Sat 5^th June

A day off in theory, but the morning was spent sorting out our various lines as the boats were all bobbing in the big swell today and no sooner than we had got everything OK than one of the mooring bollards on the quay came away from the quay altogether and we had to rush back into action to solve this new problem. The afternoon was more relaxed as the wind had come round and by the end of the day, Sarah and Lesley had managed 7 loads of washing and had prepared some fancy nibbles and a wonderful apple crumble for us to take with us to dinner on Arwen in the evening. Jackie and Robert entertained us to roast lamb, with roast potatoes and veg and we all had a great evening and were joined briefly by Dave and Kath from Mashona.

There have been a number of incidents recently that need reporting. Firstly Heinrich on ‘Stranger in the Night’ discovered that his wife Frauke had a five year old Israeli visa stamp in her passport, so they were refused entry on their arrival here in Syria and had to set sail immediately back to Southern Cyprus. There we understand that the German authorities issued her with a new clean passport, but the Syrians had now declared her unwelcome in their country until their war with Israel was over. So they are sailing directly to Lebanon now and we hope to meet up with them there.

All the Aussies got together and declared that they were not impressed with the planned trip to Damascus and went ahead with arranging their own longer visit. There was great amusement all around when news came that they had tried to book into a hotel in Damascus using their shore passes as they had not got their passports back from the Syrian authorities here in Lattakia. The police had been called and they all spent several hours in police custody until the issue was resolved by the rally organisers. They will not be looking forward to getting back here as the jokes about former convicts are very thick on the ground. To rub salt into the wound, there were a few Kiwis with them on their trip and the police ignored them!