The Best and Worst of Aden

It was a great relief to arrive in Aden and put the pick down in the center of this old port 100 metres off the dock where thousands of Antipodeans would have stopped on ships in the 60's and 70's en route to Europe on their oe's.

The grand old Entrance at Port of Aden

The dock itself dates back to 1919 when this was an integral link in the British Empire and Suez was key to world trade and commerce. Then in 1967 the Yemenis turfed the Brits out and the Russians became the flavour of the region for a decade before Yemen started fending for itself and slowly melting down to the relative state of mismanagement evident today.

Once cleared of immigration and customs formalities the next task (as at almost every arrival port) was to locate a taxi driver who spoke reasonable English.   With the benefit of advice from fellow cruisers we connected with the more African looking than Arab, Salem (as it turned out his mother was Tanzanian).
This guy might not have had the flashest car (in fact it was totally clapped out to the point that Peter had to get out and push it several times) but boy did he open doors and pave the way for us getting our spare parts, fruit and vege, groceries etc showing us the backstreets and alleys as we went. Good for us good for him.

Frenchman Erik, Peter and American Bob Bush obscured, squashed in back seat
of our Aden Taxi with the charming 'smile your in Yemen' Salem

When it came to his fare he always said pay what you feel appropriate...this way he always comes out on top because he knows we are impressed by his service and do not want to be mean fisted. (In passing Salem did let us know that some cruisers were inclined to expect his services for next to nothing and based on years meeting cruisers visiting Aden he could accurately rate levels of generosity by nationality.)  

Everywhere in Aden the people we met were very friendly and accommodating with the standard greeting "Welcome to Yemen" and the question "What do you think of Yemen". The locals (those not holding "official positons") were quick to give us their opinion on their President (photos of whom hang all over the place) who has apparently been ruling for 30 years despite a theoretical democracy and operates the usual system of privilege and graft benefitting only a section of society.
Thus the people seem to be largely disposessed of a viable future. It is a sad state of affairs when the country is clearly undermined by a very privileged minority.

One of the escape mechanisms for the general masses is 'khat' a mild narcotic plant leaf that is chewed and retained in the mouth for many hours providing the extraordinary sight of thousands (mostly males) going about their business of sitting around doing very little with a golf ball size lump of chewed leaf bulging in the cheek. It is also expensive and apparently takes up a significant portion of the family budget. Not that different to the use of Kava in Fiji.

Yemeni man at work chewing 'Khat'

Couple the stupifying 'khat' with up to 6 mosque visits a day, the heat and dust you get a surefire recipe to permanently stall the country.  Of course we were not surprised to find that all the women (with a single
exception that we saw) wore the burkha.  However we still found ourselves agog at the sight of thousands of women in 32C temperatures, dressed in black burkhas (often over western clothing including trousers and jeans as far as we could tell from the hems) faces covered except for a narrow slit for their eyes. Even more disconcerting were the women fully covered with a veil and not even their eyes visible, and even gloves on their hands!

Yemeni lady in full Burkha in 32c

An impromptu night tour with Salem saw the little Toyota wreck meshing perfectly into the mayhem of the old town whereas a flash air con car would have had the Somalian beggars all over us. We experienced a magic meal with him in a big cafe serving traditional meats, bread and salad with B the only female in a huge

dining room of males while the local women and children were isolated in an adjoining room. This was another example of muslim women being segregated and confirms the second class citizen role this control society has them destined to follow hidden under their black veils.

Salem called women in burkhas "ninjas" (even though his wife and daughter wear the burkha) - not sure whether it was his standard comic line for tourists or whether that is a slang term the locals use. B was talking to Salem on social order and he seemed to be progressive in his thinking, telling us about his children and in particular his daughter who would be going to university. But when we got on to driving he proudly told us his two sons could already drive but his wife and daughter would never be permitted to drive.

The shopping in the old town was all go up to 10pm at night with people everywhere and B did her fruit and vege shopping here around the main square rather than the sterile (but well stocked) supermarket. The shopping was very traditional with specialist streets and lanes for copper, jewellery, clothing, hardware, electrical etc.

