Well, bummer!  Whatever time we started through the canal, it was early!  Captain said picking up the pilot around 4:30am, but we still figured we’d have time to be up and see the Evergiven memorial.  Um. No!  God knows what time we actually started the transit, but by the time we are up – and it is still early – we are almost to the damn lake!  Sheesh.  I never even considered getting up early – at least not that early!  Oh well.  It was just a thing I had about Evergiven. 

So, on with the day -of sailing through the canal!  We transit the lake pretty early, watch all the little fishing boats hauling in their nets and recasting and just paddling alongside of us as we slowly progress through the split channels.

And that’s about the only excitement we have until we reach the Canal headquarters with the winged Pharoah statue on one bank and the digger man on the other.  Looks familiar!

Then we are back to the combined two-way canal with the follow car (there is still a follow car!) as well as more fishing boats and our tug escort and the big container ship behind us.  We’re at the head of the parade as we exit the canal and start heading to the Red Sea and Ashdod!

We have our normal afternoon activities, gym, drinks, a beautiful sunset from the balcony, then TV in the cabin and an early bed time – our tour meets at 6:15am tomorrow – which means we’ll be there before 6!