10th April - May 2006

The Red Sea

There is a lot of hype about pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and all sorts of cautionary advice from well-meaning armchair sailors. I was advised by friends in Langkawi to find an automatic weapon in a market in Oman and be prepared to use it on would-be attackers!

Luckily it is a way overstated problem, and this year there were no incidents involving yachts before I transitted the area, though everyone was on edge. Small convoys of yachts banded together and crept through the Gulf of Aden without lights and gave encrypted position reports on the morning's radio sched (the "Flying Fish Net").

So it was with some relief to make it into the Red Sea, where there have been no pirate attacks in the past.

We sailed through Bab el Mandeb ("Gate of Sorrows"), the small straight between the Gulf of Aden and the bottom of the Red Sea. The wind and tide really funnels through this gap and we clocked 9.5knots on the GPS, very fast for the way I normally sail Weatherly.

Joanne had never sailed before but she was liking the windy conditions after much motoring in the calms from Aden. She took the helm one morning, in 35knots wind with a triple reefed main and deeply furled genoa. Weatherly was well healed to starboard, and waves occasionally lapped the gunnels. "Is this normal?" she asked.
Not wanting to frighten her about the heavier weather conditions, I replied, hiding my own fears, "Oh yes, this is quite typical sailing for Weatherly".
We flew around a spectacular gold and black banded headland to a sheltered anchorage in the Hanish Islands.

We were given advice on the radio net of a calm spot with good holding, and it was very useful, as the recommended spot in the guide book would have been very uncomfortable in the wind we had.

The Hanish Islands are now part of Yemen, but are controlled by the military and were visited by some rough looking staff, some of whom wore partial uniforms. We were told not to go ashore beyond the beach, though it was very tempting, as the walking was meant to be terrific.

The next morning we were visited by many poor fishermen who came alongside asking for water, bread, biscuits or T-shirts. I was surprised when Abdullatif, the military guy we spoke with the day before, came over on a fishing boat and gave us a huge shell ornament. It was way over the top, and I felt I couldn't accept such an opulent gift from such poor people. He insisted and said he had nothing to do with his time anyway so he made these ornaments. This one took him about 3 weeks to make.

We ferried Abdullatif over to the beach where we sat with him and his friend, chatting there for a couple of hours, offering them the last of our oranges.

The following day I woke early to have a short walk ashore up the rubbley mountain with the black, gold and red bands. The military camp was a few kilometres away and noone in sight, so I took my camera, some drink and nut candy and scaled the hill. The scenery from the top of the volcano was well worth the scramble and I took a few nice photos, pictured.

After some lunch we set sail for the port of Massawa in Eritrea, on the south-west side of the Red Sea