Monday 14^th June

Another of those long days sort of waiting to get off on the night passage, but the tension was considerably higher than usual due to the nature of tonight’s trip.

T & L set off with Rupert from Rumpus in their hire car to get some final bits and pieces from the supermarket which ended up taking them hours, whilst Sarah made soup and sandwiches for the overnight sail. Swimming and showers were the order of the late afternoon before we were finally able to get out of the raft we were moored in to get to the fuel dock (VERY cheap fuel here in Lebanon), where we were also able to pick up our passports and set off for Haifa in Israel.

The obvious catch is that the Lebanese do not allow boats to travel from Lebanon to Israel and the rally was therefore very publically heading for Southern Cyprus but once we were 25 miles offshore we all turned left instead of right and headed through the night leaving the lights of Beirut blazing in reflective sunlight on our port sides as we motored into the rolling swell and light southerly breeze heading for what promised to be a very exciting and eventful night.

We tried fishing for an hour but with no luck and with the onset of darkness, our radar once again gave up on us on the one night when we perhaps would need it most.

The wind died away totally by the late evening and as we motored south we read and re-read the very detailed instructions as to what was likely to happen as we approached Israeli territorial waters. We were prepared for gunboats and warships that would appear alongside without appearing on our radar and who would almost certainly board most boats as a matter of course. We were prepared for our GPS signals to fail as their navy would be likely to jam the satellite signals to blind us while they investigated our presence and purpose and we were ready for a host of other possible scenarios and an inevitable barrage of questions that would be delivered over the radio to each and every boat.   Let alone the heightened security regarding world events in this area!

The key point though as we proceeded along the Lebanese coast was that we had been given a very specific narrow gateway at an exact GPS location 16 miles offshore and some 90 miles south of us through which all boats had to pass in order to enter Israeli waters and a very specific time determined by the Israeli navy.