Barbara night shopping in Aden under watchful eye of Salem

We spent an afternoon traipsing around an industrial area 10km from Aden itself looking for a new engine temperature sender and an oil pressure alarm sender for Muskies Ford engine and it was like finding a needle in a haystack, but what a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon visiting retailers, wholesalers and even junk
yards. P was part-hunting aided by Salem and B was busy clicking the camera at camels, camels and carts (for grandson Noah) and street scenes.

    

Back street scenes Aden



Driving around with Salem, Somalians get the blame for all Yemens woes and although Yemen is poor with an economy in tatters Somalians still see it as nirvana and pay people smugglers to get here. When they arrive

they are forced into menial jobs like street cleaning and according to Salem, the woman go into prostitution. Which leads on to the following....... 

Tragedy in Aden  

Sadly we must tell you of a tragedy that took place Sunday 22 March that would not have even rated a
mention in western media but is commonplace in these parts. An 8 metre open fishing boat with a broken engine crammed with 95 Somalian refugees was towed into Aden and berthed alongside the old dock just 100 metres from where we were anchored. The refugees had paid people smugglers to take them to Yemen. We were told the people smugglers were also pirates and halfway across the 150 mile wide Gulf of Aden had cast them adrift and gone off to board and seize a tug boat in the shipping corridor. The Somalians were found drifting by a French frigate.
They claimed refugee status, so the French took their unstable craft in tow taking 2 days to get them the remaining 50 miles to Aden where they passed them over to the Yemenis on the harbour limits to be towed in.   On arrival alongside the dock the Somalians all rushed to one side of the boat to get off and the already unstable boat capsized and 7 unlucky Somalians drowned. It was around 7pm local time and the mosques were chirping away into the early evening as usual and although only 100metres away we did not hear or
notice anything different as we were down below on Musketelle sorting out a software issue on a laptop.

The scene on the dock from Musketelle at just 100metres

We only noticed about an hour later when we looked out and saw emergency flashing lights and a bigger than normal mass of humanity on the dock. Erik the skipper of the French yacht Genesis that we convoyed with was on the dock and saw it happen. Being a diver he jumped in his dink sped out to his yacht got his scuba gear and went back and dived in to help. When we caught up with him later he was a bit distraught as when he got into the half sunken boat there were just 4 bodies with 3 having floated away. There was one
girl still alive in the hull when the French Navy who had just heard of unfolding events turned up with divers, underwater spotlights and other rescue gear but the Yemenis would not let the French Navy enter the water. The Yemenis completed the rescue with free divers and hand torches, but at least they got the girl out. The saddest thing is all the Somalians were youngsters in their 20's just looking for a way out of what must be a terrible life in the homeland.

Morning revealed the shoddy 8m long craft
95 Somalians sought freedom on, ending in tragedy

We felt rather out of place that evening as passing visitors sitting in the comfort and security of our floating home until then only worrying about a small software problem.

Its only Money

At somewhar lesser level Aden turned out to be a jinxed stop for us but we shouldn't blame Aden, it just happened that things went wrong here. The day we arrived B goes to the supermarket to stock up and tenders our primary Mastercard to be told it would not accept the charge so she uses a Visa card. Thats strange because we have an auto payment setup on the Mastercard so next day go to an internet cafe to check the account and whamo its been compromised to the tune of NZD$17k. Some low-lifes have gone on a shopping spree through the UK buying laptops, cellphones and the odd classy restaurant meal on us over a three day period 02/05 March when we were at sea between the Maldives and Oman. In retracing where we had used that card we think it was copied in Sri Lanka, possibly at the car rental outfit in Colombo where we hired the car for our Sri Lankan road trip. They did a manual swipe of the card for the deposit at the pickup which they ripped up in front of us when the car was returned in good order. We assume qhile we were merrily touring Sri Lanka the imprint was immediately on-sold, a bogus card made and then used until the limit reached. The good news is Mastercard have accepted the activity was fraudulent and have agreed to credit the disputed charges without question. Top marks Kiwibank and Mastercard !!

