Approaching Middle Earth!

   Well, this is really travelling in style! We are now passing through the Suez Canal, and it's awesome: one of the great engineering feats of recent centuries, and for years it's been one of my ambitions to see it. And drink the lot. Well, you know me - I think big.

   Yesterday as we passed through the Red Sea, I insisted upon walking around the deck perimeter for most of the day. This was merely so that I would thenceforth be able to proclaim "I'm a Red Sea pedestrian and proud of it!", of course. To the port side there was a blood-red sunset just as we caught sight of The Brothers, a small group of islands with a lighthouse. One hypothesis for the name Red Sea involves the bacterial blooms, or 'sea sawdust' that appear in the water...


   A reddish cyanobacterium
   Encountered a drop of deuterium;
   This heavier water
   Gave rise to a daughter,
   With radioactive delirium.