Departure from Suakin.

We raised anchor at 0730 and waved ‘farewell’ to Captain Jack who wished us a Bon Voyage.

 

I was able to get a couple of pictures of the Ospreys nesting on the remaining structures of the Ruined City. This is a very good site for them as it is protected from the public by the military and it has good access to the sea.

 

We followed the route that was pioneered by the Royal Navy that leads South through the complex maze of reefs and shoals.  The sea was very rough and confused and we spent a noisy and uncomfortable day and night. Each wave slammed the bridge between the two hulls with a sound like a canon firing and the whole hull shuddered as though it had been dropped on to concrete.

 

I spent part of the night contemplating the strength of fibreglass and if the constant jarring would damage the hull. It was rather like being in a plastic box being dragged over rocky ground and being attacked by hooligans with baseball bats. There are some sailing angles where the catamaran excels itself, but this was not one of them.

 

The one compensation was that Tony caught a Kingfish, which is very good eating. We decided to route further out to sea where we could get a better sea motion rather than the mixed up mess that existed over the shoals. Near the edge of the reef I saw, in the early hours of the morning, a ship next to a fishing trawler. They seemed to be exchanging cargo. I switched off all lights and chugged towards them. They must have noticed us on radar as they disengaged and the ship took off to the north at high speed. I imagine that they thought we were a Sudanese patrol boat in the dark, and that we were about to trap them illegally fishing and taking fish. Probably it was an Israeli ship, as they are known to pirate these waters. It is sad that we now suffer piracy in this part of the world from the very people who were only trying to protect their fishing rights in the first place, and who were ignored by the “world”.

 

The port engine stopped due to a fuel filter blockage, so we cleaned it out and it went back to operating normally. Now we had a strong Easterly wind which gave us an acceptable angle to make towards the south, with about 400 miles to go to Aden. We caught a King Mackerel, which is a beautiful fish with smooth firm flesh. I was very impressed, having only seen the small Mackerel of the English Channel.

 

The wind changed to the South. We had been told that the wind changes with the New Moon, and it had, but not to our advantage. Now the wind was very strong and we needed engine assistance to “make” against the wind. People claim that catamarans sail close to the wind, but the reality is that they can “point” high, but the leeward drift is alarmingly high as well, so the windward vector is poor, particularly when there is a sea running.

 

The swells were now at about seven metres with breakers coaming off the tops of the waves, and the steepness of the swells was so extreme it seemed impossible that the boat could ride over each one, but it did.

 

The sea reminded me of the sea state that I had witnessed when passing the southern tip of Africa at “Danger Point Lighthouse”, in my old wooden boat Zanj. I shall write more about Zanj later. There in the Southern Ocean the gales conflict with the sea currents and the result is a steep violent formation of swells, usually with breakers cascading down the slopes. These waves sometimes combine together to create monster waves and you need a good bit of luck to avoid those!

 

We now had a double engine failure, with dirty fuel clogging the filters. We knew that we had several filters of different sorts on board, but when we searched for them we realised that the Thief of El Tig Marina had stolen them all as well.

 

This put us into a very dangerous situation.

 

Tony spent hours cleaning our dirty filters in difficult seas, first with petrol and then diesel, trying to get them clear without damaging the integrity of the filters.

 

My problem was to find somewhere to go where we would not be dashed onto a reef, or get in the way of the shipping in the central part of the Red Sea. We had no sleep with all the noise of the thumping and shuddering of the boat, and only intermittent use of one engine or the other before it would fail again due to the dirty fuel.

 

This dirty fuel was the uplift that we did at Hurghada before our departure there. It seemed that the Egyptian influence over slaves and ‘others’ had not yet finally let us go, after all.

 

I have the feeling that God knew what he was doing when he sealed the Red Sea off at the north end. It was Man who created the Suez Canal and the idea that the Red Sea was both “navigable” as well as “crossable”, as it appears it was back in Moses’s day. These are all concepts that are difficult to put into practice. Ian said that his son, who had sailed up the Red Sea some years ago in a luxury superyacht, had warned him that the Red Sea was not to be trifled with, and now we believed him.

 

Now with both engines out of commission we were sailing towards the Eritrean Coast where we knew that the military were not friendly to yachtsmen and that the fishermen had announced a desire to increase pirate activity.

