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2008 EMYR
Schedule
Tuesday, June 17th, Herziliya, Israel
Slicing through the Eastern Mediterranean waters, at the
front of the EMYR fleet, 15 knots of wind on the beam,
Zia is in her element. Rumpus laid down the
gauntlet before we left. "No engines!"
The weather forecast had us all hopeful for a nice final
rally passage from Port Said, Egypt to Herziliya,
Israel. And a nice sail was just what the fleet
needed after a challenging visit to Egypt. The Zia
crew was fortunate to have opted for a private tour to
the pyramids on Saturday so that Larson and Gav could
see them before they left on Sunday. The rest of
the rally went on Sunday and suffered through poor
management by the tour guides that left them sitting on
buses instead of climbing through the interior passage
into the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid of Khufu or
Cheops.
Before I get ahead of myself, however, I have to mention
the phenomenal fishing we experienced on our last
passage from Ashkelon to Port Said. We left around
4am. Israeli Immigration authorities were at the
dock, passing out passports to departing ships.
Originally, the plan was to deliver them to the boats 15
minutes prior to a previously stated departure time.
The officials quickly saw the folly of that plan and by
3am they decided to wake everyone up and have them come
to collect their passports. Luckily, they let the
children stay in bed but everyone else had to present
themselves for a quick check against the passport
photos.
No
use going back to bed for a few hours just to wake
everyone up again for departure so we readied the ship
to sail. Once out of the harbor, only one of us
had to stay up to stand watch and the rest went back to
bed. Guess who stood watch and who slept?
Actually, both the lads elected to stay up while Joe and
I climbed back in bed. We are so spoiled!
I
got a 5:30am wake up call when the fishing rod starting
singing out as a fish tried to run away with the lure.
Gav jumped up and started reeling it in, while Larson
slowed the boat down. The grins were from ear to
ear by the time I made it up to the cockpit. Grins
turned into frowns very quickly, however, when our
captive somehow managed to shake the hook. Oh
well. It was early yet, and we had the rest of the
morning, the whole day, and sunset to look forward to.
Our next catch at 8:30am was infuriatingly more exciting
and more depressing at the same time. We had
caught a plastic bag on the starboard reel so I was
reeling in the port line to check it when something
decided the lure was too good to pass up. We had a
solid hook into something big. Larson strapped on
the rod belt and reeled in our catch.
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I
jumped down to help boat the biggest tuna yet. We
got a line around its tail and pulled out the camera for
the requisite photos. We were eager to try the
spike to the brain method of killing the fish.
"Kill the tuna by first pressing your thumb around (the
top center of the head) until you locate a soft spot
mid-way between and slightly aft of the eyes.
Insert an ice pick or other spike at a 45-degree angle
into this soft spot. If the first dorsal flexes
erect, the jaw falls open, and the fish becomes
motionless after a last spasm, you had a successful hit;
if not, try again." Scott and Wendy Bannerot are
expert fisherman and cruising sailors. In their
book The Cruiser's Handbook of Fishing, (ISBN
0-07-142788-0) they provide more information than an
amateur like I could possibly digest about all
aspects of fishing. They go on to explain the process
for bleeding the fish, involving cuts just behind the
pectoral fins and at the gills. Flush liberally
with sea water to thoroughly bleed the fish. We
had successfully, we thought, spiked the brain (you can
see the dorsal fin standing up and the mouth open in the
photo) and Larson was just turning the fish to make the
second postpectoral cut when our valiant tuna convulsed
in a violent spasm, flopped down the stern steps and
into the water. The line around the tail had
slipped off as we watched our beautiful nearly dead tuna
float off behind the boat. I thought I saw tears
in Larson's eyes. We tried to circle around and
find him, thinking he would be dead and floating, to no
avail.
Right about now you must be wondering what was so
phenomenal about the fishing on this passage.
Well, the rest of the day was pretty slow with one false
alarm on the rod:
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but come sundown, the action started back up again.
We hooked one tuna on the starboard reel. As
Larson and Gav were cleaning that one, the port rod
sings out. Joe jumps up to reel it in, but our
prey slips the hook. Gav has reset the lure on the
reel, and five minutes later, that one goes off again.
