Safari To Suez Canal - I Did The Ditch Patch

The Suez Canal runs 120 miles from Port Said to Suez without a single lock, and a ship that enters at one end is still in it eleven to sixteen hours later. Sailors call it the Ditch, and this patch says plainly that you made the run. The canal opened on 17 November 1869 and joined the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. For a warship that means Europe to the Middle East and the Indian Ocean without going around Africa. Transits move in scheduled convoys at about eight knots, with sand close on both sides for most of the day.

The canal was closed on 5 June 1967 at the start of the Six-Day War and stayed shut for eight years, with fifteen cargo ships, the Yellow Fleet, trapped inside. In 1974 the U.S. Navy sent USS Inchon LPH-12 with 12 RH-53D minesweeping helicopters to help clear it in Operation Nimbus Moon, alongside the Royal Navy's Operation Rheostat. The canal reopened on 5 June 1975. Northbound and southbound convoys pass each other at the Great Bitter Lake and the Ballah Bypass, and since 6 August 2015 a parallel channel of more than 35 kilometers in the middle section has allowed two-way traffic. In 1990 USS Dwight D. Eisenhower CVN-69 became only the second nuclear-powered carrier to make the passage.

The patch is a 4 inch round with a black border around an orange desert sky. Three pyramids rise at the top in shades of tan with a pale sun behind them, and a gold scroll beneath reads "SAFARI TO." A cable-stayed bridge spans the middle of the design, the kind ships pass under at El Qantara, where the Suez Canal Bridge opened in 2001 with 70 meters of clearance. Grey steel towers frame the bridge on both sides, and "I DID THE DITCH" is stitched in white over deep blue water. A second gold scroll at the bottom reads "SUEZ," so the whole patch reads as one line: Safari to Suez, I did the Ditch.

Safari is sailor humor, a word for a trip to a place most crews only saw from the rail. For a ship on deployment, a Suez transit usually means a change of theater, the Mediterranean behind and the Red Sea ahead, or the reverse on the way home. Lookouts stay sharp, the navigation team works the whole way, and everyone else finds a spot topside when they can. It is slow, careful work, and it sticks with people. Nobody who made the transit needs it explained.

It fits a shadow box next to a cruise book from a Med or Gulf deployment, or the sleeve of a jacket worn to a ship's reunion. It is also a good gift for a shipmate who made the transit with you. The patch measures 4 x 4 inches. Anyone who has done the Ditch knows exactly what it says.