The Suez Canal Experience: Ship Transit Southbound | Seaman Vlog S03E13

the suez canal it is the maritime gateway between asia and europe the waterway is shortcut between the mediterranean and the red sea over 150 years it has facilitated the movement of billions of tons of cargo and to this day it remains as one of the world's most heavily used shipping lanes [Music] okay i just received a phone call for end of sea passage and our ship will be arriving shortly at the northern entrance to swest canal our ship has been crossing the mediterranean for about two days and now here we are approaching port saeed the northern entrance to suez canal okay so we have just finished our maneuvering and we are now here at the swest canal anchorage area the usual convoy schedule is around twenty three hundred and zero three hundred we still don't know what time our convoy is but here in the anchorage area is where we will wait until further notice we had to stay anchored for a few hours while waiting for our schedule but soon enough the pilot came on board and we started maneuvering towards the entrance [Music] ships transit the canal in convoys which are carefully planned so as to maximize the number of ships passing through the narrow channel each day it is arranged in such a way so as to facilitate the northbound and southbound transits as most segments of the canal are wide enough for only a single lane an average of around 50 ships passed through the suez canal daily which covers a distance of around 120 miles the northbound and southbound ships will eventually meet at the great bitter lake which is roughly around the midpoint of the transit so right now we are transiting this west canal it's been about six hours since we entered from the north side and currently i'm on watch so shortly our ship will be anchoring because we'll be waiting for the next convoy sequence before we can proceed southwards and eventually exit the canal for after about three hours or something like that but i'm not sure until what time we will be staying at the anchorage area and right now it's zero 600 hours and i think it's daylight already so let's have a look outside [Music] although a number of ancient canals were dug in this region since the time when egypt was under the rule of the pharaohs and then eventually the romans it was only during the french occupation of egypt in 1798 when napoleon ordered the first survey across the isthmus of suez [Music] further studies were conducted in the mid-1800s and construction began in 1859 the waterway was completed in the span of 10 years and eventually the suez canal officially opened on november 17 [Music] 1869 [Music] originally the canal consisted only of a very narrow channel about 8 meters deep and 22 meters wide at the bottom in the first 15 years of its operation around 3 000 ships went aground continuous improvements in the canal were carried out for the next 90 years until it was blocked in 1967 during the arab israeli war it remained inoperative until june 1975 when it was reopened and improvements were resumed during his first full year of operation in 1870 there were only 486 transits which moved a total of 444 000 tons of cargo in 2019 approximately 19 thousand ships carrying more than one point two billion tons of cargo transited the suez canal [Music] right now our ship just finished dropping anchor so we're here at the anchorage area of swiss canal if i'm not mistaken this is called the bitter lake don't ask me why anyway we will be waiting here for a few hours until the pilot comes on board and we resume our convoy all the way out out of swest canal and headed to our discharging port the great bitter lake is more or less the halfway point of the transit it's where the convoys interchange in using the northern and southern channels so every time ships pass through swiss canal there will be a riding team or a riding crew electrician and boat men who will come on board the ship and stay they will stay on board until eventually the ship leaves the canal now these guys they usually bring businesses on board you know they sell a lot of stuff souvenirs sim cards and a lot of other random stuff that the crew might be interested in you know stuff like egyptian figurines papyrus paper and a lot of other stuff let's check it out [Music] okay so for me i bought only these two items because these were all i need a sim card and a speaker cable we stayed at anchor for a few hours one by one we watched as the northbound ships passed us by so from up here in the bridge wings you can get a view of the great bitter lake although there's nothing much to see beyond but sand the calm waters and the clear skies still offer the beautiful backdrop for the ships that are anchored in the bitter lake so i just got a call from the bridge i think the pilot is approaching our ship and we're getting ready to heat up the anchor so we can finally exit swash canal as the pilot came on board we made the ship ready and resumed our transit [Music] when the canal first opened transit time averaged around 40 hours as ships would stop in base to allow other ships from the opposite direction to pass by the convoy system was adopted in 1947 which greatly reduced transit times for the past 150 years the suez canal has undergone numerous dredgings expansions and improvement in facilities and management at present the transit time now ranges between 11 to 16 hours [Music] from then until now the suez canal has given ships plying the routes between asia and europe the option to save time and fuel if they are willing to pay the toll which is calculated more or less based on the ship's tonnage [Music] i don't know exactly how much our ship's transit cost but based on the suez canal toll calculator which can be found online the estimate is around 230 000 us dollars as our ship approached the southern end of the suez canal the boatmen and the other members of the riding gang prepared to disembark [Music] it took us a total of 16 hours including the time at anchor to complete the southbound transit and as we finally went through the exit the pilot disembarked and our ship resumed her voyage

Channel: Chief MAKOi

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Keywords: chief makoi, seaman, seafarer, sailor, merchant marine, merchant navy, maritime, marine engineer, chief engineer, navigator, captain, master mariner, ship, mega ship, suez canal, suez canal history, suez canal toll, how much ships pay suez canal transit, suez canal transit, suez canal blocked, suez canal traffic, ever given

Id: XwdU2cYRbnM

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020