Difficulties Departing

Our final tale of woe relates to us departing Aden Thursday 27 March for the Red Sea. Attempt 1 consisted of us getting about 6 miles out where, the wind having dropped, we decided to motor sail but the starter motor would not operate (although it had 60 minutes earlier). Decided to return to the Aden anchorage
to find the problem but this necessitated coming back in without motor under sail and anchoring under sail.

Due to a misjudgment in timing we ended up on a lee shore to close in and had to pay a local boatman and his crewman to come alongside and tow us to a better position. After negotiating a deal they towed us to the new spot (the entire time hassling us for the money) and quickly departed as we anchored but as luck would have it the 40kg anchor and 40m of chain did not hold and we drifted back maybe 75m until it finally dig in. We should not have paid them so quickly and insisted they stayed until we had completed anchoring. Result was that we ended up too close to a huge ship mooring buoy (so big they are viewable on Google Earth).

B was forced to stay in the cockpit armed with a large fender in case we swung onto the buoy while P is below trying to fix the mechanical problem.  Now this is where things really go pear shaped as P hears the Port Pilot boat going by and hails him over to tell him we think our anchor and chain are snagged on the
mooring chain for the shipping buoy (domestic harmony prevents us from writing that all this time B is saying, leave it, we are fine, just fix the engine, we do not need them to do anything). No problem says the Pilot boat man and proceeds to come alongside the fenders on our starboard side and commence an ill-fated attempt to raise our anchor by simply putting a line around the chain at the level of our deck and and pulling backwards, in the process scoring the chain on our bow paintwork and nearly taking out the pulpit (domestic harmony
prevents us from writing that all this time B is saying, that will not work, we will damage the boat, leave it...). To add insult to injury the pilot lef his steering position to check the situation and let his vessel drift around with the sharp edge of his aft starboard corner hitting and doing major damage to our starboard teak cap rail at which point we scream at him to move away fast before more damage is done.

We were both very upset at this.  B was rightly furious that this unavoidable collision had occured and as it was clearly a misjudgement by P to get the bloody big steel tug involved. He removed from the line of fire to quickly fix the mechanical problem by replacing the starter motor with a spare we carry which resolved the
problem and partly diminished the stress levels aboard. We had lunch then decided to have a go at trying to liberate the anchor from the bouy chain using our own power. Can you believe the engine does not start. Back to the engine bay and turns out our starting button has an intermittent fault. We fix that more or less and try to jiggle the anchor free under power with no success. By now its late afternoon and this time we jointly agree we need a diver but light is fading. We ring the trusty Salem who promises a diver. We decide to stay the night firmly attached to Aden but having to stand 2 hour anchor watches because we don't want to hit
the bouy and do more damage. Then at 2am in the morning the Pilot is back hovering as the big port tugs park a huge rusty Egpytian freighter 40 metres from us using the same buoy we are attached to !!!.

Next morning holy Friday 27th March Salem has a local bloke alongside with his shonky scuba gear with a starting price of USD$300 to relieve us of our woes which were now widely known on the waterfront. We settled on USD$100 and the guy jumped into the dank and murky waters completing the task in 2 minutes !! You have to laugh but at least we were free.

Attempt 2 departure therefore consisted of us pulling in the newly freed anchorand departing straight away. As usual the Harbour Master called us on the vhf radio as we left the harbour entrance. We reported we were departing and gave our original clearance number as we had not been ashore since returning. Instead
of being wished a pleasant sail we were ordered to return as the regulations required us to check in again. We protested reminding them we had returned for emergency repairs, not gone ashore and only delayed departure further because we had snagged on one of their mooring chains etc etc. P consulted the legal
advisor and concluded the Yemeni gunboat might prevail so we reluctantly returned, anchored sweetly and traipsed ashore to go through the pointless paper trail once again. Luckily we encountered a very obliging official who confirmed that all that was required was a renewed harbour clearance document, so another taxi
trip to the also very pleasant harbourmaster was undertaken. Other yachties in the anchorage came over saying they had enjoyed the verbal jousting over the airways and talked us into staying the night for drinks on one of the yachts (the renewed clearance giving us 24 hours within which to depart).

