and stay overnight before beginning our original planned full day visit to Athens etc (19th). Hence today we are at sea! The temperature is 20 degrees with a breeze but the sea is calm.