While he is reeling that in, the rod signals another
fish. By this time we are wide-eyed and slightly
incredulous. I reeled in a fish on the rod, but
the reel went slack as its victim escaped. We
managed to boat two more tuna that evening, both of
which made it into the freezer.
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Larson and Gav by this time are pros at processing the
fish and complete the ordeal in record time.
Dinner has to wait until they shower up and they finally
sit down at 9pm to relax and enjoy a hard-earned bowl of
corn chowder. We had made sushi once more the
night before and we are, frankly, a little sick of tuna.
I guess I'll have to be giving some away here before the
rally ends.
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Arriving in Port Said at 2:30 in the morning, we dropped
the anchor (can't remember the last time we did that!)
and slept for a few hours. The plan was to prepare
for a procession down the first part of the Suez Canal
into the arsenal basin where we were to tie up for the
duration of our stay. We lifted anchor at 6:30 and
slowly made our way, flags flying, down the Suez.
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Hot and tired, we had check-in formalities to complete.
We also needed to organize a separate tour since we were
delayed a day in our arrival and the group tour wouldn't
make it to the pyramids until Sunday, after Larson and
Gav had boarded their airplane back to the States.
No time to rest for the weary!
We
were on our way to Cairo in a private taxi, with our
very own police escort, by 1pm.
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They were actually supposed to put a security guard in
the car with us, but it was already cramped and we
refused. They made Joe sign a paper stating (in
Arabic, so in truth it could have said anything) that we
didn't want the security in the car with us.
Whatever. Let's just get the hell out of here.
It was a three hour ride and waiting at the other end
was air conditioning, a pool, and absolutely nothing on
the agenda for the rest of the day.
An
afternoon of leisure followed by an evening room service
meal did much to restore our spirits. We were
refreshed and ready for our private tour on Saturday
morning. Our guide, Ahmed, and driver Michael, met
us in the hotel lobby at 8:30. First stop, the
Pyramids!
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We
were able to secure some of the limited tickets to climb
up into the Great Pyramid. The narrow passageway
requires a little limbo-like dexterity through a few
hundred yard long incline which opens up into a
gigantic, narrow ascent into the burial chamber of the
Pharaoh, Khufu or Cheops. Cameras were not allowed
inside the pyramid but somehow we snapped this photo of
Joe, lying inside the empty stone sarcophagus.
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There is no doubt in my mind that the thing the kids
will remember most from our trip to Cairo is the camel
ride.
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We
all climbed onto our own camels for a fifteen minute
jaunt through the Sahara Desert, just to have done it.
It set us back a total of $50. I'd say it was well
worth it for the memories that will surely live long in
all of our minds.
On
to the Sphinx, for our next required photo opportunity.
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These ancient sights are so well known throughout the
world that it is almost surreal to be standing in front
of them. Dating back as far as 2500BC, these feats
of human engineering are a wonder to behold. The
real wonder, however, was in the Egyptian Museum where
the treasures from King Tutankhamen's tomb are
exhibited. Thirty-three hundred year old ostrich
feather fans, leather sandals and beautifully gilded and
bejeweled wooden thrones survive in near-perfect
condition. The jewelry and gems are enough to make
you salivate. Of course, no cameras are allowed
inside the museum but I am sure you know the images I am
talking about very well, including the death mask found
over the head of the mummy in the inner-most tomb inside
the Pharaoh's burial chamber.
The wealth of treasure found is mind boggling.
Given the fact that King Tut was a relatively
unimportant Pharaoh who died suddenly at the age of
eighteen, it is impossible to imagine the wealth that
was buried with the more important rulers. Of
course, those tombs were all robbed within generations
of being sealed so most of the treasure is long gone.
Throughout the day, Ahmed, our tour guide, plied us with
information on the sights we were seeing as well as
answering our questions about modern day Egypt, it's
politics, religion and people. We enjoyed learning
about today's Egypt even more than we did ancient Egypt.