Attempt 3: We finally departed noon Saturday 28 March and sailed away for the fabled Straits of Bab el Mandeb - Gates of Sorrow and entrance to the Red Sea and the next stage in our meandering. Timing our arrival to the Gates at about 0600 next morning. But more of that next blog...

All at Sea
B&P



Progress in Pee-rat Alley 13.09n 46.16e

Well nothing wrong with our convoy selection process... even if it is the Frogs that have come up trumps rather than Uncle Sam or the Brits.  Erik and Sebastien ftom the French yacht Genesis did the hardyards talking to the French Navy back in Salalah and it is those discussions that shaped our in-shore passage down the Yemeni coastline at an average of just 15 miles off the coast.

As a result Genesis has been reporting the position of our three boat convoy to the French Control Center 3 times a day. Whilst we have also been reporting to the British even though they wanted us to sail down the center of the corridor at 50 miles off and not at all happy we were doing the inshore route. They even sent us a curt e.mail saying they could not guarantee speedy deployment of assets if we called in an emergency.

We looked at the options and we agreed the French approach was better as most of the attacks have been near or even in the corridor and anyway thats halfway to Somalia where the pirates would take you.

So in short we were very happy with the French solution...particularly when 2 days into the passage a French frigate comes over the horizon and announces through communication with Genesis that they will track our progress all the way to Aden. Then to top that off they did a flyby in their ships chopper at dusk last night to wish us well and take pictures of us for their records.
We proudly held out our big silver fern flag (from The Warehouse) for the pics. This gave us a pleasant sense of security and no doubt Erik and Sebastien a shiver of pride. Maybe justification for us forgiving the French for their past misdemeanors against us....of which there are a few...turfing us out a successive rugby world cups is hard to stomach!!. We will think up some ze appropriate gesture when we get to Aden. Maybe roasting that leg of Kiwi lamb we bought in Oman!.

We penned this piece of verse to record our thoughts of this passage.....

SALALAH to ADEN  GOA by SEA

In convoy of yachts THREE
Under proud flags of the FREE
Stars'n'Stripes, Tricolor, and KIWI

Endless motoring at revs LOW
Bows to the gulfs ebb and FLOW
Dawn noon dusk and dark we GO
Willing Pee-rats to NO-SHOW
Bonjour French Navy frigate we SEE
Compliments of SY Genesis we AGREE
Chopper fly-by fills us with GLEE
Great to have such friends at SEA

SY Musketelle (NZ)
19 March 2009

Relieved just one more night at sea before reaching Aden dawn 20 March.

B&P All@Sea

Photos of the GOA

All GOA in the Gulf of Aden 14.50n 50.52e

We are at sea again after a 5 day stop at Salalah, Oman and currently 180 miles into the 570 mile hop down the Gulf of Aden (GOA) to the old Port of Aden. This is the biggie, the leg between Somalia and Yemen where the Pee-rats congregate.

But first backtrack to Oman....a really interesting experience and for us both the first taste of an Arabian desert environment. We will never again see the Desert Road as a mini desert or be convinced that Alexandra gets hot and dusty in summer. Salalah was a good entree to the arid lands ahead and gave us a feel for the hard environment these people exist in. Many of the locals knew of NZ doing their best interpretation of a shiver and talked of rain and lambs. If they have oil in abundance we will still take the liquid gold thanks. On the back of the recent oil spike this place is really on steroids with huge development projects underway particularly around the Port of Salalah. They are opening a freeport zone that attracts foreign companies to come in and setup with minimal taxation barriers. To kick- start the project the Oman
government is constructing a new industrial area in the desert with petro-chemical plants and other heavy industry plus on the coast nearby a mammoth cutting edge technology Reverse Osmosis desalination plant converting saltwater to fresh. The real kicker for this area is the Port of Salalah which is strategically at the
cross roads between Europe, Africa and all points in Asia and Australasia.
Already the shipping giant Maersk is using Salalah as a trans-shipping port moving 20/30,000 containers a week through the port. Thats right 20/30k a week.

