The Long Winding Road

Posted at 12:03 AM, Jul. 2, 2010

The day of so called relaxation in Port Said passed quickly as we dealt with various customs clearance issues and battled the very hot temperatures (around mid 40’s) and kept up the liquid intake. The final night was yet another formal dinner on a hotel balcony overlooking the entrance to the canal. I certainly would not recommend Port Said as a holiday destination – in fact I would not recommend it as any destination – pass through and do not stop!

The formal dinner on Sunday 26^th June followed the usual format of speeches thanking local dignatories and the shipping agents handled the clearances, the flag ceremonies where each country represented in the rally have a flag bearer who generally make a speech at each of the dinners. Then dinner, dancing and local entertainment.

The fleet lined up and exiting the Suez Canal

The following morning was departure time and again we exited the canal in line while it was closed to shipping for 30 minutes or so. Now we like to keep the boat pretty tidy and clean but I was surprised to see that attitude taken to the extreme when a woman on one boat (that shall not be named although mentioned in the last posting) got the kitchen dish mop out to clean the mud off the anchor. The forecast was for 10 – 15 knot NW during the day dropping away to nothing overnight. We were the last to exit and immediately hoisted the main and genaker in light winds while most of the fleet motored off into the haze. Jim & Carola on Koza and Goran & Birgetta on Kenavo were determined to sail also. Slow going for a couple of hours or so but we could see that the pressure was slowly building and once it got over 10 knots we started to get going – when it got to 15 knots we really started trucking along and over the next 6 hours sailed past the entire fleet (nice feeling) until we were around 5 miles ahead of the next boat - with Kenavo dropping their red genaker as the wind moved ahead 20 degrees. Jim called us up on the fleet channel to ask when we were going to drop the A sail. But sailing at 70 degrees apparent at 9.5 to 10.2 knots average that was not going to be in a hurry.  We did drop it on dusk so we could have a comfortable dinner and beer and then it was a two sail reach until about 0100 hrs and then 7 hours of motoring into Herzliya in Israel.

Passing Serafina at 1o knots.

The Israeli navy were very active during the night and bathed us under spotlight from 20 metres away and did not respond to radio calls – after a while they must have been satisfied as they went off to look over another yacht. But interesting to have a gunboat nearby with their guns pointing your way!

Herzliya is a very good marina near Tel Aviv and safer than Ashkelon (where we were going to leave the boat) as it is beyond the 42k range of the rockets out of Gaza. The marina is surrounded by very smart hotels and within the complex is a large and very up market shopping centre with all the major brands well represented. We have booked a berth here for 2 months and we are quite lucky as the marina is full because most Israeli’s are not cruising to Turkey this year because of the high tension between the two countries.

The rally wrapped up on the evening of Monday 28^th June with the final formal dinner – more speeches (including a good speech from the NZ flag bearer from Bruce off Kiwi Volant), good music and a good DJ. It has been interesting to see the trend in the content of speeches as the rally has progressed – really lead by the key rally organiser Hasan from Turkey, as he is very forthright and this theme has been picked up by several others. The rally is promoted as a means of developing sailing in the eastern Med but in light of recent events (the supply flotilla and the death of 8 Turks) also with an emphasis on the efforts of the rally to promote harmony in the region.

In the matter of the pin in Bruce’s arm this has now been extracted by his brother in law (a vet) but whether it will be turned into ear-rings Olive remains to be seen. At the end of the day the rally is about people and a very perceptive observer commented that the rally consisted of the French group (18 boats), the rest of the participants and Group 6 – the latter being our group. Our group leader by his actions was not a leader at all but rather was concerned that his Amel 54 ketch was not the largest or most expensive (nor anything like the fastest) boat in the rally so he therefore focussed on spending time with the owners of the biggest and most expensive boat to the exclusion of pretty much all others.  So at the end of 6 weeks he did not know my name (out of 10 boats), nor several others in the Group and when presenting the rally plaque to me commented that it was good we had kept the radio scheds. 

Signs in the Israeli desert.

On a positive note we have met some wonderful people that we would hope to keep in touch with and see again. Particularly Jim & Corola (plus Jim & Jenny) from Brisbane boat “Koza”, Goran & Birgetta from Swedish boat “Kenavo”, Barry & Gail (plus Dave and Chris) off Sydney boat “Time Out”, Rob & Sarah off English boat “Serafina” (who we hope to see in NZ in a year or two) and of course the other NZ boats – Rupert and Kristen off “Rumpus” and Bruce and Amanda off “Kiwi Volant.”

On the negative side we have had to lift Savarna out at Herzliya as the repair work on the stern tube did not survive so the only option is to lift the boat out and do a complete repair – there is a very competent repair shop at Herzliya and we are also going to change the system to a dripless bearing system which will be a lot better for the future.

Having to lift the boat out (and all the farewells) delayed our departure for Eilat in southern Israel where we planned to cross the border into Jordan. So it was late morning before our rental car pointed south for the 355 k journey across the Negev desert region  to Eilat on the Red Sea. We returned the rental car to Avis, got a taxi to the border, cleared Israeli customs and then walked across no-mans land, with all our bags, to the Jordan border in 47 degrees (hot!), completed the entry formalities and then negotiated with the Arab taxi drivers to get to Aqaba, who seemed intent on ensuring that a visitors first impressions of Jordan were going to be unfavourable!

Pam walking the 1.5 k journey through the rock fissure at Petra.

Eventually ended up at the Hertz office in Aqaba and negotiated a one way rental to Amman (another 380 k’s). Jordan only has a small border with any sea and it is with the Red Sea at Aqaba which is its major port. From Aqaba we drove the 140 k’s north to the World Heritage Site of Petra and found a hotel for the night. Petra was built by the Nabataeann’s and occupied by them from the 1st century BC until the 1^st century AD. It later became part of the Roman Empire and was severely damaged by an earthquake in 363 AD before becoming deserted in the 7^th century. It was discovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812 and is an amazing place. Entry is by way of a 1.5 k passage through a fissure in the rock before opening out into a town that contained a temple, theatre, a colonnaded street, shops and churches plus tombs carved into the rock.  It is the major attraction in Jordan and well worth the driving to visit.

The "Treasury" building at Petra.

From Petra is was a mad dash across the desert northwards to Amman to catch our flight back to NZ with minutes to spare. Certainly the road system is no-where near as well developed as that in Israel.

Waiting for a passenger in front of the "Treasury"

Well we have now ticked off the Middle East and visited, courtesy of the rally, a bunch of places we would not otherwise have visited, made a number of new friends and on the legs to Egypt and back had some very good sailing. Overall quite tiring but with particularly good formal dinners in Turkey at Kemer and Alanya and when we get back on board in late August it will be to sail back to Kos or thereabouts without the pressure of a rigid timetable.

Cheers

Keith

Egypt

Posted at 4:48 PM, Jun. 27, 2010

It is now Friday 25^th June and we are in Port Said which is all closed up for the Muslim Sabbath. We returned last night from a two day tour to Cairo which was well worth while and I will cover that shortly.

Following Balder a Norwegian rally yacht down the Suez Canal.

We had a good sail from Ashkelon to Port Said and covered what was around a 135 mile passage in 19 hours having sailed most of the way. We left Ashkelon on Monday morning with the final group of larger boats and were soon battling with Australian yacht Koza as Jim is fiercely competitive and has been out to show us that he has a faster boat. On a two sail reach in around 10 knots we slowly pulled ahead trailed for a while by an Israeli gunboat who called us up on the radio as were passing an offshore oil or gas platform – they were very friendly though. As the wind veered we were able to get the A sail up and then it was bye bye Koza and the other boats from Group 6. I think Jim has finally accepted we are a quicker boat. We carried the A sail for some hours and then as the wind lightened and we being headed we dropped that and resorted to motor sailing for a couple of hours as we needed to ensure we hit the correct arrival time for entry into the Suez Canal. Managed to head up wind and slow the boat down sufficiently for a swim before dusk and then as the wind built we were able to two sail reach at 7.5 to 8 knots all the way to the designated anchorage off Port Said where we dropped anchor at around 0400 hrs. Around that time a 30 knot SW developed and that meant a windward bash for the boats that had not yet arrived.  During the night we passed close to a huge offshore gas platform that was well lit but was apparently secured by four unlit steel mooring buoys. We spotted the buoys on the radar and passed within 100 metres of one but a Halberg Rassy 44 “Walkabout Two” managed to hit one square on - the result was that the bottom of the stemhead was pushed right through the bow and they were well and truly holed but at least it was above the waterline. After passing the platform we passed through dozens of fishing boats that were either stationary or fishing and displaying a large variety of completely illegal lights. But all the fleet managed to successfully manoeuvre and dodge them during the night – this is when radar comes into its own. This leg is a long one for the smaller boats as effectively over about 5 days there is 280 miles of sailing all to spend two days in Cairo. The small boats are a lot slower and can easily spend several hours more on a passage than us and mostly are crewed by just husband and wife – you have to admire them.

                  Container ship in Suez Canal

The other bit of rally news is that Bruce off Kiwi Volant who fell and broke his arm just before the start of the rally has now had the plaster off but one of the pins is very close to the surface – the advice has been wait until it breaks the skin and then pull it out with a pair of clean pliers! Or the alternative - go to hospital and have it reset but he is a tough guy from the Hawkes Bay so they sailed on to Port Said with the rally. One of the boats (Manca – and you can guess what that rhymes with!) with reportedly a paying crew on board (against rally rules)  have had a few defections as crew peeled off to find spare berths on other boats. His style of sailing is intriguing to many as he never puts up his mainsail! The final piece of rally news is that Jackie off UK boat Arwen (a Hanse 411) was lighting the oven the other evening and a gas flare back resulted in her blouse catching fire but fortunately the resulting burns while painful were not serious.

The last night at Ashkelon was yet another formal dinner with plenty of speeches and a couple of girls providing entertainment as Brazilian dancers i.e. not wearing much . Great for the guys, not so sure about the wives. The kiwi contingent led by Chris, Pam and me also performed the haka which we had been practicing for some weeks – that seemed to be a hugh success particularly with the French. There are some photographs which are being emailed to me so I can post one here once it has passed the appropriate scrutiny and received any necessary photoshop work.

Entering the Suez Canal proved to be a complex process that took several hours but eventually the whole fleet was in line and we entered the canal as several large ships stood by off Port Said. The place was bedlam as the fishing boats that we had passed through overnight all started streaming back into port and in some case were still towing nets up the canal while we were trying to dodge ships, ocean going tugs, cross canal ferries and the numerous other vessels of all shapes and sizes that were moving around. Eventually we managed to get into the berthing area known as the Arsenal Basin which is a security controlled area and very dirty and dusty. It is quite surreal to sit on board and watch huge container ships pass by – although no transiting is permitted at night. The canal is 122 k’s long, 25 metres deep and up to 400 metres wide and built in 1864.

The principal reason for coming to Port Said was not to visit the fastest growing port in the world but to visit the second largest city in the world  - after Mexico. Cairo at 22 million people is vast and around 250 k’s from Port Said. So we piled into three buses (with an armed guard on each bus) and proceeded towards Cairo preceded by an armed police escort with all side streets and traffic lights shut off to let us pass through. We could only assume that this high level of protection was a response to the terrorist attack on some tourists some years ago at the pyramids.

            The Giza pyramids

So our convey of buses and accompanying guards drove along the edge of the Suez Canal for a while and it is quite a sight to see huge container ships gliding by 100 metres or so away with the Sinai Desert on the other side The area here is very poor and the housing looks dreadful but noticeable because of the presence of cylindrical shaped pigeon houses that stand several metres high. Our guide said they are bred for eating – not sure whether they are part of a restaurant supply line or whether they are bred for home consumption.

   Where the locals breed their pigeons

The Nile is the only river in Egypt and they appear to be taking one awful lot of water from it with numerous man-made draw offs including pumping water in a tunnel under the Suez Canal to the Simai region. I wonder how long this can be sustained?

