By Bob Van Leer

(SUEZ CANAL, EGYPT, Friday, April 14, 2000) - Today we are transiting the Suez canal, the strategic waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean which was opened in 1869.

   The canal is 105 miles long and shortens the distance from London to Bombay, India, by more than 5000 miles compared to going around Africa.

   The canal handles about 60 ships per day, more than 20,000 per year. Most of the canal is one lane and ships go through in convoys. Our ship is the lead of a convoy of 12 and we started through the canal at 6:0 a.m. At Great Bitter Lake there is room to pass and we met a convoy of 15 ships that had left Port Said, the northern terminus of the canal, at 1:00 a.m.

   Further north we met a convoy of eight ships pulled off the main canal in the equivalent of a railroad siding.

   Transit time is about 15 hours but we will not have to stop for other ships so our time will be about 10 hours. This is not a speed run - our average speed is under 10 knots. It is not as spectacular as the transit through the Panama Canal because this is a sea level canal. What it is is a big ditch. There are no locks that dramatically lift ships to the next level. By chance, this ship, the Legend of the Seas, is the same ship on which Betty and I transited the Panama Canal several years ago.

   The canal was completed in 1869 at a cost of $100 million and thousands of laborers lost their lives during the 10 years of construction. It has been widened and deepened since. Passage through the canal has to be booked more than a year in advance and there are severe penalties for missing a transit date. We were told the cost of passage for a ship such as ours is approximately $300,000. If you charge that to the paying passengers on this ship that works out to $208 each.

   On the east side of the canal, particularly in the northern section, there is a lot of irrigation from the Nile River and fields are lush and green. By contrast, the western, or Sinai, side of the canal is brown desert. Egypt has an ambitious plan to take Nile water to the Sinai and in a few years both sides of the canal may be green.

   The canal is not a complete barrier through Egypt. There are five ferry services scattered along the canal and we were told that several tunnels have been built underneath it. During the transit we saw a swing-away railroad bridge and a huge, high highway bridge under construction.

   A surprise to me is that the canal is not the first time ship passage was made through this area. According to information from the ship, a channel between the Red Sea and the Nile River was excavated in the 13th century B.C. which allowed traffic to move from the Red Sea and down the Nile to the Mediterranean. The canal was used intermittently until the seventh century A.D. when it was filled for military reasons.

   Yesterday we were at Sharm el Sheikh, the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Near there is Mt. Sanai, where Moses received the tablets from God.

   I went snorkeling at a place called Ras Mohammed, a national park. The snorkeling was good, but the facilities were not. Four primitive shelters for shade were all that was available and the temperature was 107 degrees.

   Some evidences of the two wars Egypt and Israel fought over the Sinai are still evident, firing positions, pill boxes and trenches. Looking at the moonscape-like terrain, some wondered why anyone would fight a war over it.

   We had been scheduled to anchor at Sharm el Sheikh and go ashore by lighter, but the captain managed to find a dock and get us tied up. The captain said it was tricky. He said at one time, there was only 1.5 feet of water under the ship.

   Tonight we will be at Port Said, the northern terminus of the Suez Canal.