October 17, 2003

A Ditch through the Desert

So far so good - we had managed to anchor off Suez Yacht Club in 40-plus knots, and our agent Prince of the Red Sea seemed to have everything in hand.

The first step is to have the boat measured. Our measurer came on board and proceeded to measure the most extraordinary things - the dorade boxes, for example. He seemed very professional before lapsing into the by now familiar ritual of begging for baksheesh and 'gifts'. Cigarettes, clothing, money were all on the wish list. And the measurer arrives by pilot boat whose crew require 'gifts' of cigarettes in order to make a gentle arrival alongside our boat. You are, of course, entitled to impose your own ethical standards and refuse to make donations, but there is no recompense for a heavy landing by a pilot boat nor any recourse to appeal against the obscure method of calculating your canal fees from the boats measurements. We decided to go along with the age-old practice, and waved Marlboro enthusiastically at the pilot boats before they came alongside.

Suez is a simple canal in that it has no locks; it is nothing more than a ditch through the desert joining the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. It takes two days for a yacht to transit. Day One takes you as far as Ishmalia, where there is a yacht club with stern-to moorings. The northbound traffic flow begins early in the morning and yachts are tagged along after the ships at around 10 am, arriving in Ishmalia during the late afternoon.

Day Two completes the passage up to Port Said but we left our boat at Ishmalia yacht club while we went to Cairo for a few days. The start from Ishmalia is generally earlier, though you still do not get to Port Said until late afternoon, and with head winds and a counter current some yachts struggled to get through before nightfall (one even grabbed a tow from a barge). Facilities at Port Said are poor to say the least, and many boats opt to head straight out into the Mediterranean.

At the time we were transiting the canal, convoys of military ships were heading south to Iraq, so the general flow of traffic was occasionally disrupted. We were also surprised to find early morning fog when we left Suez, followed by a sandstorm, so visibility was always poor. A pilot joins the boat for the passage to Port Said and when he gets off, the choice is to set straight off into the Mediterranean or tie up for the night at the very grubby, no-facilities Port Said Yacht Club (no, there is no yacht clubhouse either). We opted for the latter as a stiff northerly was blowing and our destination - Turkey - was due north.

This was the end of our Red Sea passage and, though the least enjoyable part, it marked another important watershed for us. Entering the Mediterranean felt as though we had almost finished our circumnavigation (although we still had 2000 miles to go to Gibraltar) and we were both excited and saddened. Despite taking a very slow and scenic route over the past 9 years, it now seemed as if it was rushing by and would soon be over. But as we set sail for Turkey, we were looking forward to enjoying a few months in the Mediterranean first.