First stop in Cairo was the Egyptian Museum that amongst many other antiquities houses finds from Tutankhamen’s tomb. There are 1,700 items on display including the incredible death mask made of solid gold. This guy was a ruler from the age of 9 in 1327 BC for nine years until he died at the age of 18. The jewellery in his tomb consisted of many valuables including 11 kilograms of gold jewellery. He was a relatively insignificant ruler and the discovery of his tomb in 1926 is important as it was in its original state and not looted. Imagine what the tombs of Ramses must have contained – reputedly ¾ of a ton of gold jewellery!!. The museum also has the Royal Mummy Room where the actual mummies of 11 of Egypt’s rulers are on display. The museum contains hundreds and hundreds of huge exhibits from many archaeological sites and apparently only 25% of what has been found is on display.

The museum was followed by a visit to yet another mosque ( the Mohammed Ali Mosque) which was impressive as they all are. Like all religious groups the Muslims seem intent on building huge mosques as before them the Christians built huge cathedrals. I think we have done enough mosques this trip!  After this it was a trip to the local Souk where Pam finally bought a houka pipe which she has been looking to do for weeks. So now we have yet another bag to carry back to NZ complete with all the right bits! Maybe one of the more expensive houka pipes sold in the souk that day.

    The Mohammed Ali Mosque in Cairo

From here we drove through the outskirts of Cairo to our hotel for the night near the Giza pyramids – and as we got nearer we could see them in the distance between various of the high rise buildings. The first sighting was pretty exciting as the scale of them is beyond belief and even more so as they are built on an elevated plateau. On the other side of the pyramids is the desert but the suburbs of Cairo are virtually right to them. We were told there are 107 pyramids in Egypt but these ones are the only surviving wonder of the Ancient World and were built more than 4,000 years ago. The area is surrounded by touts selling any and everything and they have all the tricks known to mankind!  We reckoned  this was akin to an asset stripping operation i.e. we have the cash and they take it. They (the pyramids not the touts) were covered marble originally but most of that was removed over 100 years ago to be used in buildings in Cairo – what a tragedy.

Just a couple of hundred metres away from the pyramids is the Spinx carved from one huge piece of limestone. No one appears to know the reason for it being carved but it is also around 4,000 years old and very impressive.

  Posing for the Spinx with a Pyramid looking on.

After a few hours wandering around the pyramids and the Spinx (and being relieved of some Euro’s) and also riding camels we headed back to Port Said by bus with our armed ecorts. We stopped on the way back at the Ismailia Yacht Club where they provided us with a free beer (non-alcoholic). This yacht club is situated on a lake about half way down the Suez Canal which is now opened to the canal and it is possible to moor there for a night of longer It used to be a fresh water lake with crocodiles among its residents. A couple of 100ft multihulls stopped while we were there one of them being Ellen Mcarthur’s old B & Q which she sailed single-handed around the world in record time a few years ago.

We have one day of relaxation left in Port Said, another formal dinner and then on Saturday morning we exit the canal and have a 140 mile sail to Herzliya in Israel – this is a major marina just out of Tel Aviv.

Cheers

Keith

Israel

Posted at 10:31 PM, Jun. 22, 2010

Well this is another late night blog writing episode as we are currently en route from Ashkelon (Israel) to Port Said (Egypt). This passage is 124 miles and we left at 0830 hrs this morning (Monday 21 June) and the whole rally fleet is to meet at a designated waypoint just off the Suez Canal entrance at 0530 hrs tomorrow at which point we proceed in convey (fully dressed with code flags) down the Suez Canal for a few miles to the Arsenal Basin off the canal which is controlled by the Egyptian Navy. Then rally news is that quite a few boats have opted out of the Egyptian legs as they are quite long relative to the other legs so we are down to 36 yachts.

                  Bedouin camp in the Israeli desert.

But to back up as the last post had us on an overnight passage between Jounieh (Lebanon) and Haifa (Israel). It is getting noticeably hotter – both in temperature and military presence if that is possible. The fleet had a designated “gate” of about three miles wide being two waypoint positions that we had to pass through as we crossed the border from Lebanon to Israel. The naval presence was significant – quite clearly the Israeli’s guard their water space as much as they do their lands. During the night a navy warship would broadcast lat and long positions and ask the vessel at the position to respond. This would be followed by significant questioning, with extensive use of the phonetic alphabet (Dave one of the rally heads made extensive use of Italy for a while rather than India!), that could last for up to 15 minutes. The naval vessels do not show up on radar which is somewhat disconcerting.  We were intercepted by two naval ships on separate occasions to which we had to respond and then as we approached Haifa a police boat collected our passports for inspection, we were then followed by the police on jet ski’s and then watched through high powered binoculars as we approached the marina – and all these guys carry big machine guns. No place for boy racers! On top of this surveillance helicopters overhead most of the night.

Arriving in Haifa - Bahai gardens and temple in  middle.

The passage was a combination of a good sail for a few hours at the start, motoring overnight into a light headwind and then wrapping up with a good sail in to port. Basically we sailed most of the way.

This is the only stop in the rally where we are hosted by a yacht club – in this case the Mt Carmel Yacht Club situated off a creek up past the main docks and is a conventional marina. In this case the boats rafted up in the fairways up to 20 boats deep so the locals were not going to take their boats anywhere while the rally show was in town!  Fortunately we scored our own berth which was good for a 40 ft boat so we had ropes everywhere seeing as we were well oversize. The day of our arrival was also the occasion for a rally dinner accompanied by speeches by a cabinet Minister, the mayor plus others and a cultural show of dancing provided by a children’s group.

Haifa is a city of about 500,000 and is spread out over the slopes of Mt Carmel and is on three levels – as one might imagine the upper level is home to the wealthy and chic cafes etc as well as the University. From the sea there is a stunning view of the Bahai gardens  snd temple which stretch from the top level to sea level – they are beautiful and world renowned.

We have had a smooth passage to date with no problems with the boat but the old saying “bad news comes in three’s” proved correct. Main station VHF ceased operation, leaking about 6 litre an hour through the fitting where the shaft exits the hull (not the stern gland), the main 24 volt alternator packed up and the in-line blower fan in the engine room ceased working also. So on the day of our arrival (Tuesday 15^th June) Chris headed off for a couple of days to photograph the World Heritage site at Akko, Pam headed off the following day on a tour of historic sites and I stayed on board to work with an engineer I had met at the dinner to manage the repairs process – pleased to say these guys are pretty good, alternator back within 3 hours plus a new blower that I installed, VHF repaired (a bit of soldering on a circuit board) in 30  minutes and the leaking repaired by mid afternoon so at the end of the day nothing major.

In the meantime Pam was visiting such renowned places as the Sea of Gallilee, driving past the Golan Heights, visiting Nazereth and lunching at a kibbutz.

Where Jesus was baptised by John The Baptist on the Jordan river.

That evening various members of the Mt Carmel Yacht Club very generously hosted rally crews at their homes. A group of ten of us were entertained by  Giora & Tamar Reder (he is a former commodore) at their home for dinner preceded by a drive around the sights of Haifa. It was a most enjoyable evening.

The short stop in Haifa was followed by an 85 overnight passage down the Israeli coast to Ashkelon a full scale marina located about 25 k’s north of the Gaza strip – which is a long narrow coastal strip by the way. Again another passage characterised by some good sailing for a while and then motoring.

Ashkelon seems to be a pretty dreary dormitory town with a growing population and many tower cranes going flat out building new apartment blocks. It seems there is a conscious decision to build the population in southern Israel. Temps getting hot – i.e. 43 degrees yesterday!  We took a tour to Masada (which is a hilltop fortress where 966 Jews fled Jerusalem and then held off the Romans for three years before finally surrendering – but killing themselves beforehand although 7 women and children escaped to tell the story). And all this in AD66.

The long walk/climb to the fortress at  Masada

A very impressive place and overlooks the Dead Sea – to which we then drove and all had the mandatory swim.

                      Pam survives the Dead Sea!!

It looks like water, you walk in it like water but when you lie down in it you simply do not sink. The river Jordan runs from the Sea of Gallilee to the Dead Sea but in fact does not reach it as the river dries out. After this a visit to the plant that makes all the impressive range of Dead Sea products (creams, shampoos etc) and then a drive north to Jerusalem skirting the West Bank settlements.

The motto at Masada is “ Masada shall not fall again” and up until the 1967 six day war all the soldier recruits climbed to the top and swore this as there oath. All males have compulsory military service for  three years (women two years) and then a month a year until the age of 40. The psyche of the people is very much that we want peace but always accompanied by very strong views about this being the land of the Jews. Although the six day war resulted in Israel tripling its geographic area they still believe surrounding areas (e.g. of Jordan) should be part of Israel. The biggest issue though is the Palestine one – the Gaza strip is 45k’s long, 10 k’s wide and houses 1.5 million people. The average pay is USD2 a day and there is 40% unemployment. While in the West Bank settlements there are 2.5 million Palestinian’s of which 43,000 a day cross to Israel to work down from the 75,000 a day reported a few years back. It is difficult to see how Israel itself with a population of 7.2 million can box the Palestinian people in for ever and deprive them of so much.

The wall between Israel and the West Bank settlements.

The country has got an excellent infrastructure, it is good to see people taking a pride in their environment e.g. lawns are mowed, gardens maintained, little rubbish around, etc. A great change from the countries we have just visited although with the extent of irrigation we did wonder at the sustainability of the water supply in the long term. We did see a report though that 10% of the GDP is funded by the USA – this amounts to USD3 billion annually. In many ways a very impressive country with highly educated people but always at the ready to fight for their perceived rights so the question of what the long term holds in terms of peace with their neighbours such as Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, the acknowledgment of the Palestinian demands for a separate country and the sustainability of their treatment of the environment remains to be determined.

Have had a great sail today having left at 0830 hrs this morning from Ashkelon after Customs/Immigration cleared us for departure at 0200 hrs. The first 62 miles we knocked off in 7.5 hours  but with dusk the inevitable happened and we are now motoring past a huge offshore gas platform so will give it a wide berth.

Cheers

Keith

Lebanon

Posted at 5:11 PM, Jun. 17, 2010

Well I drew an easier watch tonight (2100 hrs to 2400 hrs) so filling in some time by updating the blog as we motor quietly onwards to Israel – Monday 14^th June and we should arrive in at Haifa around 1100 hrs tomorrow. But I need to go back to the last leg first.

Keeping on with the sailing we did manage to score a great sail for the entire leg (only the second time this has happened) on route from Lattakia (Syria) to Jounieh (Lebanon and near Beirut). The leg started off with us pretty much last to leave one of the dirtiest ports we have been in i.e. Lattakia. The Syria Yacht Club occupy one side of the small basin and the other seems to be commercial with some steel boat building going on. Unfortunately the harbour seems to become a good place to dump rubbish of all types and there is a very shallow spot in the middle (1.6 metres only). It is a shame for the yacht club as they are trying to promote yachting in what for them must be a difficult environment. Before we departed they put a diver in to check the propellers, anchors and keels of all yachts  - and sure enough the stuff he pulled out certainly averted more disasters of the type that caught a few boats when we arrived. The leg was 105 miles if no windward work was involved but as noted in the last posting this was not going to be a gentlemen’s sail. (for those who don’t know gentlemen never sail to windward – maybe it spills the gin!). Again we were in the last three or four boats to leave and had a good sail ( no tacking) out to the waypoint about 6 miles offshore and then onto starboard tack for the run down the coast. Initially we had to throw in a few tacks to keep our distance beyond the regulation 6 miles offshore requirement but as the wind moved to the west we were able to lay through to the waypoint off Jounieh. By early morning though the wind had freshened to 20 – 25 knots and gone to the south so the last 20 miles to the waypoint were a dead beat i.e. we have to sail 40 miles to cover 20 miles directly unwind. We had a great sail with one reef in the main and a few rolls on the overlapping genoa we have been using during the rally – 8.5 to 8.8 knots upwind seemed respectable. We were one of the few boats to sail all the way as with the scheduled arrival times the smaller boats in this case simply had to throttle hard down and go for it. Rob from the English boat Serefina (a Najad 49) got some good shots of us on the wind.

