Friday 25^th June

A day off for us all to sort out the boats in preparation for the 136 mile sail to Herzliya, which is close to Tel Aviv, Israel.

I got a little bogged down with the previous two days blogs whilst Sarah set about washing decks and things. Trevor was under the weather again, this time with stomach cramps which are giving him a lot of pain, so much so that he did not come with us to the Rally Dinner in the evening.

We all took a stroll up into the nearest parts of Port Said and visited the market, but in truth this is neither a very safe nor pleasant place to be and several crews reported being heckled by groups of youths. Like Cairo, everywhere and everything is very dirty and dusty (the desert may have a part to play in this of course) but the standard of living is clearly very low indeed.

In the evening we all boarded the coaches for a short, high speed, armed and escorted trip to a very smart nearby hotel where we were treated to another superb buffet meal. Frequently these events have a pay bar which is no problem of course, but on this occasion they pitched the prices so high as to be ridiculous and so lots of people chose to just have bottled water! After various presentations there was a disco, but somehow they missed the market slightly and whilst there was plenty of enthusiastic dancing going on, most people chose to sit this one out and there was a quite definite rush to get on the first bus home. During the speeches there was a slight distraction in the hotel reception area when an Egyptian wedding party arrived complete with band and once they started dancing they had everyone’s rapt attention.

Sarah and I left Lesley at the dinner as she was very involved in learning Egyptian dancing, but in fact the second and final coach was not that much later in the end, so we all had a fairly early night.

I thought that I ought at some stage to say a few words about the organising committee for the rally. The entire event is run by four seemingly unlikely but very hard working individuals, Hassan, Dave, Kath and Faruk (who is not actually on this tour but beavering away in his office in Gocek, Turkey.

It is hard not to equate Dave and Hassan with Laurel and Hardy, partly for their endless good humour throughout, but perhaps partly due the air of organised chaos that surrounds their announcements and presentations and general organisation. In truth Hassan does an extraordinary job balancing the needs, demands and sensibilities of a selection of very volatile middle eastern countries, several of whom are actually at war with each other, along with the curious and eclectic band of sailors drawn from 18 countries around the world with all their idiosyncrasies. This he does with a cheerful and indefatigable good humour, brushing off setbacks and always trying to find humour in a situation. Not everyone fully appreciates this approach and certainly there are a few who despair of the apparent lack of organisation, but no-one can deny that he gets the job done one way or another, and I am certain that the logistics would have long since defeated a more conventional approach. Dave and Kath are perhaps best described as our long suffering ‘flotilla leaders’ as it is on their broad shoulders that the practical problems of taking nearly 70 boats from port to port and country to country falls, knowing full well the complete absence of space, facilities and assistance that awaits them along the way. They struggle to get ahead of the fleet on passages, often starting off in the very early hours in order to be ready and waiting the arrival of the yachts at the destination. They are the ones trying to bring order to the chaos of trying to dock all the boats, by carefully orchestrating the entire event, only for one or more skippers to totally ignore all the instructions and wreak havoc by doing all the wrong things, frequently quite wilfully. Indeed being a flotilla skipper is actually a good deal easier that this job here as most holidaymakers do generally do as they are instructed. Dave and Kath’s problems stem from the fact that here they have 70 determined, single-minded self professed experts, who frequently resent being told what to do and are largely nothing like as good as they like to think! Add in language difficulties, real or deliberate and it is a wonder that they keep going with such an indomitable spirit and wonderful sense of humour. I have posted a couple of photos of Dave and Hassan at www.rhbell.com .