A big container ship passes us going south at the Bitter Lakes.
The Suez Canal forms a 121-mile Ship Canal in Egypt between Port Said on the Mediterranean and Suez on the Red Sea. The canal offers the shortest route from East and West compared with the Cape of Good Hope e.g. Tokyo to Rotterdam via the Suez Canal = 11,192 miles but around South Africa = 14,507 a saving on operating cost of 23% or 3,315 miles.
At 60 metres wide the canal is capable of taking fully loaded ships of up to 150,00 tons – so today that is a container ship carrying between 14,000 and 16,000 standard sized containers. So if anything happens to shut the canal you can be sure the cost of living in Europe will explode.
The Suez Canal is a sea level canal with no locks since the tidal range is from 65cm in the north to 1.9m in the south, so water flows from north so south. The average transit time is 15 hours – we entered at 5.30am and exited at 4.00pm.
Over 15,000 ships pass through the canal each year, which is about 14% of the world’s shipping.
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