                    Good bash to weather!

The sailing has been characterised by poor visibility with significant haze so it was quite a surprise to get a beautiful view of Beirut, sitting on its own headland, emerge as we approached the coast. The marina at the town of Jounieh is pretty classy – four tennis courts (one with a grandstand), a raised Olympic swimming pool with restaurant and bar alongside and various bars on the breakwater with swimming holes, including two actually inside the marina. It was a significant but welcome change from Lattakia – although the Palmyra Bedouin dinner stomach blues tagged along to ensure we did not forget Syria in a hurry.

We arrived in Jounieh on Thursday 10 June, gave the boat a good clean and hose off (the dust and dirt from Lattakia had given us a nice coating on the decks well spread by salt spray during the sail down.

We opted for a hire car for our exploring rather than the tour buses. First trip was north up the coast and then inland to Les Cedars. This is a cedar grove dating back 1500 years in the mountains and only a few k’s from a major ski resort – Lebanon used to have extensive cedar forests and the cedar tree features on their national flag. The cedar grove is 102 hectare’s and is surrounded by a high stone wall paid for by Queen Victoria in 1898 before her visit to Lebanon. From here we drove up through the ski resort, with the Swiss Alp style hotels and chalets, and across the mountain pass at 2,200 metres to then drop down into the Beqaa valley.

      At Les Cedars - Jenny, Jim, Carola, Jim and Keith

The plan was to visit the World Heritage Site at Baalbeck which is in the Beqaa valley – and this area of Lebanon is home to the Shiite Muslim’s and the famous Hezbollah (means the Party of God) movement. Hezbollah have 14 seats in the Parliament and reportedly assist in many initiatives around housing, health and education in southern Lebanon. Further south in Israel they are still regarded as a terrorist movement though and they do seem to indulge is such activity from time to time according to Lonely Planet. They are reportedly financed by Iran with significant support from the Ayatollah.  In the meantime Chris went off for a couple of days to photograph another World Heritage Site at Byblos, a coastal town not far north of Jounieh.

        Pam at one of the Roman temples of Baalbeck.

The drive was characterised by our passage through numerous army check points fully manned with armed soldiers supported by a tank with a soldier in the gun turret with sand bags all around and camouflage above. We did get a sense of this the first night in Jounieh when we walked out of the marina main entrance to find a tank stationed at one end of the roundabout  – tough way to control traffic!

Baalbeck is regarded as Lebanon’s greatest Roman treasure and construction on the site dates back to the 1^st century BC however the buildings have been built and rebuilt over many years by different rulers. As a set of ruins they are certainly impressive and well worth the visit. The columns of marble are huge and of a size we have not seen before – very impressive! The underground tunnels built by the Roman’s house a wonderful museum with some great exhibits. Lebanon also has something of a reputation for wine making and as the grape growing area was quite close by we drove down to one of the better known wineries – Chateau Ksara, established in 1898 and complete with 2 k’s of tunnels for the cellars built by the Roman’s. Sampled a few of their wines (chardonnay, rose and merlot) and now have some on board in stock! All in all an enjoyable day and covered a few hundred k’s in company with Jim and Carola off Koza and their on board visitors Jim and Jenny from Brisbane.

This posting would not be complete without a mention of the driving style in Lebanon. Simply put it appears to be drive as fast as possible, overtake with freedom and hope that nothing is coming the other way and if it is simply pull in hoping to avoid cars going the same way. We were following the Jim’s and a van overtook us pulled in and then pulled out again to pass Jim – oncoming truck flashing lights so he pulled in to the right sideswiping Jim in the process and did not stop. The only way to avoid getting run off the road is to drive like they do – apart from the overtaking approach which seems to be based on the 50/50 rule. The state of the roads is bad (worse than Syria), largely with no lanes marked and this does not help the stress levels. Certainly a great place to drive if you want to test the nerves. Plenty of Mercedes and other expensive European cars around (without dents) certainly indicates that Beirut at least is significantly stronger economically that its neighbours. It is the banking centre for the Middle East and we understand the home to plenty of petro-dollars from Saudi Arabia.

     Pam walking the walk on the Corniche, Beirut

Beirut is a stunning city located on the coast and known as the Paris of the Middle East. The city centre has been largely rebuilt with impressive buildings with many closed streets to support outdoor cafes and restaurants not to mention many very upmarket stores. We had dinner there one evening and watched Australia get annihilated by Germany in their World Cup opener – the Lebanese are certainly favouring Germany based on that evening and the number of German flags we see around. The city certainly has World Cup fever and the excitement and energy levels are very high. Our exit from the area was interesting in that our group of about 20 had arranged to meet at a certain point at 2230 hrs which we did. A group of armed soldiers appeared and casually seemed to arrange themselves so they were on either side of our group as we walked up the street to get the bus – basically they herded us out of the area. These guys were serious – left hand on the barrel, right hand on the trigger all the way, and we see them everywhere we go. We met a taxi driver who we commissioned to drive us around Beirut for a few hours (the plan to drive ourselves was abandoned) and it was interesting to get his perspective on a number of things. Despite 15 years of civil war between Christians and Muslims the different groups still live in different parts of the country and cities and the population is split about 50/50 – when we commented to the driver that Jounieh was a nice area his reply was that it was Christian.

Bombed out Holiday Inn, middle of Beirut - kept as a reminder

We drove down the street that was the demarcation line (the Green Line) between Christians and Muslim’s during the 15 years of civil war that only ended in 1990 although Syria did not withdraw from Lebanon until 2005 after 30 years of occupation. It was interesting to note that the street all the major banks are in was not damaged during the civil war and our guide said the banks had a bet both ways and made “donations” to each side. There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian’s located in refugee tent camps in southern Lebanon and it seems almost inevitable that conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will flare up again – the Palestinian’s are a displaced people and it is hard to visualise peace in this region until the Palestinian issue is resolved and that is to a large degree is in the hands of the Israeli’s.

All in all Beirut is a large cosmopolitan city of huge contrast but the country is even more so – cities or towns like Baaleck and Tripoly are totally unlike Beirut, more reminiscent of Syrian towns and do not appear to have the underlying wealth evident in Beirut.

Several Turkish and other yachts , including our group leader Murat, have withdrawn from the rally in Syria in protest at Israel’s attack on the supply convey in which several Turks were killed. So the rally fleet is down by about four boats. But we have had word that the visit to Egypt is back on.

Cheers

Keith

Syria - The Cradle Of Civilisation

Posted at 12:19 PM, Jun. 11, 2010

It is now Wednesday 9^th June and our six days in Lattakia end shortly as we depart later this evening on a 105 mile overnight passage to Jounieh in Lebanon. There were several organised tours out of Lattakia but the programmes looked very compressed and reminiscent of our experience of very long days for the Cappodocia trip a week or two back. As we had extra days here because of the rescheduling following the cancellation of the Iskenderum visit a group of 12  of us (the antipodean group) hired a 20 seater bus, a driver and a guide from Damascus (located via Lonely Planet) and headed off on a five day tour, taking in Salah Eddin Citadel (Saladin’s Castle), the Dead City at Sarjalleh, Damascus, Palmyra and the famous Crusader castle Krac Des Chevaliers – the latter three being World Heritage sites.

                       Krac Des Chevaliers Castle

Syria refers to itself as the Cradle of Civilisation which has a certain irony given that its system of democracy is based on electing a President who selects the cabinet and the current President is the son of the last President, with we were told,a controlled press and restrictions on freedom. Despite this the people are very friendly and helpful and in many places came up to us to welcome us to Syria and try out a bit of English on us. They often asked Pam what her name was and also where we were from. The country seems to be quite poor, there are a lot of refugees (it borders Iraq) and the Bedouin Arabs largely still follow the nomadic desert life. We saw many during our trip living in tents in desolate conditions herding a few sheep and goats -  a tough life seeing as the temperatures get to 45 in the summer and minus 15 (with snow on the ground) in winter. The Syrian currency is pounds and one of our challenges was finding an ATM machine that worked – many places accepted EUR or USD and in Palmyra one of our party even got counterfeit USD in change and when questioned the shopkeeper said its ok they work in Palmyra.

Our first stop was at Saladin’s (Salah ad-Din) castle (so named after the great General born in 1138 who went on to take control of Syria and Egypt) and then defeated the Crusaders to take control of Jerusalem and as a consequence precipitate the Third Crusade – and thus went head to head with Richard The Lionheart with whom he ultimately signed a peace treaty in 1192. So Saladin was the guy who defeated the Crusaders to take control of the castle. An impressive castle with the moat dug out of solid rock 28 metres deep and 150 metres long.

From here we visited the Dead City of Sarjalleh having first driven across the Al Zawiya mountain range over 2000 metres high (snow in winter) and then wonderful views across the valley below, almost virtually below us, largely turned over to wheat growing it appeared. It sounded as though the growing lots were relatively small so you do wonder at the efficiency of the farming methods. The city of Sarjalleh has been deserted for 15 centuries and is located on a windswept moor with well preserved buildings – the city contains a church, men’s meeting place, bathhouse (hot and cold running water - incredible) private houses, bakehouse, tombs etc. Really quite amazing how sophisticated the people of this time were and the quality of the buildings they erected. No-one seems to know why this city (and many other similar cities) of this era were abandoned but as the region is prone to earthquakes it is a reasonable assumption that this is what happened and the people fled.

            The Anzac tour group at the Dead City

Late that first evening we arrived in Damascus without our passports to find that the hotel would not let us check in. So we got lugged off to the tourist police office and under the watchful eyes of four armed guards with their fingers on or close to the triggers we attempted to get permission to stay at the hotel. Eventually the big boss man turned up – shook my hand with a very strong grip, wouldn’t let go and said "hello sailor" while smiling all the time. Draw your own conclusions! But we did eventually get the ok and finally checked into the hotel near midnight.

Damascus is reputedly the oldest continuously occupied city in the world and dates back to at least 3500 BC. Mark Twain wrote in “The Innocents Abroad” in 1869,

“To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only fitting trifles of time. She measures time, not by days, months or years, but by the empires she has seen rise, and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality.”

The city has a population of 4.5 million in a country with a total population of 23 million. Its early conquerors included King David, Alexander The Great in 333 BC, the Romans in 64 BC (to 330 AD), the Crusaders from 1096 AD to 1187 AD, the Ottoman Turks from 1516 to 1918 and many others in between This was followed by the French mandate from 1920 to 1945 and finally independence as a separate country in 1946. We spent two nights in Damascus getting the senses assaulted from all quarters as we explored on our own and toured with our guide. The souks of the old town extend for miles up, down and around the winding narrow old lanes -  and you can buy anything. Spe******ation is evident as there are souks for clothing, foodstuffs, sweets, houseware, plumbing and taps and on it goes. Easy to get lost but the great find was an ice-cream shop that was the busiest I have ever seen anywhere – the ice-cream is apparently made of tapioca, after that a mystery! Many of the souks are covered and the roof of the main souk has many holes in it that our guide said was the result of strafing by French fighter planes when they were trying to suppress riots.

Of the places to visit the most notable was the famous Umayyad Mosque at the heart of the old city. This is a huge and beautiful old mosque that dates back to 705 AD. It was originally a Byzantine cathedral. Towards one end is the large green domed, marble clad shrine of John the Baptist which supposedly holds his head. He is the prophet Yehia to Muslims and this was evident in the way in which many approached the shrine. We spoke to groups visiting from Iran and India – there were many pilgrims. It was an interesting visit and throughout the mosque there were many smaller groups of 20/30 people being spoken (preached) to and in some cases men and women were visibly distressed. Adjoining the mosque is the mausoleum built in 1193 to house one of one of the great heroes of Arab history – Saladin. Nearby is a very elaborate bejewelled Shiite mosque that our guide would not enter (but we did). A most interesting experience which I will not elaborate on here - we have got some good photographs.

