35:20.5N 33:19.8E

Tuesday 25^th May

Very little breeze at any stage last night and the morning dawned clear and sunny. As we approached Girne in Northern Cyprus we came up behind Mashona which is the committee boat and at that moment they developed a problem and steam billowed out of their exhaust. They stopped and we circled them until they had resolved the situation.

Meanwhile another yacht’s engine had stopped and they were unable to restart it so one of the crew of a nearby yacht transferred across and very cleverly jury rigged a pump to bypass the lift pump and got them going again.

The committee boat and ourselves proceeded into the harbour, but they went into the little marina (this is their home port) whilst we continued into the commercial port to moor in our designated spot so we could help bring the other yachts in. What we had not expected was the huge level of excitement on the island about the rally’s arrival but fortunately we performed a perfect stern-to mooring in front of TV and film cameras and the massed ranks of customs, immigration, passport and police officials. Sarah, Trevor and Lesley tidied up Serafina and dressed her overall in flags whilst I went and presented myself and our papers to the specially arranged long line of tables of officials who welcomed us to Northern Cyprus.

The rally organiser Dave, then appeared and gave me my full brief which was not just helping the boats moor as I had previously understood, but I was to be the dockmaster for all the boats arriving on the main quay, whilst he managed the other quays. He had a very carefully laid out plan of how it might work in theory, but since all the boat widths vary so much it would not be until later that we would see if it worked! There was very little space at all and it involved mooring the boats in their groups with one rank of yachts anchored stern-to the quay and then a second rank of yachts anchored behind them but these had to use stern anchors and tie their bows in between the bows of the first rank of boats that facing the other way.  An added excitement was that not many boats fancied being in the second tier and a good many claimed not to have stern anchors at all. Add in all the language difficulties and we were set for a long afternoon.  Armed with a whistle that Sarah discovered at her Dad’s last winter, a portable VHF radio to communicate with all the fleet, Sarah, Trevor, Lesley and some local marineros (who were pretty bemused by the sheer scale of the endeavour) to catch ropes and the memories of doing all this 30 years ago when running a flotilla, I found the next 5 hours more fun than I might have imagined. I probably did not win too many friends as I made boats that dropped their anchors in the wrong spots (having ignored our signals about where and when to anchor) go back out and do it again until they got it right! Hopefully next time they will pay a little more attention. We were all a little surprised by how many of the boat owners were not very adept at anchoring properly and one yacht in particular could yet turn out to be a disaster in waiting as they had absolutely no idea about what to do. But for the most part everything was done with good humour and between us we squeezed 74 yachts including several catamarans and one huge Nordhaven motor yacht into the allotted space. I would dearly love to see an aerial shot of all this. Dave thanked us and reassured us that this was probably the worst place for trying to shoehorn the fleet in throughout the rally, but we know that we are headed for places where they may only see 20 boats in  an entire year apart from us all coming in one hit, so there is more fun to had yet.

In the evening we were taken by coach up to the very well preserved castle overlooking the old harbour where we had a huge buffet meal, endless drinks and were due to meet His Excellency the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but in the event he was unable to attend and sent his deputy to address us and welcome us to their country. There was a small but significant incident as most people queued for the food when rather predictably, certain nationalities used their usual swarming technique and one particular lady received a detailed explanation of what exactly she was doing that was unacceptable to everyone including the hosts, from the normally shy and retiring Sarah! The four of us took a taxi back afterwards to the boats, where we had to walk through the empty customs and passport control sections of the ferry port to get to the quay.