The Route
Around 2,350 Nm east aboard Discovery. Four distinct passages, sailed to the seasons and the weather rather than to a timetable.
Three seas, one line east
Winter wind off the Balearics, Sardinia and Pantelleria in the haze, then Malta. Long sailing days, water cool but clear enough to swim off the platform before breakfast.
A day and a night in a queue of ships between two deserts. Nobody sleeps much. It is the strangest and most memorable stretch of the whole passage.
Reefs, empty anchorages and light so hard it flattens the horizon. The last miles run down a coast almost nobody sails, ending at AMAALA.
Stage by stage
January · Mid winter
Palma de Mallorca → Valletta, Malta
This is where it starts. Palma behind you, cool winter air, and a sea that opens up the moment you clear the bay.
February · Late winter
Valletta, Malta → Alexandria, Egypt
The real crossing. Days of open sea, a horizon that stays empty for hours, and the strange calm that comes with it.
March · Late winter / Early spring
Alexandria, Egypt → Northern Red Sea
Port Said, the canal, and the moment the water under the hulls changes sea entirely.
March to April · Early spring
Northern Red Sea → AMAALA, Saudi Arabia
The last leg, and the most beautiful. Reefs almost nobody has dived, desert mountains, and water at 28 degrees.
Weather and timing
The prelude leaves Palma in January, crosses the eastern Mediterranean in the cool of winter, and reaches the Red Sea in early spring when the northerlies are steady behind us. Dates can shift by a day or two. The captain decides, and he decides for comfort.
Every leg starts and ends in a port with an airport nearby, so joining and leaving is simple.
