Sunday 20^th June

Day started badly when the hire car broke down as Trevor and Lesley were taking Bruce to hospital for the latest in the saga of him having the pins removed from his broken elbow. Once they had been given a fresh (and larger) car they also took the opportunity to do some food shopping as we have been warned that supplies will be harder to come by in Port Said.

Very hot and still day which made doing jobs around the boat very unpleasant, but who are we to complain when we are enjoying unbroken sunshine day after day. Sarah set to with a view to repairing the scratch in the side of Serafina but was delighted to find that the scratch looked a good deal worse than it really was and although a fuller repair will be needed, the marks polished out fairly easily.

It is one of those strange truths that whenever England beat Australia at any sport, you can never find an Aussie. Well this lot had nowhere to hide, but they tried hard enough to avoid us never the less. For the most part they suddenly feigned any interest in rugby and a total denial of the score last night when England thoroughly thrashed Australia 21 points to a miserable 20. But these are the same folk who all knew the score last week within minutes of the final whistle.  Roger took things to an extreme I felt when he arrived at the dinner dressed as an arab. He certainly avoided being recognised as an Aussie, but the security guards were very unimpressed.

Security is of course a big topic here and it is very unnerving to see all the young men carrying automatic weapons all the time. The ones who have the magazines strapped to their weapons are off duty, and the loaded guns belong the people on duty, uniform or no uniform. We have become used to all the military traffic, airborne or otherwise, but very few of us missed the sound of very heavy guns being fired in the afternoon.

In the evening we had another presentation evening with drinks and a big buffet dinner along with a very impressive display by two costumed Brazilian dancers who were accompanied by three drummers. The speeches were as usual a little predictable with the mayor particularly keen to thank us for making the considerable effort to continue with our rally when there was so much tension in the area. The recurring theme was that the arrival of so many yachts representing 18 countries means a lot to them here and as part of this we were invited to listen to ‘Bridge over troubled waters ‘ and perhaps adopt it as a theme ourselves.

Sadly this spirit of goodwill and understanding did not extend as far as their police and immigration service as they refused to allow us to have our passports back until after midnight which was slightly less than helpful as we are mostly setting off tomorrow morning for Egypt (130 miles) around 5.00 am. Not the perfect start to a long night and day, particularly as we have also been warned that the temperature is going to be higher by 8 degrees tomorrow and very little wind is forecast.

Only 36 boats are making the last two legs of the rally, with many just staying here in Ashkelon and using this as a base to explore Jordan and Jerusalem etc. which is what we plan to do in a week or two. These boat crews plan to take a coach up to Herzliya which is a way north of here and where the rally finishes on the 28^th June, to join us for the final dinner and presentations. It is obviously a shame they do not wish to complete the rally they signed up for, but understandable that many crews see the 24 hour trip to Egypt and the 24 hours back, only a few days later as a bit too much.