     Womens section of the Damascus Shiite mosque

We also visited the National Museum which is set in attractive grounds full of antiquities that cannot be housed in the museum itself. The most important exhibit is probably the smallest – a piece of rock on which is engraved the first alphabet. So who could deny the claim to the Cradle of Civilisation as this is where the forerunner to our alphabet came from.

A bit more on the rally – I omitted to mention that there are also several Amel ketches in the rally. One rally boat (a German boat I will not name) has been expelled from Syria as the guys wife had visited Israel about 5 years ago and had an Israeli stamp in her passport. We had been warned several times in the lead up to the rally that this was a huge no no but they must have forgotten. The position in Israel is such that our visit to Egypt is in doubt although the rally committee are working to overcome this – we do not know much but we do get the reports of various events in this part of the world.

From Damascus we drove NW about 60 K’s and visited the town of Maalula. This is a town carved out of the mountain hillside and one of only three villages where the language spoken is Aramaic – the language spoken by Jesus Christ. The Syrian government have established an Institute for Aramaic where the language is studied as it is only recently it has become a written language. It is an older language than Arabic. We visited the Christian church of St Seguis (originally a pagan church built in the 3 BC) and a local woman had us sit down in the small chapel, partly carved out of the bedrock, and recited the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic -  it would be hard not to be moved by this experience.

      Pitstop in the desert on way from Damascus to Palmyra - very windy.

From Maalula we drove for several hours eastwards across the desert to Palmyra (Tadmor in Arabic) arriving there in time to catch the sunset from the castle – but it was very hazy unfortunately. We stayed here in a “traditional hotel.” This in our case mean’t no hot water, one towel, no soap and a torn sheet on the bed – and we stayed two nights! The drive across the desert left us about 100k’s from Iraq and it was strange to drive past sighposts pointing to Bagdad. The desert is not sand but rather a golden coloured soil which we were told is very fertile – this drive was around 300k’s and in times gone by was a cedar forest. We have learn’t little as a civilisation it seems and maybe the climate change guru’s should arrange a visit to Syria by the Brazilians and Indonesians.

        Looking down on Palmyra from the castle

Palmyra is a World Heritage Site, and there is a smallish “new” town built adjacent to the site. Palmyra was a great trading centre at the cross roads (in fact on the Silk Road) between China and India to the east and Europe to the west. It is at the midpoint between the Euphrates River in north and east Syria and the Mediterranean and is sited where a fresh water spring provides plenty of water. It was historically a wealthy and important town until it finally succumbed to an earthquake in 1089 AD although its importance had dramatically reduced since Zenobia’s time. As with many places in Syria there were a succession of rulers at Palmyra but the most notable was Zenobia. Her husband (Odainat) was assassinated in 267 AD so she took over as Queen in the name of her son – it seems she somewhat over reached as after taking over Egypt she declared independence from Rome and slaughtered 600 Roman soldiers. This was definitely a bad call as the then  Roman boss (Aurelian) called off proposed settlement negotiations, eventually besieged Palmyra and got control in 272 AD. I can only describe Palmyra as incredible so look at the photos in the blog – although I think we could get “rocked” out by the end of the rally!

 Australian friend Gail rides a camel down main street of Palmyra

From Palmyra the following day we drove eastwards across the desert on a more northerly road to take us to the Krac Des Chaveliers the great Crusader castle. This is a well preserved castle and in its time housed 2,000 men and 5 years food supply. The Crusaders occupied the small fortress in 1110 AD and then set about building new fortifications to protect them during their 162 years of occupation. There were four earthquakes during the 162 years so rebuilding during the different periods is evident. Saladin besieged  the castle in 1163 but it was not until 1271 that the Moslems were able to celebrate after King al-Zaher Baybars conquered the Crusaders and took control.

One aspect of Syria that is disconcerting is the amount of rubbish around. It seems it is fair game to simply throw everything onto the road or street. Taxi drivers throw empty drink bottles out of the window (maybe not all of them) so plastic rubbish is everywhere as rubbish bins are rare. At both Palmyra and Krac Des Chaveliers the amount of rubbish around what are World Heritage Sites can only be described as disgraceful. It is a great shame  that the people do not have more pride. Rubble is also a huge issue as it seems that the way to dispose of this is to drive along the road to an empty spot and up goes the tip on the truck.

    The street in front of our hotel in Palmyra - hotel to the right.

Overall however we found the Syrian people very friendly, helpful and interested in us as visitors. It is a poor country with a dependence on agriculture (self sufficient in wheat and oil) with some recent natural gas finds in the desert. Also olive oil is huge with over 100 million olive trees according to Abdullah our guide. But ultimately we will remember Syria for the huge historical impact it has had over the millennia and maybe for the fact that of our group of 12 several of us (6) missed food for at least 24 hours.

Cheers

Keith

PS:  going sailing later today. Great but 15 knots on the nose forecast.

PPS: posting this from Lebanon - there is a manned tank at the gateof the marina!

Mersin, Turkey

Posted at 11:39 PM, Jun. 5, 2010

Mersin is a major port for the province of Anatolia and we had a preconceived idea that this was a small port town – quite an incorrect view as the port is huge (some 15 ships at anchor waiting to enter port – or laid up) and a pretty average place for the rally yachts to tie up. The population is 700,000 and mostly Kurds we understand. There is a new marina under construction a few kilometres from the port and while the breakwater and pontoons are in place there are no services and the buildings are only just rising from the ground. They say that it will be finished for the 2011 EMYR  - maybe! The 106 mile overnight passage was again largely a motoring exercise although we did get around 6 hours of slow sailing in during the night which certainly ensured we totally blew our scheduled arrival time by several hours.

In a small corner of the main port there is a small marina complex occupied by the local fishing fleet and they relocated themselves while we took over. As we were one of the last boats to arrive being late leaving Girne because of the fueliing delays we ended up alongside a pontoon that housed on the other side the first of several floating fish restaurants which the town is reportedly famous for. That might be the case but to be about 2 metres from the fish cleaning table – (all the guts were swept into the water at the stern of the boat) and about 3 meters from where the chef (?) was cooking the fish on a hot plate, with music going to very late was possibly not the best spot. We did however get to know the guys on board and they did provide us with plates of fish and calamari one night when we had a few people on for drinks.

Tied up next to fish restaurant - food prep table with blue legs, kitchen cooking on nearby white topped bench!

We did take a one day tour down the coast which was unremarkable and not worth doing really. There are many ruins along the coast and our final stop of the day was at bunch of ruins (we could be rocked out by the end of the rally!) that were around a huge “crater” in the ground. A music group that had been on the bus all day with us set up with sound mixer, violin and guitar on one side of the crater and sang a variety of music ranging from opera (the guy was a professional opera singer at the Mersin State Opera) to Frank Sinatra. The remarkable aspect of this performance was that singing out across the “crater” the acoustics were fantastic to the sound was pretty good. We had a fish lunch at a restaurant on the waters edge in a small bay so this combined with the musical performance made up for what could have been a very dull day.

            Muscians playing across the natural amphitheatre

The city of Mersin is surrounded by what appears to be fertile agricultural land turned over to cropping – wheat, tomatoes etc. There is a huge shopping mall called the Forum that houses every major brand one can imagine – so we did spend an afternoon there, and also got to experience another Turkish haircut. No flame throwers around like last year but the result is an equally short haircut – a No 1 cut all over would have been much quicker.

A bit more about the rally – there are 18 French boats against 16 English boats with 3 each from NZ and Australia (out of 71 boats all up). The antipodean boats all get on well but additionally we are making some very good friends on other boats from Norway, Austria and France particularly as well as several of the English boats. As the rally progresses everyone gets into the swing of it, you get to know most of the other people and natural friendships evolve. One of the Norway boats is a 17.5 metre Najad (Ko Ko) and a lovely yacht -  probably the nicest boat in the rally and they are doing the ARC later this year. There are 4 Hanse’s in the fleet (us, a 411, a 430 and a 370), 3 Najad’s, 3 cats,3 Beneteau First 44’s but Jeanneau definitely have the biggest representation. Only a couple of Bavaria’s interestingly enough.

We did catch a bit of culture while in port as Mersin was hosting its annual international music festival. We were able to get tickets for a show entitled “Jazzing Flamenco” that was stunning. The brochure describes it as a striking marriage of flamenco and the tango danced (and sung) to jazz, blues and soul music. A great show and well worth seeing – it has played at the Montreal Jazz festival and all around Europe. Just think of six gorgeous Spanish women in a variety of costumes during the show, six equally stunning guys (or so I was told), one spanish singer and great musicians with wonderful music (e.g. Rhapsody in Blue etc) and you will get the general picture. Watch out the Irish dance shows!

A long lunch day - the Mersin version of a kebab comes in 1,2 or 3 metre lengths

The enforced extra day in Mersin with temperatures in the 30’s did not do much for us so we did explore the old town thoroughly, had the subdued rally dinner referred to in the last posting and awaited news from the rally organisers. Eventually we were told on Tuesday that the rally committee had made arrangements with the appropriate and numerous officials for us to all clear out of Turkey at Mersin. This all happened over a two day period and our passports and ships papers were returned to us late afternoon Wednesday 2 June and then there was a mad exodus from the marina. We certainly got the sense that everyone was very keen to get out to sea to the 94 mile overnight passage to Lattakia in Syria. As the Iskendreum stop was cancelled we had an extra day at Mersin and we will have two extra days at Lattakia.

The town of Tarsus is nearby and one we were planning to visit from Iskenderum but that of course did not happen. Tarsus is where St. Paul was born around 2,000 years ago. Jo left us here to return to NZ and caught the plane back to Istanbul from Adana about an hours drive from Mersin. Iskenderum was also part of Syria until 1937 when Turkey decided to take over that region.

We eventually pulled out of port into a nice SW of 12 knots at around 1900 hrs on Wednesday 2^nd June, quickly got the sails up and were off chasing the fleet. We were pulling them all back quickly after a couple of hours (on the wind) and I reckon we are the fastest boat in the fleet – that is until the wind started to ease and at that stage fellow NZ boat, Rumpus being well sailed  by Rupert and Kristen got up to us but not ahead as we all started to wallow in the left over slop. Well 94 mils to go and yet more diesel – the only consolation is that diesel prices start to drop dramatically – e.g. Turkey 3.20 a litre, Lebanon 0.56 a litre. We are told not to take on diesel in Syria or Egypt because of suspect quality.

We arrived with the first group 6 boats into Lattakia after calling up the Syrian navy who escorted us in at around 1000 hrs on the morning of Thursday 3 June after an uneventful crossing. Four boats were disabled coming into the port with rope around propellers with gearbox damage to Godspeed which is sufficiently serious they will be lucky to be able to continue the rally. The port of Lattakia is the major port for Syria and again the boat harbour is in one corner around 6 k’s out of town. Another pretty average place and again we are stern anchored and bow in between Norwegian boat Ko Ko and Australian boat Koza. We are in this position after going aground in very soft mud so had to anchor off a bit. Several other boats also went aground so we did not have that experience to ourselves. Good security though with guards at the gate.

More on Syria next posting.

Cheers

Keith

Iskenderum, Turkey

Posted at 11:48 PM, May. 31, 2010

This is a quick update following the terrorist attack in Iskenderum, Turkey earlier this morning. Iskenderum is our next scheduled port of call about 80 miles east of here and close to the Turkish borders with Syria and Iraq – it is in fact where the Iraqi oil pipeline ends. As a result of the attack in which seven soldiers were killed the rally is staying in port in Mersin an extra day and we will sail directly from here to Lattakia in Syria.

This afternoon we were all asked to remove the code flags from the boats and to fly the Turkish flag at half mast. The Turks are taking this very seriously and the formal dinner held tonight (hosted by the Mersin Chamber of Shipping) was changed to a smart casual dress, no music and no dancing – a very subdued affair compared with the formal dinners of the last couple of weeks.

