Ismailia
Yesterday was a long, long day. It started with frantic preparations and ended well, but in between were several hours of believing that we were about to be;
a) towed away by a suez canal barge for $2000
b)smashed into little bits by a ship the size of the Hilton
c)shot by a nervous Egyptian soldier
d)thrown out of Egypt for breaking just about every rule the Suez Canal Authority has.
We set out with a very nice pilot called Mohammed, and for the first 30 miles or so we had a great time. We had wanted more fuel in Port Said, but there was no way to get any, and we were fairly sure we had enough. However, at about the 31 mile mark, we ran out of fuel, apparently. Anyway, there was air in the fuel pipes. Oren threw the anchor and started to get the air out, after opening the reserve tank. Meanwhile, the anchor didn’t really hold well, and we started gradually to drift in the direction of the north bound convoy of huge container ships, which of course had chosen this moment to start chugging by. So Oren waded to shore ( amazingly, the Suez canal is quite shallow at the edges) and tied a line to a road sign. Unfortunately, we were quite close to Kantara military checkpost, and two soldiers came running out and started yelling at us. The pilot, who by this time had given up on closing his eyes and pretending he didn’t exist, started yelling back, and things got to the point that they nearly came to blows. Meanwhile Oren managed to get the engine running again, somehow we convinced the soldiers to untie us and set off, yelling ” Inshallah”, “salaam”, and “Allah huakhbar!”
The rest of the way we prayed that the reserve tank would be enough, and the pilot screamed at the agent who had sent us without enough fuel, on his mobile phone. At the checkpost in Ballach the controller wanted to stop us for the night, as it was already dusk and no yachts are allowed to transit at night. The pilot went ballistic, and in the end they let us carry on- maybe the only yacht ever to transit during the dark. As a final gesture we opened our sails as we moved away- this is also completely forbidden, but by now the pilot had also argued with his wife, and was probably considering suicide if he didn’t manage to get off soon, and so couldn’t care less.
Only afterward did we realize how nice this pilot really was- he argued with the controller just for us, because he could have gone home in a taxi from Balach, and abandonned us to our plight, a thought which must have appealed to him, especially as his wife had rung him at least ten times. Also he took us into the marina and introduced us to the staff, and when Oren gave him the traditional baksheesh we even had to convince him to take it by assuring him that he really did deserve it!
So, now we are in Ismailia. It is a nice town, and the people are lovely. We have spoken to everyone on Skype, and done shopping. Everything is less than half the price of Israel, which is nice, and there are good supermarkets. Tomorrow we will go to the pyramids, and for the final word- it turned out that we didn’t run out of fuel, it was a fuel pipe blockage, and we now have lots of fuel after bribing the guards to let us jerry can it in to the marina.
Leave a Reply
Visit Gravatar.com to customize the image that appears by your comment.