RED SEA MARSAS
Saturday 03 March, 2007 – 19:43
With the southerly winds progress was quite rapid up the Red Sea – that is until the northerlies kicked in a week ago. The wind is constantly blowing from the north – west 20 to 30 knots, making the seas very uncomfortable. Those boats that hadn’t made Port Ghalib in Egypt in time are having to shelter in the marsas up the Sudan coast, which are small natural bays protected by fringing reefs. So far we have spent 3 days in Kor Shinab about 21 degrees north and after an aborted attempt to try and make the Egyptian border we are now in Khor Shinab, 35 miles further north, with eight other rally boats waiting for a weather window. Our weather routers (Janet and Howard) are telling us we be here for at least another few days not that it’s a problem, as our social director (Penny) has organized pot luck dinners, barbecues, fishing competitions, trips in the desert and Thai cooking lessons by an authentic Thai cook with authentic Thai ingredients bought from a French port in Africa.
On Friday, while the girls were having there cooking class, we went ashore to the local Sudanese village (a few huts in the desert) and ended up joining in one of their celebrations. They had just slaughtered a sheep and we were invited to join them – we all sat on carpets and proceeded to eat (using our right hand only) the tasty morsel of barbecue mutton!!! The meat was not only tough and fatty, but it was a little off putting seeing the head of the sheep and his entrails not more than 5 metres away..