Talking of food these guys like us love their meat and dairy....but what they call mutton is in fact Somalian goat and these were being shipped in day and night adjacent to our anchorage in the Port.
B was most perturbed at the lack of humanity being shown for the goats as they were literally thrown from high up on the motorised Dhow-like wooden boats down into trucks, on top of each other bleating and crying like babies, legs caught in the truck railings - horrible sight. But in this part of the world if she had
protested as a woman she would likely been castigated big time by the local Muslim men and maybe even spat at.

The dairy food experience has been good with goats cheese and feta type cheese very popular and scrumptious but not an ounce of conventional cheddar, just the ubiquitous processed cheese.
Salalah is very much a backwater compared with sophisticated Muscat but they sure are trying to improve things with the main highways all tree lined with hardy colorful flowers, shrubs and even the odd bit of grass. The major roundabouts are attempting to replicate Paris with impressive structures, waterfalls and pieces of art in the center of each. But elsewhere it was wide dusty streets and roads full of late model autos and more concrete trucks than you can imagine. We as usual hired a car and zapped around doing our repairs,
maintenance and shopping chores. After Sri Lanka it was a breeze albeit driving on the right hand side. The price of diesel was the best yet at just US.39cents a litre.

The wildlife is sparse but accessible... camels strutting around on the desert and roadside on the outskirts of town. They were even on the forecourt of the Shell station when P went to fill the jerrycans. On one occasion we decided to take the rental car off road into the desert to get up close and personal with a group of camels being herded by their owner.... in his Toyota 4wd.  The Omanis seem to be well off but do not appear to be motivated or work very hard. The real grunt work is done by imported labour from Indian and Pakistan who  work long hours 6 days per week with Friday (Muslim holy day) the only day off.
In new as opposed to old Salalah they are building a grand mosque of monumental proportions and of a quality to behold with its spires glistening in the sun....no doubt the petro dollars have helped this project.

In conclusion we enjoyed Salalah and even found the only establishment in town that served a cold beer and good steak...the 'Oasis Club' run by a Sud African named van der Merve and frequented by ex pats. They had a big Silver Fern flag to make us feel welcome.

So now after 5 days we are back on the water heading down pee-rat alley. We got together in Salalah with a French boat and an American boat to form our 3 boat convoy and develop a plan for the passage. The French skipper had direct dialogue with the commander of a French warship in Salalah and came up with a
route that resonated with our thoughts. So here we are motor sailing in flat calm seas in a v shape 200 metres apart, with the slowest boat (FR) in the lead, the (US) on his port aft side and (NZ) on his starboard aft side.

The Frenchman and his crew member are good value. As NZ has no naval presence in this area and the French and US do, we felt we could do worse than go with these guys. The big concern is the yank has the surname of the immediate past-president of the USA and gossip says a distant relative (we haven't asked)...we hope not too distant if we all get pee-ratted and a ransom is required.

We can tell you that on this leg we are having no trouble finding the reserves to stay awake through our watches with eyes peeled and binoculars at the ready.
We communicate between yachts by low frequency vhf radio and have emergency numbers on speed dial on the satphone to call the security co-ordinators should trouble loom. Roll on Aden....

All at sea in the GOA
B&P

Arabian Sea off Socotra Is Somalia - 15.38 N 57.30 E

Night watch, when the wind is gentle, sea kind and moon lighting the way is quality time to think. In these waters "think" means things like....are we going to make it through these pirate infested waters, is that light on the horizonone of them, how will we respond to an approach, have we got our emergency procedures sorted etc etc etc.

The emergency VHF radio channels have been jammed, presumably by these pirates, hurling abuse at all and sundry passing sailors, their mothers and their countries of origin. These "pranksters" (to give them an unduly polite name) intercept bonafide calls and even make bogus mayday calls, thereby voiding this form of communication in a real emergency. They also play soundtracks of lurid sex scenes from b rate Hollywood movies for some unfathomable reason....maybe distractive entertainment for sailors on merchant ships. We have paid them the greatest compliment and now turn off our VHF at night.