I asked about women's position in society and got what I
though was a frank response. Of course women have
a lot of choice in Egypt compared to other Islamic
countries. That said, it seems the trick is to
choose your husband carefully. Everything must be
done with his consent. Although marriage contracts
are common and often very favorable to the woman in case
of divorce, they are negotiated with the men of the
family rather than directly with the woman. It is
a disgrace to negotiate with a woman. Although the
Koran states that either party is justified in killing
their spouse if they are caught in the act of adultery,
somehow in modern day Egypt only a husband goes
unpunished if he kills his wife for sleeping around.
Although Muslim men are allowed up to four wives, in
reality only about five percent of Egyptian men have
multiple wives. And there are strict conditions
that apply to the arrangement. Each must be
treated equally. They don't share the same home,
as I had assumed, but must each have equal homes of
their own, whether they be apartments in the same
building or stand alone homes apart from each other.
Ahmed shared with us a photo of his wife and talked
about his family. He has a 2 and a half year old
son and a 7 month old daughter. He is trying to
raise his family in the Muslim way. Up until seven
years old you are not allowed to hit the child.
After that, since he has already been taught everything,
it is compulsory to "beat" him if he breaks the rules.
It is much more desirable to have a son first.
Both boys' and girls' educations begin at four but the
state education is very bad so private school is
essential if you are able to afford it.
Corruption runs rampant in the government.
Everyone expects a little "baksheesh" or bribe just to
do their job. We experienced this in the EMYR
fleet when we tried to order fuel for the boats.
The cost of diesel is about twenty cents a liter.
By the time the rally organizers negotiated a final
price for fuel to be delivered to the boats, the cost
was up to $1.80 a liter. One skipper was able to
take jerry cans to a gas station, and then pay the
baksheesh to the port authorities to get it into the
tightly controlled basin where all of our boats were
docked. Twenty cents a liter for the fuel and a
dollar a liter for the bribe. It was too much for
the group to consent to and we wound up foregoing the
fuel altogether.
By
the end of our stay in Egypt, everyone was pretty fed up
with this mentality, especially after the aforementioned
screw up on the group tour. Most of us showed up
for the rally dinner on Sunday night, but most of us
were pretty grumpy about it. Last minute program
changes and new immigration requirements hit us as we
were trying to get changed into our "formal" dress.
People were running around delivering exit papers and
ships documents to the authorities. It had a very
unorganized, haphazard feel to it all and we were hot
and tired and NOT in the mood.
We
went through the paperwork shuffle again the next
morning and finally shoved off around 11:45am. It
took a while for all the boats to untangle their anchors
and make their way out of the Canal. Zia left
ahead of the last ten boats in the fleet. We hit
the buoy at the entrance to the Canal at noon, unrolled
our big genniker, killed the engines, and left all of
the headache and hassle behind us. Rumpus had been
calling for the breeze to be aft of the beam and had his
spinnaker ready up on the deck. Too bad for
Rumpus! With 15 knots a little forward of the
beam, there was no catching Zia! Although they
left behind us, and had a ball picking off all the boats
in the fleet in front of them, Zia stayed well in front,
her lead growing by the hour. By the 4pm check in,
we were the lead boat. Sansipop, a Swedish flagged
Farr 50, had left a little in front of us and was the
last boat we overtook. How much fun was that?
Of
course, the breeze died around midnight, but we kept on
sailing. We came up well high of the rhumb line in
order to keep the boat moving in the 5 to 7 knot breeze.
By 6am, the breeze was dying down to 4 knots. I
finally called Rumpus. Turns out, they had been
motoring since about 3am. They figured the breeze
was so light, we would be too! In the end, they
were six miles ahead of us. It would have been
interesting to see if they would have caught us in the
light air. They are definitely faster in those
conditions. I guess we will never know!
We
are back to our core Zia crew. Night watches
aren't the same any more! Joe and I actually have
to stay up! Larson and Gav made it home, delayed
for a day because of a British Airlines screw up but
safe and sound. We miss them and their wonderfully
helpful, cheerful and energetic attitudes. Our
rally leaders made a point of telling both them and us
that they are "a credit to their country." They
were certainly a credit to the Zia crew!
Next Entry
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Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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