The other significant event in this part of the world today was the Israeli attack on the convey taking supplies into Gaza. Consequently there is no decision made yet as to whether the rally will continue past Jounieh in Lebanon and no doubt the rally organisers will be monitoring the position carefully.

Cheers

Keith

Alanya to Girne (Cyprus)

Posted at 11:50 AM, May. 30, 2010

It is now late night Friday 28^th May and I have drawn the pre-graveyard watch (0000 hrs to 0300 hrs) as we motor at around 7 knots on the 108 mile passage from Girne to Mersin back on mainland Turkey and continue the push to the east. The mountain peaks around Girne were shrouded in mist all day and as we headed out to sea we were enveloped by a sea fog, which currently is filtering out the full moon and making it impossible to distinguish the horizon. So I am harnessed up, Ipod playing Katie Melua, headlight on and with the bimini up keeping out the heavy air laden moisture so the only thing missing is the wind! So it looks like another diesel burning trip. A repeat of the trip from Alanya to Girne but without the rolling uncomfortable sea. We have one yacht in sight a mile behind us (Godspeed of the USA) and two yachts on the radar about 2 miles ahead but not visible by eye. The diesel quality in Girne is reportedly good and much cheaper than mainland Turkey – 3.20 lire versus 1.70 lire on Cyprus. Consequently most boats took the opportunity to refuel but with the limited facilities it took 6-7 hours and we were among the last few boats to refuel so our planned departure time was set back some hours.

       Pam posing in front of some of the rally yachts at Girne

We did get away from Alanya late afternoon a few days ago and allowed 15 hours for the passage but managed to get the genaker up and had thoughts of arriving very much ahead of schedule. During this exercise we did ascertain that the A sail flies a lot better when both the tack and clew remain attached to the boat – Jo’s hand bears witness to her vain efforts to hold the tack while adjusting the tack height.  However the early arrival thoughts vanished with the wind an hour or so later by which time we had already caught up with a lot of the smaller boats. So it was a night of close watch on the radar as we motored through the clear night, in a rolling sea, in close company with around 40 other yachts.

Looking down onto Girne  - castle and port, from St Hillarion castle

The arrival into Girne saw the rally occupy the first commercial port – translated this means that we pretty much rafted up and double banked boats by group (size) into the most complicated patchwork quilt of boats I have ever seen. For us it was rigging up a stern anchor as we edged the bow into the gap between the bows of two other fellow group 6 boats – they were pleased we had folded the anchor back I think. Then it was about running lines between boats and nearby fixed objects (like a local ship) to provide some mooring security. This all worked quite well until an unexpected 20 knot easterly blew up late yesterday afternoon and general mayhem ensued. We were away touring at the time but by the time we returned our anchor had been relaid, more lines were everywhere and with quite a joggle there were a lot of watching and waiting concerned owners. Last night was the much awaited pirates party and we, and several others, stayed on board waiting for the wind to turn which it did over the space of 30 minutes when it went through 180 degrees and then died out. So the by then happy owners remaining managed to get to the party shortly after it started.

Another hour has gone by and busy as a nice 8 knot SW developed so it was up with the main, headsail out and motor off. What a pleasant change. A few boats have motored on past us so it looks like we will be one of the last arrivals into Mersin unless the wind strengthens and goes aft a bit  and we can get the A sail into work.

A little about the rally. There are 71 yachts, 228 people on them and 17 nationalities represented. At each of the formal dinners a nominated flag bearer for each country has to carry their flag up to the podium and after introducing dignatories each country representative steps forward with their flag and makes a thank you speech – the quality and content varies enormously. Jo was the NZ representative at the last function as she leaves us at Mersin. Early in the rally a woman came up to me from a boat Kiwi Volante and asked if I was the Keith Goodall who had been head prefect at Te Awamutu College – when I replied yes she said she was Amanda Hurst she said she had been in Form 2 when I was head boy – what a small world, or maybe a small country!  I did remember that her father was the local vet.

Well we can tick off Cyrpus and that is about it!  A divided country since 1974 with the north occupied by Turkey and the south by Greece. The border is referred to as the Green line and is patrolled by UN troops resulting in Nicosia (or Levkosa to the Greeks) being the only remaining partitioned city in the world with the Green line running through no-mans land. On Wednesday 26^th Chris and I had a lengthy board meeting by skype back to NZ so Pam and Jo went on the day long bus tour taking in castles, medieval temples, museums and a visit to Nicosia. The following day we rented a car and drove over the coastal mountain range then up though the interior (flat and boring) to the town of Famagusta on the NE coast. We did manage to find ourselves in a circuitous series of streets with high rise  buildings that looked as though they were in the process of being demolished – we later found that area had been bombed in the war and the area abandoned. Castles abound – Famagusta is dominated by the huge castle walls surrounding the town built by the Lusignans (the French crusader knights). Nearby we visited the church and monastery of St. Barnabas originally built in 477 A.D. The attached museum has near a perfect display of ceramics and suchlike dating back to 2000 B.C. Girne is dominated by an impressive Crusader castle on the waters edge and on a nearby mountaintop is the equally impressive St. Hillarion castle looks out from ahigh.

           Former christian cathedral now a mosque - Farmagusta

On the evening of our arrival we were hosted to a dinner at the castle by the President – who ended up not attending but had a representative there instead – speeches plus references to the hope of a successful negotiations for unity with the south by year end.

   Flag ceremony at the castle - Jo on extreme left with NZ flag

The pirates night dinner is a major event and was held on the waterfront balcony of the Dome Hotel in Girne, Many very well dressed pirates, a slim extroverted belly dancer and a lovely female singer combined with superb food all contributed to a great evening.

All in all we found Cyprus slightly depressing as it is apparent that little has been invested in infrastructure for years despite significant holiday home development for the Germans and Brits who retire or semi-retire here. Probably the only place in Europe where people drive on the left in a mixture of right and left hand drive cars.

Back to trimming the A sail as we roll on to Mersin.

Cheers

Keith

Cappadocia

Posted at 11:14 AM, May. 28, 2010

Writing this in Girne (also called Kyrenia depending on whether you prefer the Greek or Turkish version) in Northern Cyprus (known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus or TRNC) where we have a few days. As I said in the last blog Kemer is a delightful town, strong tourist centre and with some interesting nearby places to explore. We will certainly stop there for a few days on our way back up after the rally. From Kemer it was to Alanya and we found this to be a huge tourist centre with around 800 hotels stretching along the coast. We were hosted at the new marina about 10 minutes out of the town centre – this is a marina that has been several years in the making but the making is now largely complete and the facilities can only be described as world class. The photo below evidences this. I don’t know how successful it will be however as there appears to be limited cruising areas nearby and it may remain largely a stop off point for yachts on a passage. The marina hosted the second formal dinner in the yet again stunning setting around the pool area – the local mayor attended and spoke. The same band as at Kekova and Kemer again hit the right notes when it came to the music department.

  The pool, bar and restaurant area at Alanya marina

Alanya was a medieval walled city with a fortress on the headland above the town. The town was given to Cleopatra by Mark Anthony in 44 BC so Cleopatra could use the timber around the area to build ships. In 1221 Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad cruised into town and took over – and this is the guy who we in the western world know as Aladdin of the lamp with the genie fame. There is a huge statute of him in the town.  The Taurus mountain range runs along the coast and we took a gondola ride to a nearby mountain peak that stands at around 2300 metres literally rising straight up from the coast. Unfortunately the peak was in cloud so the anticipated views were not to be – still a bit of snow around so pretty cool up there in shorts and t-shirt.

The major tour we did was a two day trip to Cappadocia (or Kapadokya) – and it sure was a major. We departed by bus (three busloads from the rally) at 0400 hrs last Thursday and drove up through the Taurus mountains for a few hours (the pass we went through was at 1900 metres and again snow and ice on the peaks all around) arriving at the town of Konya where we visited the Mevlana Museum – the former lodge of the whirling dervishes. This was all started by Celaleddin Rumi who was born in Afganistan in 1207 and became one of the world’s great mystic philosophers – he later became known as Mevlana (meaning “our guide”). More than 1.5 million Muslims visit the museum  each year. Konya is on the edge of what appears to be vast plains that are totally given over to wheat hence it is referred to as the bread basket. We drove across the plains for a couple of hours on virtually a straight and rough road before arriving in Cappadocia area mid afternoon – so the drive was basically an Auckland to Wellington trip. The region that makes up Cappadocia, that includes several towns, is a geographical aberration as the landscape has been carved out over thousands of years into weird and unusual formations and with a huge history. Excavations here show evidence of life dating to 3500 BC, it was the centre of the Hittite Empire that lasted from 1800 BC to 1200 BC and was taken by Alexander the Great in 333 BC. The area was a major centre of Christianity until the 7^th century until the new religion of Islam arrived.

       A fedw of the numerous "fairy chimney's"

The area has underground cities carved out of the rock and we visited several areas where we were able to walk though extensive underground houses. The place is riddled with cave dwellings, unusual rock formations referred to as fairy chimneys, rock hewn churches amid significant wine growing and a backdrop of three inactive volcanos, still snow covered, explain why this area is called the 8^th wonder of the world. Of the three towns in Cappadocia the main centre is Goreme and this town is a World Heritage Site although the whole area seems to be referred to in this way.

            Looking out over part of Goreme town

The day ended with a visit to the underground home of the whirling dervishes where we watched the “sema,” a ritualistic performance described as an evocative, romantic, unforgettable experience. The sema is a ritual dance representing union with God. The dervishes dress in long white robes with full skirts that represent their shrouds atopped with conical felt hats. Maybe an important ritual but most struggled to find it evocative or romantic and it was forgettable – although Pam said she enjoyed it. After this experience we were delivered to the hotel around 1000 hrs for a very late dinner and a few hours sleep before the next day morning call that started at 0430 hrs.

                     The wirling dervishes in their underground home.

After the exploring of the first day the Friday brought us to the world aloft where we ticked off our first ballooning experience. I can only describe this as a fantastic experience with some 50 balloons in the air as we skimmed across fairy chimneys with only a couple of metres to spare to soaring high to 700 metres for great views to dropping down and quietly skimming the housetops of one of the towns – but bringing people out to their balconies as our balloonist fired another jet of flaming gas up into the balloon briefly making a huge noise. What a great way to spend the morning and then the obligatory champagne to finish.

  View of an identical balloon to our one carrying rally yachties

The day finished with the long drive back to Alanya but not before we visited one of the “carvanserais.” (caravan palaces). There are many of these built at around 30 kilometre intervals for the camel caravan trains travelling the silk road which passed through Anatolia from China.

The two day trip covered 1300 k’s and essentially I think we managed to get four days crowded into two days. Our last day in Alanya was spent recovering from the Cappadocia trip and completing odd jobs on the boat. From Alanya it was a 106 mile overnight sail to Girne where we are at present. But more of that in the next posting.

Cheers

Keith

Finike to Alanya

Posted at 4:38 PM, May. 23, 2010

Blogging regularity still a problem as we seem to be busy all the time. At the last blog posting we were at Finike which is the furtherest point we have been to in Turkey previously so after this all new ground.

               Finike women making Turkish bread at the marketplace.

Finike is very much a working town although with a large marina complex but apart from this not much tourism. The rally had booked out the local haman (bathhouse) so after an hour or so of excessive water of varying temperatures and plenty of soaping we emerged particularly clean and then back to the boat for dinner.

                           Cocktail party quayside with local entertainment

On Tuesday 18^th May it was departure time and we scored again as the last boat to leave the marina. There had been a gale centred about 20 miles offshore for the past 24 hours so there was considerable debate as to whether the rally would leave Finike or delay 24 hours. In the end it was left to the skippers as to whether they would leave or not and all choose to go. The first leg was a 14 mile run to the cape and then a 90 degree turn and 32 miles along the coast to Kemer. All the rally boats are allocated into groups and we are “dark blue” group 6 which is for the bigger boats. Each group is then given an arrival window of 60 minutes the purpose being to ensure that arrival marina staff (marino’s) can get the 71 boats into pre-allocated berths in an orderly manner i.e. avoid shouting, screaming and general mayhem. Our group, being for larger boats always has the earliest arrival time so we start last and hope to pass all the other yachts en route.

