Communication Breakdown

Thursday 17th June Off first thing on a half day tour that soon proved to be a
total shambles. The guide was dreadful and paid no attention to what he was
being asked and was far too busy delivering his views and political leanings.
The last straw was a three quarters of an hour visit to a shopping mall so 6
people could do some supply shopping despite the vast majority of the
passengers being anxious to get back to their boats at the time given in the
details when we booked. We endured this until the bus finally returned to the
marina around 2.00 pm just in time for Sarah to attend the skipper’s
briefing for tonight’s sail south towards Gaza and our destination of
Ashkelon Marina. The journey is around 100 miles but with light winds forecast
there was some considerable debate about when it would be beat to set off. In
the event this was all rather academic as the way all the boats were rafted
together and squeezed into Haifa meant that we could only leave when all the
boats blocking you had left and in our case this was nearly last! The first boats away reported 30 knots of wind from a
southerly direction which served to slow the reluctant leavers down even more.
We finally got away around 5.20 pm and found that the wind had dropped to 14
knots and so we hoisted the sails and beat our way out of Haifa heading for the
start of the very tight corridor down which we had to sail to avoid the wrath
of the Israeli navy. Various fast patrol boats checked our early progress and
we on Serafina also were singled out for a visit and visual inspection by a
fully fledged warship, but by and large we proceeded uninterrupted into the
night. The fleet was quite bunched up during the night as we were
required to remain in the narrow Israeli shipping corridor running a minimum of
12 miles offshore. However it is not easy for 60 yachts to sail and motor sail
in such a confined space, at night, knowing that we are sharing this channel
with all the sea going container ships etc. Furthermore, there are still countless
foreign flagged yachts in our fleet who have no working knowledge of
understanding of either the international requirements and directions for
lights at sea, nor the rules of the road. Goodness knows what some of the big
ships heading through this flotilla made of it all, but it must have caused a
quite some consternation on their bridges. |