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The northern Gulf. Jezirat Faraun lies seven miles south of the modern-day Israeli city of Eilat. The waters between the island and the Sinai mainland are a natural anchorage, offering ships protection from the rough seas and violent storms that frequently come up on the Gulf. This is thanks to the Wadi Jereya, which opens into the Gulf about a mile south of the island. Like all wadis, Jereya is usually a dry riverbed, except for torrents that rush through it once or twice a year. Over the millennia sand carried into the Gulf from the wadi has accumulated into a half-mile long submerged breakwater. The breakwater repulses the turbulent waters from the Gulf’s predominantly southern storms and preserves calmness in the anchorage between the island and the mainland.