Savarna sailing blog

This blog records the travels of Savarna, a Hanse 531 yacht, following our taking delivery in June 2005 from the Hanse yard in Greifswald, on the Baltic. Having currently sailed as far as Turkey over the past four summers we are planning to head up to Istanbul, the Black Sea and then cruise the Cyclades Group during 2009, then complete the East Med Rally in April 2010 which will take us to Israel and Egypt followed by the ARC at the end of 2010 to get us to the Carribean then to New Zealand via the Panama and the Pacific.

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Iskenderum, Turkey

Posted at 10:48 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

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