April 25th 2004:

Email from the Ship: 4-25-04 Sun. It has cooled off some and not as humid. It has been very windy on the Red Sea, sometimes too strong to be on the deck outside. We are sailing between Egypt on the port side and Saudi Arabia on starboard side. The sea has narrowed and we are close to both countries. There are a lot of oil rigs along the sidesI spent most of the day on the bridge. It was very interesting to observe how they keep watch and alter the course of the ship according to where the other ships areWe got to Suez about 7:30 4-25-04. I don't know how to adequately describe what I see. It is so awesome. It is dark and all along the shore there are many twinkling lights and all the big ships are lit up--and the stars and the moon are being as beautiful as ever. I just sat by myself on the monkey island taking in all the beauty. We are anchored here for the night 4-26-04 Mon. Position 30N 32E

I went up to monkey island at 5 am this morning to see the sun come up. The ships were lining up to go thru the canal. There are no locks and the canal is 100 miles long from Suez to Port Said. On the west side is the delta of the Nile and on the right is Sinai peninsula. It will take 12 hours togo through. The ships go in a convoy and we are #12 0f 20 ships. The first ship started at 6 am and we entered the canal at 7:30 am. There are 8 major bends and 3 lakes. After 3 hours at the first lake ships coming south and our convoy going north all had to anchor for 1 hour until a large ship coming south passed throughOn the west side there are small cities all along the way and on the east side it lookslike desert with sand dunes. There was a lot of farming as we got further north. It was a very interesting day. At 7:30pm tonight we got to Port Said and we will now keep on sailing in the Mediterranean Sea.