However in daylight we recently tuned into an entertaining conversation between ships to hear a Mexican officer telling his counterpart on the other ship that this was his first transit through the Gulf of Aden for some time as he has been sailing the Pacific between Asia and the USA. He said he did not know who was
worse to have on his ship, the US Coastguard paranoid about the terro threat over there or the "pee-rats" here. We have adopted his Mexican/English "pee-rats" as it is so appropriate.

Other day time chatter between ships indcates a general concern with the piracysituation, with the ships forming convoys through the Gulf of Aden (GOA) in accordance with their speed. One watch captain told another that the transit corridor (which is 500 miles long) is becoming fairly safe now but the result of
this high level of security is that the pee-rats are moving their activities further offshore.

As we mentioned in the previous blog we have registered with the security forces control centre for the GOA and we communicate by e.mail at noon each day with our position as they are currently tracking our progress to Salalah. Their guidelines make it clear that vessel owners should make their own security arrangements to minimise boarding as appropriate to your own vessel, which in our case with barely a 2 metre height from water to deck is not much of a challenge for a tall athletic pee-rat with long legs. So P has been postulating
about deterrent and self preservation options, albeit a little late now. The best he could come up with....... Deterrent - maybe we should have electrified the safety rails with a Gallagher electric fence system.

Self Preservation - maybe we should have converted the aft deck to become a temporary live sheep meat
carrier. This way we could make genuine sacrificial offerings to people we know appreciate live meat (B - I have edited this line out 3 times now but it keeps getting back into the blog....). B had the idea of inviting a friend, a soon to be retired accountant who shall remain nameless, along as crew. Unfortunately he declined. B's rationale was not that he would bambozzle the pirates with numbers, no, rather that he would be good for the ransom money and thus we might all get out safely...

As an added measure we have a list of basic words and simple phrases in Somalian....we are going to have lessons in the cockpit over morning tea (yeah right). However, based on the VHF broadcasts from the pee-rats we know they have a good grasp of the more colourful and less polite english words - these form a true international language and phraseology it seems.

This leg has as usual for Musketelle and her herculean but aging crew has been a voyage of three parts....

Part 1 - the beginning as per normal was very trying with variable head winds testing our resolve coupled with B getting her motion issues stabilised.

Part 2 - The middle section has been a full week of sailing in consistent and at times strong winds forward of the beam on the starboard side for the whole time. This means the boat has been continuously leaning at 10/15 degrees for 170 odd hours on its at times rolly course without respite in winds up to 30 knots.

Part 3 - Now the third part as we close within 200 miles of the Oman coast the wind is finally backing to the East to come onto the aft starboard quarter to hopefully push us into Salalah.

Since departing the Maldives we have had a developing moon which generally makes for great sailing. At this point in the voyage however this is now a burden to us and a benefit to the pee-rats who apparently and surprisingly prefer daylight hours or well lit nights.

As the Indian Ocean leg from Phuket comes to a close we reflect that we made the correct decision to break the 2600 mile voyage into three sectors by stopping at Sri Lanka and the Maldives. 

You have to compartmentalise everything on all of these sectors to make it achievable. We even break our days and nights down into sections as we count down miles achieved and waypoints passed.

You can take the boy away from competitive yacht racing but you can't take racing out of the boy. P even has B thinking faster faster faster on her watches and only last night she spent the whole three hours of a watch adjusting the steering by points of a degree at a time and tweaking the sails to maintain
constant boat speed to ensure we beat the previous nights performance. The driver is we don't want to be out here longer than we need to and as long as we are not in gear breaking mode it keeps monotony at bay.
Until next blog.

