Ocean Princess has just dropped both anchors at the south end of the Red Sea. Our journey this past week has taken us around Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the east coast of Egypt. The Red Sea is over 1000 miles long and Ocean Princess took 3 days to navigate this body of water to arrive at our present location. For the most part, our ship has been approx 50 miles away from foreign shores with no land in sight. The last terra firma we set foot on is Dubai. At 0600 Wed AM Ocean Princess along with a convoy of an unknown number of ships will sail north at a speed of 8 knots destination Port Said. A second convoy at the same time will depart the north end at Port Said. We will later pass this convoy in the canal. There are 6 pull over locations in the canal where ships can hold while others pass. On Wed, the number of ships requires two convoys south and one convoy north.
We have passed dozens cargo ships plus many off shore oil drilling platforms today and sadly we can smell the hydrocarbons in the warm tropical air.