Due to several unforseen hindrances which occurred close to planned departure from Greece, the vessel was delayed by 6 days in its programme. Three days of the delay were gained by postponing the Christmas leave for the crew, while the remaining three days had to be taken from the planned survey in Egypt.
The vessel sailed from Khalkis Greece, on 9 December and arrived at Alexandria anchorage in the evening of 11 December. The vessel was not cleared to take the team from Egypt onboard before the afternoon of the next day. The vessel then steamed eastwards on the shelf to El Arish running the acoustic system. Starting on a survey grid westwards the vessel was hit by a gale from west, making it necessary to reduce the speed to 4 knots and adjust the coursetrack. When the gale was over the vessel was outside Port Said were it was stopped by an egyptian warship that had found the surveytrack strange. This delayed the vessel by 14 hours. After this episode the survey track was continued westwards. A final call was made in Alexandria in the morning 17 December to disembark the Egyptian team. The vessel then headed for Malta for lay-up.
Figure 1. Survey routes and stations
The cruise track together with trawl stations and hydrographic stations are shown in Figure 1.
During the survey there were carried out:
4 hydrographical stationsThe length of the total cruise track in Egyptian waters was 810 nm.
1 pelagic trawl station
8 bottom trawl stations