B&P All@Sea

Arabian Sea Nights and Days - 08.21n 69.54e

Hello from the Arabian Sea en-route Oman
Our forced return to the idyllic Maldives to rectify engine overheating issues provided a bonus that outweighed the tech issues (more on those later). We had another 2 days and a night at anchor off Uligamu anchoring in 22 metres of clear water, putting out 50 metres of chain which then saw us drag over a beautiful
reef with at times only 6.5 metres under Musketelle. Previously we had anchored over a big sandy patch. The upshot of this new location was the reef attracted the resident fish life in abundance and whats more the huge Manta Ray also surrounded us too, all seemingly attracted to the hull.
B was the first to be confronted by a Manta in the water as it approached to within 3 metres of her before gliding away. She burst to the surface with a shriek of excitement. P also dove for his first confrontation with these gentle giants albeit not quite as close but very impressive. These creatures of the sea are harmless plankton eaters and simply huge, gliding around gracefully with mouth wide open taking in their microscopic food. The biggest we saw had a fin to fin cross span of about 3 metre and longer wip tale reminding us of a star wars type spaceship. They seemed to circle the lagoon in formation in groups of four or five at times flapping their flippers on the surface to herald their location. We rate our experience with the Manta Ray as up there with the Orangutans and Komodo Dragons. Our one outstanding date is to swim with Doogongs. To top off our enforced stay we had a final great snorkel on the shore reef experiencing the best fish life we have seen anywhere even if the coral reefs in Indo were more colorful.

We are back at sea on our way to Salalah Oman having stripped down the complete fresh and saltwater cooling system, replacing the saltwater intake pump impeller and cleaning the heat exchanger thoroughly with vinegar to eliminate growth in the fine copper tubing. Also removed the thermostat and tested it finding ok
but opted not to re-install as we are going to be doing a lot of motoring up the Red Sea in high temperatures and this eliminates a potential problem area. Will re-install when we get to the cooler climes of Europe later this year. We were in a situation where we could not establish what the cause of the overheating problem was so to remove doubt we did everything. Ironically it may all have only been a faulty fanbelt which in situ looked fine and well tensioned. Being less than 6 months old we did not suspect this but on removal noticed multiple cracks so obviously that would have contributed. So we set sail again for Oman and can you believe as we were raising the anchor the Aternator on the main engine decides to die on us leaving our only form of power generation the Generator. We decided to push on regardless. The feeling is the Alternator was
the cause of the excessive heat in the first place sending the temp in the engine compartment way up making it seem as if the whole engine was overheating.
Hope to find an Arab electrical engineer on a camel in Oman.  We have the excitement and feeling that our voyage is moving into another new faze. Ahead the land of the Arabs, sandstorms, backshee, deeprooted tensions and thousands of years of upsetting travellers and voyagers transiting their space.
Sailing in the Arabian Sea sounds romantic and exciting...its the same as the Tasman in mid-summer just bluer. Unlike the Tasman there are some current issues up ahead as we prepare for the challenge of transiting the Gulf of Aden. We acknowledge we are going into dangerous waters and understand the risks. 15
countries now have naval hardware in the area to maintain free-flow of maritime trade and we are more confident than last year that we'll get through safely. We have registered with maritime security co-ordination controllers in the UK and Dubai with our Satellite Phone as the key component in our security kit, in addition to VHF/DSC Radio and Single Sideband Radio.
A shipping corridor is operating in the Gulf and we have agreed to follow procedures to maintain contact with the co-ordinators as we transit the corridor. If we suspect we are being approached by unsavory types we set off emergency systems and the coalition forces should have support to us within a certain timeframe. As an extra precaution we will still try to get together with say 3 or 4 other yachts in Salalah for the 300 mile passage through the corridor as there is no doubt of enhanced safety in numbers. We must say the information we have received from the security forces is most comprehensive and extremely
helpful and reassuring...to a point. Enough of the formal. 

We have been listening in each morning to a loose radio sched of other yachts sailing these waters en-route to Oman etc. We share positions, weather and information. After each sched there is inter-boat chatter if propagation allows. To identify we are moving into less than friendly waters a yacht two days out of Salalah mentioned a local regularly jamming the VHF Ch 16 emergency channel with a less than welcoming singing session that went like this... "F...you, we're coming to rob your boats and slit your throats". Repeated...Nice
stuff. We have obviously discussed some strategies to minimise this happening to us and positions we will take aboard to protect each other.  Note: Unfortunately the format on our blog postings get reset by the system after they are posted by us from sea (we dont write them like that) and only when we get ashore to an internet site can we re-edit and tidy up. See older blogs have been re- edited. Also we cannot download digital pics until ashore.

All for now.
P&B All@Sea