Gym's Ramblings: Egypt

The Suez Canal

Hey y'all, we are in the Mediterranean now! For all those of you who were worried about Somalian Pirates and Islamic Terrorists you can relax. We are in the friendly waters and under the care of a whole country of gun toting Israelis for the next 3 days. This place is like traveling to Los Angeles. Everyone speaks English, there are freeways and cloverleafs everywhere and everyone has a gun. Seriously though, there would be no Israel if these guys couldn't shoot. Its just strange for a guy from Canada who is most familiar with a pellet rifle. But more on Israel later.

We passed through the Suez Canal yesterday and it was pretty amazing. The desert is so flat that there are no locks along the entire stretch. All they had to do was dig a ditch between Suez and Port Said in Egypt and voila, the Red Sea was connected to the Mediterranean. I'm sure you know by now that I am just kidding, right?

The Suez Canal is a little bit more than just a ditch that was dug. Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte first came up with the idea for this canal at the end of the 18^th Century? Old Boney abandoned the project though, because, he was told by his surveyors, that he would need to build expensive locks. They told him that the Red Sea was higher than the Mediterranean Sea. What the F---? Sea level at one sea is different than another?

You know what though? They were right and wrong. They were wrong because expensive locks were not necessary. However, the Red Sea has been flowing into the Mediterranean for a long time. The Red Sea is a bit higher as it turns out.

It didn’t take long for The Canal to become a reality though, and in 1869 the completion of the Suez Canal came into being by a joint venture between the French and the Egyptians. The U.K. then bought the Egyptian share in 1875 when the ruler of Egypt ran into money problems. Since then there was the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the Egyptian Repudiation of 1951, the British pull out in 1954, the British, French and Israeli invasion of 1956 and closure until April 1957, the Six Day War of 1967, the closure until 1975, the establishment of a UN Peacekeeping force and finally the Gym and Mrs. Gym Crossing of 2011.

Today canal crossings are made by convoy and the north-bound and south-bound conveys pass in the Great Bitter Lake. We had 24 ships in our convoy lead by two U.S. warships. The Gym and Mrs. Gym pictures were mostly taken from our stateroom on the port side, except for that picture out the front windshield of the U.S. destroyer and its frigate escort.