Sailing the Gulf of Suez – Day 30

It’s been another beautiful at-sea day. We entered the Gulf of Suez a little before lunch time. A friend of ours debated with us whether or not the mountains we were sailing by were indeed mountains or cloud formations. We had seen nothing but water for so long it took some time for us to believe they were indeed mountains. The Gulf of Suez is not particularly interesting except that you can see land on both sides of the ship. The water is filled with oil derrick after oil derrick; some come quite close to the shipping lanes.

We anchored in the late evening near the entrance to the Suez Canal awaiting our appointed time to join a northbound convey early tomorrow morning. The canal does not allow ships to transit in both directions at the same time. The northbound ships will start first reaching the lake in the middle and then wait for the southbound ships to finish leaving the lake before continuing on through the rest of the canal.

Tonight, we held a dinner party in the ship’s steak restaurant for fourteen people. We started everyone off with a couple of bottles of Tattinger champagne and didn’t look back. Everyone seemed to have a great time, some of us may have had too good of a time.
Tomorrow we will awaken transiting the Suez Canal!