 

It seemed like a good idea to tack back across the sea!

 

I had a problem to choose a place where we could anchor in a strong wind from the south and at the same time get to without the use of engines, and also to have an escape plan in the event that the wind changed, or some other problem arose. There was only one choice that was possible, and that was a small island called “Al Badi” which is in the Yemeni group of islands near their northern border with Saudi Arabia.

 

The Red Sea Pilot book warned of poor reception by Yemen of yachts, but there was nowhere else to go, including back up the Red Sea, where we would again meet adverse winds from the north and still have no safe place to go.

 

We sailed through the day through huge swells and gusting winds. The wind direction held and we arrived at the anchorage as the sun set, which was what I hoped for, as it would give us a chance to “rest” before we were “discovered”. The north side of the island had many small fishing boats anchored there, and we saw that they were all engaged in night fishing with lights. During the day they go close to the shore where the sea movement is less, and they sleep.

 

We found out later that they go off in these small skiffs for a week of work and then they have a few days off before returning for another tour of duty. There is no social security for these fellows. They work or die.

 

I wonder how popular this work and life style would be for Europeans who are accustomed to the state being responsible for giving them a reasonable standard of living, even  if they don’t work?

 

We managed to get one last sputter out of one engine before dropping the anchor in an ideal place. The next day, after a good night’s sleep, we worked on cleaning fuel lines and filters and trying to get the engines reliable enough to get us to the island of Kamaran in Yemen, which was our only chance of getting fuel and spare parts to replace the parts that were stolen in Egypt.

 

We were approached by one fishing boat whose crew asked for alcohol. We told them that we had no alcohol and no cigarettes but we gave them some Bulgar Wheat and a tin of sweetcorn. They offered us a dogfish, which is a small shark. Tony was insulted that they thought we would accept this, and Ian told us that the fast food restaurants in the US and Canada use dogfish in all their so called “fish fingers”!

 

Another boat approached us with one fisherman suffering from conjunctivitis, so Ian administered first aid with eye drops. They were friendly and curious, and very poor.

 

The next day we had to move the boat because of a change of wind direction and we managed to move a mile with only a few engine failures. We still had work to do!

 

The following day the wind had dropped, and we thought that we had achieved better engine reliability, so we “went” for the twelve mile trip upwind to the island of Kamaran. I steered while Ian and Tony monitored each engine with bleed spanners at the ready, to bleed the final remnants of air out of the systems. Slowly the engines settled to an even throbbing sound although I steered along the ten metre depth contour, ready to drop the anchor at a moment’s notice, because a total engine failure here would have meant drifting downwind onto a reef, with little chance of escape by sail.

 

It worked. We arrived in the Harbour of Kamaran Island and we were the only boat there. Before we dropped the anchor, a small skiff came out with three eager people on board.

 

One was called Abdul.

 

It turned out that he had worked on an Italian Cruise Ship for several years and was multilingual. He was a Godsend for us. He organised the Police, the Military and the Coast Guard. I chatted to the Port Control which is situated across the bay at the Salt Terminal.

 

Everyone was welcoming and charming as I repeatedly told them how happy we were to be there and what a beautiful place it was, with the sunshine and the wonderful fishing fleet.

 

“No Problem” they repeated to us, over and over, as we explained our dire circumstances. Abdul volunteered to go fifty miles to another port town where he thought he could find the right filters for us. We were not allowed to leave the boat, without going through painful formalities and red tape, so Abdul’s offer of assistance was more valuable than we could imagine.

 

Of course I will have to make it “worthwhile” for Abdul and his friends when we leave, but what a much better experience for us it was than having all sorts of pseudo charges levied for nothing but aggravation, as we experienced in Egypt.

 

I hope we will get the filters and other spare parts this afternoon, and that we will be ready to leave tomorrow, if the wind has moderated.

 

Each day the wind is against us, the chances are better statistically that it will change direction and strength for us. We are supposed to get 25 percent favourable winds here, and fifty percent contrary winds. So far we have had 100 percent contrary winds in this part of the Red Sea.

 

But as you know, the “Weather” has never read the book of our statistics, and even if it had, it wouldn’t respect our man made laws.