The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The 193.30 km long canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.

Several different groups worked on building the Suez Canal over 100s of years. Finally in 1859 construction of the canal that exists today began and it continued over the next 10 years with the officially opening on 17 November 1869. The canal offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres or 10 days at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph). The canal extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. In 2021 more than 20,600 vessels traversed the canal (an average of 56 per day).

We arrived at the entrance to the canal – Port Said – the night before our transit and anchored in the Mediterranean Sea with many other boats that would form our convoy through the canal the following morning. Each day there is one northbound and one southbound convoy through the canal. As we were a passenger ship we would be one of the lead ships in the convoy. Boats are ordered and are allowed to enter every 10 minutes between 0330h and 0800h and must travel at a speed of 14 km/h through the canal. A pilot is required to board all ships and remains on the ship for the duration of the transit. Our ship was also escorted through the canal by 3 tug boats. I was told, though I am not sure if it was accurate information or not, that we had so many escort boats because of the unrest in the Gaza Strip and Israel. The tug boats followed us closely during the entire transit.

The transit was very interesting. From our balcony we could see both sides of the canal (Egypt and Asia). Both sides were desert for as far as you could see with the Egypt side having some residential areas along the route. It surprised me that there were many small, manually manuevered, vessels fishing in the canal. At one point we were able to see a sand storm in the distance but luckily it did not come close to the canal.