We left Finike in a heavy rolling sea and motored for 5 miles until we got into the wind and after that we had a screamer of a ride to the cape, wind well aft of the beam and with full sail up, getting some good rides and regularly over 11 knots for sustained periods. Great sailing – after the cape it was a gybe and then a broad reach up the coast. We were one of the first few boats into Kemer and the 46 mile passage took a little over 5 hours so a very good average speed maintained despite a period of light winds after the cape.

                            Overtaking a smaller boat on route to the Cape.

Kemer has a great marina, is a very nice town and a huge tourist centre with many large hotels dotted along the coast. There are nearby ski fields and still a bit of snow (or ice) on the peaks. The largest mountain peak is 2345 metres rising from the coast that we ascended by cable car. Unfortunately it was shrouded in cloud so the expected views did not eventuate. The landscape around Kemer and the adjoining coast is very mountainous and quite spectacular. It is certainly a place where we will spend a few days on our way back up from Israel in September. The nearby site of Aspendos has a second century amphitheatre that seats 17,000 and is still in use with regular opera and concerts there.

At Kemer we had the first (of what looks like many) hosted formal dinners i.e. collar, tie and jacket and a sit down many course dinner. This was held at the Turkiz Hotel in a stunning setting on the waters edge with beautiful table arrangements etc. We are seated in our groups which works well as we get to meet other nationalities. In our group we have some delightful people from Austria, France, Sweden and Australia. Greta bunch of people – mind you we are among the youngest I think. Many people on the rally are retired and have sold their business. The band that played for us at Kekova were also at Kemer and they effortlessly moved from the Beatles to Strauss waltzes – the latter clearly popular with the Europeans.

The key guy (Dave Gerrard closely supported by his wife Kath) organising the show on a day to day basis is a retired Brit, living in Cyprus, and participating on his boat Mashona. I doubt he gets much sleep as his work load is phenomal! The other key guy who will participate in the rally in his boat from now on is Hasan Kacmaz who started the event off 21 years ago. Hasan is a great guy and Mr Yachting in Turkey.

So Thursday 20^th May saw us departing Kemer for the new marina at Alanya (where Hasan is a shareholder) a leg of 67 miles, heading due east, that proved frustrating as a consequence of numerous sail changes –  the A sail up and down several times. Light winds and plenty of motoring with the throttle down for the last two hours to ensure we arrived five minutes before the expiry time for our arrival window.

That’s it for now.

Cheers

Keith

Marmaris to Kekova Roads

Posted at 8:48 PM, May. 18, 2010

Somehow another week has nearly slipped by so time for an update. The last posting had us at Netsel marina waiting for a genset part to arrive from Istanbul. Given the uncertainty surrounding just when the expected genset part was due to arrive Bobo arranged with his Fethiye office for a one way rental car so that Chris & Jo could make the 2 hour drive and join us in Marmaris so they arrived on board on Tuesday 18^th.  Mind you I think that after the flight from Auckland they were quite happy to fall into a full size bed at the waterfront hotel just along from the Fethiye marina.

The genset part was finally delivered  late Wednesday and less than a 10 minute job later and we were departing. Motored to the other side of the bay and dropped anchor for a calm night. It was great to get away from the marina. The replacement wind gear parts are due to arrive in Marmaris on Monday 17^th and will be forwarded to the marina at Alanya where we will be in a few days time. So hopefully this will work and we will get the parts – after that the next step will be the installation involving a trip to the top of the mast.

Thursday 13^th saw us supporting the Middle East economies with a 49 mile motoring exercise to Gemiler Adasi. We anchored off and a boat boy was quick to take a line ashore. A strong crosswind an hour or two later resulted in an audible bump so it was a quick drop of the stern line and motored to the other side and free anchored. In the meantime one of the local boats called by and offered to come by the following morning and cook us pancakes for breakfast – banana and honey pancakes was the order. We had anchored in this area about 18 months ago so it was familiar territory for us. Chris & Jo went ashore to the island to explore the ruins of St. Nicholas (of Santa Claus fame although St Nicholas also pops up at Myra near Finike at the church of St Nicholas). Lots of Russians here as St Nicholas was the most popular saint in Tsarist Russia. After the mouthwatering breakfast of homecooked pancakes we motored across to Olu Deniz so that Chris & Jo could dinghy ashore and visit the famed lagoon.

                     Entering Kastellizon harbour, Turkey in background

From here it was a 45 mile sail to the Greek island of Kastellorizon (75 miles south of Rhodes or Rhodos as it is called here) a favourite spot. As the wind slowly built from slightly astern up went the 1250 sq ft genaker for a good sail for a most of the passage. It is always a stunning sight entering the harbour at Kastellorizon as it is semi-circular harbour completely contained by a sea wall with houses surrounding the harbour. Also it was a welcome return to Greek culture and wine – fortunately the authorities do not bother checking to see that boats that have obviously come from Turkey comply with customs requirements. A very sensible and pragmatic approach and one that only benefits the 450 people who live on the island – and this saw us sampling local fish at one of the restaurants where the owner only sold what he had himself caught. Since we were here last the restoration of the houses in Kastellizon has continued apace and it is great to see. The population has increased to 450 so the threat of a return of the island to Turkey looks an unlikely event.

From Kastellerizon it was a short motor to the Turkish town of Kas where we bought a couple of carpets in 2008.  A quick look around, yet another visit to the supermarket and back on board for a motor in calm seas to join the rally at Kekova Roads. We dressed the boat for the first time and made the entrance through the narrow channel to see the 51 boats resplendent in code flags.

                       Savarna with code flags

Since we were last here there has been significant development and the old rickety restaurants piers have gone to be replaced by pretty smart floating concrete pontoons extending well out into deeper water that easily accommodated all the rally boats. The waterfront had all been paved so very smart and will certainly help the restaurant business - a huge improvement. However we did learn that around 50% of the houses in this small community have been illegally built over many years and that the Government had condemned them and they were due to be demolished in 15 days time – over 100 people will be displaced with no alternative accommodation. We signed a petition supporting a rescinding of this proposal. Although as it was in Turkish we may have been signing anything. 

We have now moved on to Finike and arrived from there into Kemer this afternoon. So blogging somewhat behind. But will catch up soon.

Cheers

Keith

Kos to Marmaris

Posted at 10:21 PM, May. 13, 2010

Now Tuesday 11 May and we are at the Netsel marina at Marmaris having arrived here on  Sunday night after an initial good sail from Symi but on the nose in 15-20 knots before the wind finally dropped right away and we were left with a rolling beam sea. A few more gallons of diesel and some hours later the 47 mile passage was completed when we dropped anchor in a secluded corner on the southern side of the bay near the entrance to Yot Marin marina.  Early Monday morning we motored across to Netsel marina having had a few txts with Bobo of Phoenix Yachting (who looked after the boat over the winter 0f 2008/9) who we were hoping would work the odd miracle. Not to be unfortunately and the wind gear parts have to come from the States with a delivery time of several weeks. With all the acquisitions and consolidation in the marine electronics world in recent years there are only really two major players left and even though our gear is not all that old at 5 years design changes have resulted in it being out of date (but still does the job fine) and the consequent impact on ready availability of spare parts.

The big impact of no operative wind gear is around steering efficiently under autopilot, particularly with the overnight passages ahead.

We also fired up the genset for the first time and found that cutting out with the error message referring to overheating exhaust temperatures. The local Mastervolt guys quickly diagnosed the problem and the part is due to arrive from Istanbul today and should be installed in a few minutes – assuming it does arrive.

We relaunched Savarna at Kos on Saturday 8 May and after replacing one of the service bank of batteries we bade our farewells to Babis and departed at around 1500 hours for Panorititis Bay on the bottom SW corner of Symi. about a 40 mile sail. It was after dark when we finally dropped anchor having navigated the narrow entrance under radar. A delightful bay and we remember it well from when we called in here in 2008. The monks melodious singing has not improved and the four story high bell tower on the monastery is still a beautiful sight at night. It is a stunning bay and one of our favourite spots – when we were here two years ago we followed the monks renditions with some loud Emma Shapplin. At Athens airport we found another Emma Shapplin CD  so that got christened immediately.

The guy we had looking after the boat at Kos is Babis Marou, a marine engineer, who did a great job and got through the job list we had left him. His mobile number is +30 6944841964 for anyone looking for a competent engineer in Kos.  His account to us is the only time we have had a detailed breakdown of costs and hours etc. He got married late last year and asked if he could use Savarna for some photographs which we were happy for him to do – a couple of shots are included in this posting.

We also caught up and had dinner one evening in Kos with Sophie our friend who worked at the marina but no longer - Greek politics are strange! It was good to catch up with her and all her news.

Weather is great, water is warm and still only the occasional cloud in sight. We do need for more consistent wind though as mostly sea breeze wind patterns at the moment.

Cheers

Keith & Pam

On board at Kos

Posted at 8:23 PM, May. 5, 2010

Blogging now underway. We arrived back in Kos on schedule after a 36 hour door to door flight but all on schedule and only got hit Eur20 for overweight  luggage from Athens to Kos – Olympic airlines seemed far more generous than Aegean airlines who extracted every last dollar last year for excess gear. 

Back on board Savarna everything seems to be under control and we have spent a couple of very solid days work cleaning, polishing, getting sails on and canvas covers set up and still the work list is long. The teak was pretty dirty as although Babis had been hosing it off from time to time the dust from northern Africa seems to become imbedded in the teak – one of local maintenance guys on the marina describes this as a gift from Gaddifi.

We lifted out yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) a day later than booked as the time taken to pay the 0.88 cents tax took 5 hours – mainly caused through the extraordinary bureaucracy not assisted by the fact we had not obtained a customs clearance to leave the boat unattended for 6 months. Also found that this involves paying a tax which is levied for every 3 month period which cost us Eur280 for each 3 months – so my thinking that the marina fees were a lot lower than Turkey is still correct – just not as lower than I thought. Other yachties be warned – and this is not the threatened cruising tax introduced as a proposal by the old government in late 2009 but not yet passed into law and we are told the proposal is on hold.

Savarna in the travellilft at Kos, Turkey in background and the sky what we see every day - we miss the clouds!

The Greek economy might well be relatively stuffed (high brow economic terminology) however operators at the marina in Kos say that the forward bookings are vey strong and they are looking at a great year. But we are hearing some dreadful stories of some of the stringent measures the government is taking – maybe the best is that apparently over a 5 year period they aim to have all taxpayers return all their income and pay the correct amount of tax. Now changing the culture of tax avoidance  will certainly be a challenge!

The plan is to depart Kos Friday for Symi, Rhodos to Fethiye where we need to be by Monday. Today will see what progress is made on the anti-fouling front but talking to the guys in the yard late yesterday I am not optimistic that we will be back in the water in time to enable a Friday departure. A  bit of drama in the yard today when heard a big bang and looked around and saw the travellift had dropped a 65 foot cruiser bow down onto the concrete. It seems as though the steel pin in the strop broke - glad it was not us as dropping a keel boat bow down would likely cause huge damage.

We have a couple of maintenance challenges to resolve the main one being that the wind gear is not working and almost certainly it is a transponder problem at the top of the mast. A call to the Simrad guys in Auckland is coming up – I am not keen on going up the rig when the boat is on the hard so we may well depart without repairing and attend to on the way. Invariably it is more than the transponder but possibly base plate corrosion also. So it may be a stop in Marmaris where all parts are well available for a quick repair.

