Chasamba – Travels Across The Seas » Blog Archive

Port Ghalib

Filed August 25, 2008 at 3:58 am under by Administrator

We arrived yesterday evening here, the last marina in Egypt and the place where we will check out. This is a huge complex, totally devoted to trying to squeeze as many euros out of the tourist as possible, and probably because of that it is completely empty. There are altogether 3 yachts including us, and 2 dive boats in the whole place, which is capable of holding maybe 1000 boats comfortably. There are fancy restaurants, coffee shops, jewelery boutiques and at least 3 huge hotels, but everything is empty, like wandering round a ghost town. It is all very new, and there is no grass or anything yet either, so it is really weird. For the benefit of all the yachties who have told us various things about Port Ghalib, here is the real deal;

-there IS a supermarket with milk and sometimes you can buy vegetables (we were unlucky ) but you have to be prepared to walk 15 minutes to get there- on the way back you can get a lift if you buy enough stuff.

-dogs ARE allowed, and because the complex is so big and deserted Sheva had a really good time

-there IS water and electricity, and wifi ( the wifi at an exorbitant price)

We will be checking out today, and the next stop apart from anchorages will be Massawa, at least a week away. The best thing about the marina was the showers, of course, and the chance to catch up with everyone by skype.

The trip from Suez to here was fun, with all kinds of anchorages- one where black dust covered us during the night, one where we rolled all night and fell out of bed, and one magical one tied to a mooring rope off a reef in complete still, snorkelling and watching parrot fish, zebra and all the other reef fish, and eating a huge white palamida ( I don’t know its name in English) which we barbecued. The fishing is phenomenal, whenever we put a line in the water we get a big fish after an hour or two! The thing we didn’t expect is the lack of yachts generally in Egypt- we have only seen 4 yachts altogether including Port Said. The sailing has been good, sometimes with lots of wind, sometimes with 10 knots or less, and we have become used to using the spinnaker, since most of the time the wind is from the back. We can do 5 knots in a 6 knot wind with the spinnaker! There are also days with no wind at all, although today of course because we are in port the wind is blowing at least 20 knots.