12:48.06N 45:28.91E Leaving Aden, 27th August
arkouda
barry latchford
Mon 27 Aug 2007 19:06
Well, we finally got going from Ismailia down Suez, after the usual pilot
hassles, nothing new. Then picked up a good tail wind and went onto
gennaker for the journey down the Red Sea. The author had already booked a
flight home from Sharm el Sheikh for some much needed R&R - after four
months on board without a break it was time to tread solid earth for a
week or two, not least to see beloved wifey, dogs, cat, mates,
infrastructure of home, English beer and the rest. And that funny wet
stuff that falls from the sky, hadn't seen that for 3 months.
All of which was remarkably prescient, because not only did this author
stupidly take most of the skin off his hands, and arm, handling the
gennaker halyard under load just short of Sharm (30Kn wind shift, tangled
block, no worries, I'll free it, oops, 2 ton load, ouch! Is that morphine
by any chance...?) but we also discovered that the generator impeller was
u/s and guess what, our only spare supplied was the wrong size! But, they
did have them in Sharm, in a bizarre, mirage-like Onan dealership, way,
way out in the desert, a brand new air-conditioned shop/factory surrounded
by car-wrecks and scenes from Mad Max 2.
Three days in Sharm/Naama Bay was quite enough - what dumps they have both
become! Naama Bay is now 35km of non-stop MacDonalds, Starbucks, TGI
Friday and the rest, ugh. And not much in the way of eye candy either. So
muggings here flew back Gor Blimey Airways straight to the Burns Unit
(quoting "Poor wee timorous beastie...") and left Erik the Viking, No 1
Son and the French National Tanning Team to find their own way down the
Red Sea and through Pirate Alley, which was a bit cowardly methinks.
But, last position update on the mailasail blog was about 25 miles east of
Aden - so far, so good, and making bloody good time at that. My plan is to
rejoin the boat at Salalah, Oman, which by all accounts is a fairly
civilised place, and then straight to the Maldives (not via Cochin as was
planned - after Egypt I think we have had quite enough of tortuous
entry/exit formalities, and no-one can do tortuous quite like the Indian
Civil Service) Anyway, I suspect that we're all a bit 3rd world-ed out for
now, time for some serious luxury and excellent diving and snorkelling.
Now, if I can only smuggle the gin through customs....