Cheers

Keith

2010 Cruising about to start

Posted at 12:13 PM, Apr. 15, 2010

Kusadasi back to Kos

Posted at 11:36 PM, Oct. 17, 2009

Finally cleared out of Turkey at Kusadasi, with a few delays as there were several cruise ships in town that were also clearing in or out. We were fortunate in that we had southerly winds to get us the final 20 miles into Kusadasi that by the time we came to leave were back in the north. We had planned to visit Ephesus (famous ruins, Virgin Mary supposedly spent her last years here etc) but Pam was not well so Dr John  (not the piano player) headed off into town for some anti-biotics, which are easily obtainable in Greece and Turkey i.e. no prescription required.

John enjoying the handlebars in a fresh southerly.

Before we arrived back on Savarna we spent a delightful few days with Alice and Volker in Leipzig. Also met Volker’s parents for the first time. Lovely city, flat, hundreds of trams and unknown before we arrived home at various times to Bach, Wagner, Mendelssohn, and Goethe (who wrote Faust here). We have plenty of pictures of us posing under statues.

Posing with Bach - he wrote a new cantata every Sunday for 23 years for the cathedral.

Also visited nearby Dresden – the old town is full of history and well worth the visit. The new part of town is where the British bombed the hell out of the place – the futility of war!

Keith, guide Anna, Pam, Buarnt, Christiana and Volker with statue of Mendelssohn in background.

Back to cruising – after Kusadasi it was back to Pythagorion on Samos to clear back into Greece. The police asked if this was the last time I was going to check in!  Back into the marina for a couple of nights and the day we spent there we rented a car and drove up to Manalotes, the mountain village, for lunch. Blowing hard from the north again and we thought the meltemi winds would have disappeared by now?

Manolates for lunch - waiter, Keith,John, Karen, Jack

From here it was a tight reach in a westerly to Marathos where we were one of only three boats on the moorings for the night. Goat stew, curry goat or roast goat did not really appeal this time round so we adjoined to the pirate’s lair for a few beers to show some support and then dined aboard.

Savarna at Marathos - Keith takes Jack for a burn

Weather warmish (mid 20’s) and still swimming in water temperatures of around 22/23. The following day we had another quick broad reach across to Patmos where we again tied up on the town quay so that John, Karen and Jack could get the bus up to the hugely impressive monastery. Patmos has a number of well sheltered bays on its southern side and we anchored in one of them behind a small island in about 7 metres – great spot and good swimming.

From Patmos it was another sail across to Lipsi on the island of Lipsol and anchored under the small church in the north eastern corner of the bay before moving into and anchoring off the town for the night. This is a small town we think has a lot of character and worth spending some time wandering around the alleys and streets. It is apparently still run out of Patmos and the religious history must have permeated Lipsol as sitting in the cockpit we could count at least 14 churches and the population cannot be more than a 1,000 or so!

The following day we had a quiet sail to the northern end of Leros and were quietly sailing into the bay called  Parthoni and did notice that the airport runway rose from the waters edge. As we got a few hundred metres off the end of the runway, with no other boats or activity in sight, we spotted a fire engine roaring down the runway with lights flashing  and the siren going. A quick turn to starboard was our response which appeared to get 10 out of 10 as they turned away. A few minutes later an Olympic jet emerged from nowhere and landed. So we ended up in the next bay ( Plakoudhi) which had a number of holiday homes on its shoreline and a few power boats at anchor – the first bay we have seen like this. It could have been in New Zealand.  A flat calm night resulted.

Typical bay on a Greek island, fishing boat and Savarna in background

From Leros it was a 24 odd mile sail to Vathi on Kalymnos (the sponge island) and again we scored the spot anchored off and stern to the jetty for the night of Monday 12 July. On checking the forecast (windfinder.com) we found a 983 low over the Adriatic and a few places in the Aegean with up to a force 9 forecast. Fortunately Vathi is very sheltered and when we ventured out the following morning it was with a reefed main and a quick sail for the 15 miles back to Kos with nothing over 25 knots and reaching until we reached the north eastern of Kos and turned into 35 knots for the last couple of miles back into the marina – actually dropped all sail and motored. In the last 6 days we have only run the motor 5 hours so plenty of sailing and also plenty of generator to keep the batteries up.

John, Karen and Jack jumped into a nearby hotel for their last night on Kos and then the ferry to Bodrum for them while we spent a solid couple of days winterising the boat. Wrapped up a couple of full dyas work with a dinner with Sophie from the marina at a local restaurant owned by second generation Cretians. Babis a local engineer we met during our last visit to Kos is looking after the boat in our absence - he seems like a good guy and reliable.

That’s it for the 2009 season. Next year brings the East Med Rally which we will join in early May somewhere around Bodrum or Gocek in Turkey.

Cheers

Patmos to Kusadasi

Posted at 11:23 PM, Oct. 17, 2009

Well the last blog had us at Patmos where we stayed a couple of nights before heading eastwards for a short 10 mile sail over to the island of Marathos (off Arki) where we able to pick up a mooring in the bay and go ashore at the Pirates Taverna for dinner. The pirate king said on arrival that the Belgiums were here last night and asking whether we had been there. Vee and Daniel sorry we missed you by a day and hope you enjoyed the bay quite apart from the culinary delights !! Sabine enjoyed being able to swim off a sandy beach and also to check out all the goats wandering around with bells around their necks – presumably so they could easily be found before being prepared for the taverna dinner men

   Emma and Sabine at Marathos looking for goats

From Marathos it was a 22 mile sail to windward, just laying through to Pithagorion on the island of Samos, which is the southernmost island of the Eastern Sporades Group. The depths in the town basin looked pretty marginal for us so we motored in slowly, got down to 0.2 metres under the keel but we eventually dropped anchor to go stern to – slowly – but hit the mud about 6 metres off so anchored in the bay. Result being a short dinghy ride ashore. Pleasant but small town with the entire waterfront consisting of restaurants and relatively quiet – one guy said about 15% less visitors than last year as the island attracts older people and they still have money to spend on holidays!  We had one night in the bay but with a worsening forecast and southerly to boot (which would set up quite a swell in the bay) we moved around to the marina which is about a 20  minute walk from the town. It turned out to be a good call as the 20 knot plus southerly wrapped into the bay and bouncing around on anchor with 1.1 metres under the keel does not allow much of a safety margin.

       Pam entertains Sabine on the garage door

The Heikell pilot describes the marina as incomplete however that is not the case now – the marina fingers and walkways are completed, there are a couple of restaurants, a well provisioned supermarket, a chandlery, car hire place as well as an 80 ton travellift and good engineering workshops on the marina itself. The marina was quiet and about 70% full with prices that matched those of Kos. The daily rate for us was EUR43 inclusive of power and water. I would think a good option for wintering over and the island has a substantial airport. The main downside seemed to be the lack of security – although it boasts CCTV there is no evidence of this, the place closes down at around 2200 hrs and the gatehouse is not manned. In speaking to the engineer he said it was a better marina for business than Kos (where he had worked for 7 years) as there are no charter boats, only private boats in the marina.

We rented a car and drove around the island and were much impressed with the mountain town of Manolates  - high in the mountains on the northern side. This is steep countryside and yet covered in vineyards and olive groves on seemingly impossibly stony and inaccessible slopes.

  "Main street" of Manolates.

We pretty much covered the whole island and some pretty steep and rough roads. Also checked out the various “ports” around the island and found that the town of Samos itself has a small boat harbour filled with local fishing boats and apart from this is quite open to the north. I would not stop there.

   Emma, Hugo and Sabine look down on Samos town

Further along the northern coast is what looked like an industrial town called Karlovasi that would provide good shelter from the meltemi and has good depths. Did not appear to be set up for yachts though and there was only one yacht there that was moored side on to the main shipping wharf. So not a place to head for with a few days stopover in mind. On the southern side of the island the only place worth stopping is Pithagorion. This town is named after Pythagoras the famous Greek mathematician who was born here and the harbour wall features an oversize bronze statue of him complete with various instruments and formulae.

We cleared out of Greece at Pithagorion on Sunday 4 October and took advantage of the fresh southerly to sail the 18 miles across to Kusadasi in Turkey passing through the Samos strait which is only a mile wide, separating Greece and Turkey. The only place to go is the Kusadasi marina, a huge setup with several restaurants, swimming pool, tennis courts etc. etc and very good security. It appears that many boats winter over here.

  Thanks Sabine for drinking my milkshake!

So Monday 5^th October saw me with a 2 hour drive north to Izmir to collect John, Karen and Jack who had arrived in the previous night from Auckland, and then a 2 hour drive south to Milas/Bodrum to deliver Jason, Emma, Hugo and Sabine to the airport for their flight back to London. A day of enduring crazy Turkish drivers whose main sporting interest seems to be passing on blind corners at speed!

We checked in to Turkey one day and then amended the crew list and checked out the next day. The marina office were agents and did the check in but when it came to check out they said it would take all day as they were busy so we did it ourselves – so now a little unsure about the stated requirement that it is necessary to use an agent.

The plan now is to pretty much reverse our path, with friends aboard, and get back to Kos by 13 October to give us a couple of days to winterise the boat.

Cheers

Keith & Pam

Dodecanese, Kos and Autumn

Posted at 5:21 PM, Oct. 9, 2009

It has been over 3 weeks since re relaunched Savarna at Kos after two months on the hardstand. Great marina complex but the hardstand was obviously a dusty place while we were away and a heavy rainfall just before we returned converted all the dust to mud. The relaunching went smoothly with the 100 ton travellift meaning that we do not have to release the forestay or alternatively demount the radar post off the stern to accommodate the draft and give sufficient height for the lift.

Sophie at Kos marina looks after us like family and is fantastic – I am not sure how the place would operate without her. She organised us an apartment above the marina offices for when we returned and kept in touch with the sailmaker to ensure the various repairs were effected in time. On the sailmaker (his details are on an earlier blog posting) he turned out to be very good. His attention to detail and his enthusiasm in wanting to explain precisely everything he had done and why showed a thoughtfulness in his approach that I think is to be applauded. Good guy and I would certainly use him again.

We arrived in Kos on a Monday night, launched the following day and spent the rest of the week cleaning the boat and getting sails and bimini etc reinstalled. One of the slides in the mainsail battcar system had broken and I brought a new part back from New Zealand. That was the simple part – removing the bottom section of the mainsail mast track to enable me to install the new car proved a major. In the end after successfully removing one bolt and breaking the next (and with about 6 more to go) I called in Babis the local engineer/fix it up guy we had previously met and effected a redesign with the help of a metal cutting saw. All now working very well.

The week was also memorable as a consequence of a very active social round largely because we met up with Paddy and Carolyn from Christiane who we had met very briefly earlier this year after they had just arrived in Kos following a 15 month trip from Sydney. They are great fun and we spent several enjoyable evenings with them. Carolyn is also related to Ted Peacocke a fellow kiwi yotblogger. On the Friday night we also caught up with Brenda and David from Bandit, when they arrived in the town basin, a New Zealand yacht we have met up with several times over the last year.

                                       Town square in Kos

So finally on Saturday 19^th September  we did the “proper” thing and cleared out of Greece, sailed the 10 miles or so across to Bodrum, parked up on the marina there and paid an exorbitant fee to enter Turkey. It is required to use an “agent” now rather than clear in yourself and the fee charged by the agent on the marina at Bodrum is outrageous at EUR197 including the transit log. The agents fee was EUR140 of this - at Datca we found the agent there charged EUR30 and at Kusadasi the marina act as agent and charged EUR50. So all I can say is if clearing in at Bodrum find an agent other than the one within the marina complex.

On the evening of Saturday 19^th “Bodrum Transfers” delivered son Jason plus Emma, along with Hugo and Sabine. The latter being our 2.5 year old grand-daughter who we had not seen for over a year. She is certainly a livewire, very inquisitive might be the polite way of expressing it, and for her age has an impressive grasp of English and can conduct very detailed discussions. As fresh northerlies were forecast for a few days we figured we may as well head south to Datca about a 30 mile sail – it was a fast sail topping out several times at over 13 knots in a heavy rolling sea from astern which is always designed to establish who the survivors are - so Sabine had her one and only chuck up (over Jason) and after that well and truly established her sealegs. An exhilarating sail for some! This time around we did manage to successfully throw an anchor in the harbour, dropped the dinghy in and explored ashore. Nice beach adjoining the town and Sabine and Hugo had plenty of swimming. We then cleared out of Datca (being Turkey) and sailed the 10 miles across to Symi which is a favourite spot – no room on the town quay so we anchored in Pethi, the next bay over the hill from the town. Spent a couple of nights here but also scored a spot on the town quay, next to Bandit as it happened, the following day to clear into Greece. The advantage of Pethi was that there was plenty of opportunity for swimming off the boat and it is a pretty nice bay.

                       Jason with Sabine

     Sabine  - she likes the water.

So from Symi it was pretty much a couple of weeks of revisiting old haunts as we beat our way northwards towards  Kusadasi where Jason and family were planning to leave the boat. So a good sail back up to Kos, overnighted in the marina. Then to Vathi, the fiordlike small harbour on Kalymnos – where we met Austrian yachtsman Gunter and his delightful daughter Rebecca (hope she had a good birthday Gunter!) and from there to Pandeli on Leros where we met up with and had dinner ashore with Vera and Daniel (aka Olive Oyl and Popeye on Yotblog). Had a most enjoyable night with them ashore and always interesting to meet internet friends!

       Greek fishing village  - just like the brochures

Northerlies still prevalent and the next night we spent at Lakki on Leros, on the west side of the island where we had not been before. A good anchorage until the coastguard screamed at us to move the next morning – so we did so immediately!  Had a solid beat to Patmos with one reef in the main and wind in the low 20’s gusting to 26/27 knots. Good powerful sail regularly clocking 8.4’s unless the helmsman missed a wave. Got onto the town quay at Patmos. The following day Pam and I hired a scooter and explored the island (and later Jason and Hugo – who couldn’t stop smiling also headed off).

       Motormower style around Patmos!

Jason and Emma bussed up to the most impressive monastery we have come across to date (reported in previous blogs) and we took the opportunity to catch up on a few chores.

                         Hugo the water boy!!

All well on board, Sabine and Hugo are really enjoying their first sailing holiday and apart from one heavy rain squall early one morning we have had fine, and reasonably warm weather – temps in the 23 – 26 degree range I would pick. By and large plenty of wind so the diesel consumption is running at a low level. In fact in the past 5 days we have only run the engine 5 hours – genset getting some use to keep batteries charged though.

Getting several emails about slack blogging performance so will get another posting up very soon.

Cheers

Kalymnos to Kos

Posted at 9:42 PM, Jul. 6, 2009

Savarna is now perched on the hardstand at the marina in Kos where she will remain until we return in September. The process of lifting out became something of a drama as we had booked for a 1000 hrs lift out and about 15 minutes beforehand I went to the office to check that all was in order for the lift and was asked whether I had paid the tax. Despite all the paperwork the previous day the issue of tax had not been mentioned. The upshot of this was that as we were “leaving” i.e. the boat onto the hardstand, we had to pay some sort of local tax and we had no idea of how much. Further it had to be paid to the tax office and could not be handled by the Port Police office at the marina. So I spend two hours sorting this out - cycling around Kos trying to find the tax office, once found queue up at the first queue to be assessed and the second queue to actually pay – all done in quadruplicate and then back to the Port Police who want all the boat docs, insurance stuff again. When I told the woman that I had given it all to her yesterday and she had copied it she said but I need it again because this is for a different matter. The good news arising from all of this is that the tax we had to pay was only 88 cents – something is wrong with the system somewhere.

                Our favourite boat

The lift was rescheduled for noon and duly happened about 1300 hrs and we sat in the sling for another hour or two before they moved us to a sealed section of the yard and propped us up so by 1500 hrs we were able to get back on board and complete the cleaning up process.

Agathonisi to Kalymnos

Posted at 10:38 PM, Jul. 4, 2009

Well only a few days left on this trip and the month has flown by.  At Patmos a few days back we met a neat English couple – Tim and June Perfect – who spend half the year in Cambridge and the other half in England or sailing on their centre cockpit Westerly 43 and we have been cruising with them since. Tim’s mother was a kiwi and he can boast an early relative who witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

         Perfect Lady - "There was a painted ship upon a painted ocean...." ??

So from Agathonisi (scene of the big RIB gunboats in the last blog posting) we attempted to sail the 15 miles or so across to the town of Lipsi on the island of the same name. Continuation of the calmish, fine weather and we alternated between motoring and sailing before anchoring off Lipsi late afternoon. Went ashore for a wander around the town and to find a free wi-fi café which we did and apart from drinks they provided a power cable and various items of food to snack on which they did not charge us for. Pam had earlier spotted a restaurant  promoting spaghetti lobster for a very reasonable price so the four of us dinned in style before retiring to our respective boats for the night. The following morning we called into a bakery (yes wood fired) and bought some local bread and the old Greek lady gave us some other bread also – so our memories of Lipsi are very much a nice little town and very friendly people.

                    Approaching the Lipsi waterfront

From Lipsi we had another quiet sail down to a bay at the top of the island of Leros for lunch, swimming and relaxation and then late afternoon a gentle sail (race) with Perfect Lady on down the eastern side of Lipsi to Pandeli which we had very much enjoyed with Nicki and Richard a week or so back. As we pulled into the bay and were preparing to go stern to into the rocks and tie off there was Ted and David off Elixir waiting in their dinghy to take our line ashore. Three boats flying the NZ flag side by side tied off right in front of the beach – a few drinks on Savarna seemed called for and then we adjourned for what I said previously was the best moussaka in the Med  - the waiter (we had nicknamed him Manuel but really Nicos) recognised us and we again got a table a few feet from the waters edge. And the mousska was just as good the second time around – although the free grappa was not offered this time so maybe they did see how we disposed of it at our last visit.

Up anchor the following morning and a bit of sailing with Elixir for a photo shoot and one of the results is inserted below.

                   One half of the mutual admiration society.

     Savarna sailing on the wind out of Pandeli (photo courtesy Elixir)

From Pandeli we sailed down to the bay at the bottom end of Leros, anchored off and visited the little old church stuck in the most impossible place as you can see.

                     Little churches everywhere

It was here that we split tacks with Perfect Lady stayed put while Savarna had a boisterous sail for the 15 miles or so down to Kalymnos on the island of the same name. The weather forecast finally has the meltemi lined up after several weeks absence and it was due to start blowing on the Wednesday – and they got that right. The Pilot says this is a boring dirty place but to the contrary we found it delightful – this is regarded as the sponge diving capital of the world and the sponge institute still operates today. There is a called new and long concrete jetty that has been built in the NW area of the harbour and although the power and water boxes are all quayside they are not yet connected up. We approached the whole set up very slowly as it looked pretty shallow so it was bow in to have a check – the guy with the restaurant stood by to take our lines and assured us it was 4 metres deep so we spun around to go in stern first. As we realised my worst fear (grounding the rudder which is a first time) I realised his interest probably lay in getting us to eat at his outdoor restaurant a few metres off the back of the boat. Anyway we had to pull well off and while tied off astern we needed to dinghy in a few metres. The rudder is still turning ok but when I dived I can see it has scraped the hull so I suspect it has been pushed up the stock a fraction. The set up looks good here but the ballasting extends for a way off the quay and with a 2 metre deep rudder it is a place we will not be tying up to again.

So it is now Wednesday night 30 June and we head off tomorrow to Kos, and  haulout the boat Friday morning as no room in the marina. The option of leaving the boat in Kos is a financial  decision as for us to book through until 30 April 2010 it is 2,000 euro’s cheaper than at Marmaris. Also there is an Australian/Greek woman  (Sophie) there who is in a senior role and a good communicator so she will be most helpful.

Cheers for now

Pam & Keith

Nisos Leros to Nisos Aganthonisi

Posted at 10:52 PM, Jun. 29, 2009

Time is drifting by far to quickly as we have continued our northerly passage up through the Dodecanese group of islands which stretch over 100 miles from Rhodes (Rhodos) in the south to Agathonisi in the north which is where we are as I write this. The next island group north of here are the Sporades.

The last blog posting had us at Pandeli on Nisos Leros and from there we had a good sail just off the wind in up to 15 knots. The prevailing winds at the this time of the year are northerly quarter winds but for the last week or so the meltemi has disappeared and we have had southerly sea breezes, mostly south westerly’s, which has been great for making to the north. 

From Pandeli the next port of call was Patmos.  We had heard of it but that was about all so were unprepared for the sight of the enormous monastery dwarfing the port town and the chora. The monastery is more akin to a medieval castle and was clearly built to withstand assaults from marauding forces whether they be Saracen pirates or suchlike. Within the monastery there are 40 churches and the chora is a maze of small narrow streets with whitewashed houses as we saw in the Cyclades last year.         The imposing St John Monastery  - built to withstand attacks it seems

The monastery was built in honour of St John in 1088 (but presumably took many years of construction) as on the road up from the port town to the chora is the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse where St John saw the vision of fire and brimstone and wrote the Book of Revelation in AD95. John was exiled to the island and lived in the cave for three years. So Patmos is an island that caters for both tourists and pilgrims - we figured John must have been a pretty old guy by this time, at least in his eighties?

                                     The monastery from the water

We had a couple of nights on the quay at Patmos and Nicki and Richard departed from here by hydrofoil back to Kos and then by ferry to Bodrum. Berthed alongside us was a Westerly 43 centre cockpit boat flying both British and NZ flags owned by Tim and June. They have strong NZ connections and live in Cambridge (the NZ one) for 6 months a year and then sail and spend time in England for the other 6 months.  We have been cruising with them for the past few days and Swagman friends if you read this they live in Beaulieu (Lord Montague territory we are told) in the New Forest so cannot be far from you.

                    Nicki, Pam & Richard looking down to Patmos from the monastery.

From Patmos we headed roughly eastwards for Nisos Arki but found a most delightful very small island adjoining Arki called Nisis Marathos. There are three tavarna’s in the bay and laid moorings to pick up. An absolutely delightful spot, amazingly clear water and a sandy beach which is a rarity unless you happened to have Cleopatra as a lover – which would probably not be all bad news. The Pilot makes a minor mention of this island which is a shame as it was one of those 99.5% bays very worthy of a stopover and with dinner ashore even better! The Pilot talks of two taverna’s in the bay owned by the same family who were born on the island, but in fact there are three and the right hand one is the so called upmarket imposter  - so in our view don’t patronise him and instead support the local family – Pirates Taverna at the left hand end. Lots of goats with bells on and wild goat stew and wild goat chops featured on the menu – the former ordered by both Pam and Tim.

From Marathos we stopped for lunch at a delightful bay, Caribbean blue water, on the bottom of Arki and then is was a slow genaker  run for the 10 miles across to the top of Nisos Agathonisi and anchored off in a bay on the NE tip. This bay was notable for the strong military presence – there were two powerful RIB’s and all the soldiers were dressed in full camouflage gear and hard to spot amongst the scrubby rocky landscape. This small island has a permanent population of 120 and last year 5,000 refugees turned up via Turkey. We are now in the main port of the island and when we arrived there were 18 refugees on the jetty who were marched off in military style, two abreast, up to a building above the village where they remain at present. By the end of the day there were over 100 there and they were still there the following morning. 

                       The soldiers head out to sea - guns in hand and on foredeck

We struck this at Symi last year and we thought as Symi was close to the coast of Turkey they must be the recipients of a lot of refugees but that does not seem to be the case and although we are close to Turkey at Nisos Agathonisi (8 miles off the coast) it does look as though many of the Greek islands have refugees as a major problem. Here at Agathonisi there are plenty of slashed inflatables and the rubbish bin was full of what looked like good life vests. At Nisis Marathos we met another kiwi boat called Agronauta and they had picked up two backpacks and some wreckage from the sea and reported into the port police at Patmos – only to be told don’t worry just refugees nothing that you can do.

All systems aok  on board and weather continues to be kind to us. No sign of the meltemi again as yet!

Cheers

Keith & Pam