Sailing Leander

October 2, 2011

“PAUL!!!! PAUL!!!!!! WAKE UP!!!! THE BOAT!!!!  WE’RE LOOSE!!!!!!!!”

This is probably just a dream.  I’m going back to sleep.

I mean, it’s got to be.  Only today we were fearing just such a bad dream.  I must have brought it upon myself.

As a sailor living aboard a boat, sleep is always a little troubled, and sometimes you rest uneasily.

Out at sea on passage, you’re concerned with all those open ocean thoughts, especially as you come off watch and try to close your eyes.  The boat is hurtling along through the ocean, and you’re wondering if you’re about to hit something? A rock? A great big tanker? A partially submerged container? Flotsam from the Titanic?  Is the wind going to continue to pick up? The seas? Should we have put another reef in?  What’s that humming noise? Are we drawing too much on the batteries?

You’d think that you’d rest comfortably once you make it into harbor.  But although it is substantially better, a whole new host of concerns arise.  Will our anchor hold? Did we put out enough scope?  Are the lines chafing? Will there be a problem with the tide?  Will the wind shift and bring in a swell?  Is that a cricket on board or is a water pump running endlessly?

Or maybe, “Is this mooring strong enough for our boat?”

We walked through a local village a couple of days ago, and Sima got to talking about these stresses.  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.   “I love our life, but I’m also starting to kind of want a house.  You don’t have to worry as much, you know.  Wind, waves, submerged rocks – they’re not so much of a problem when your home isn’t floating.”  We talked about it as we headed back to Leander.  It’s true, I agreed.  Especially when the weather kicks up, boats can be tiring.  A blowy wind can take the stuffing out of you, especially when it whistles – or even worse, when it roars – for a couple of days on end.

And the wind has been doing that recently.  We have been on Leros, a Greek island in the Aegean, for about a week.  We’re not too far from Kos and Rhodes and the Turkish coast.

Our anchorage in Pandeli, on Leros. Pretty but boisterous.

We spent our first five days in Pandeli, a town and small bay on the east side of the island.  The village was beautiful, nestled among some surrounding hills.   But the hills, as nice to look at as they were, also act like a funnel, gathering puffs of air from this hilltop and that, and channeling them into a throaty blow that harrassed Leander and her crew with varying degrees of intensity.   We went about the boat working to quiet various straps and lines, which whistled, creaked, or groaned in the gusts.  (Wind is a little less bothersome if you can’t hear it.)  We got rid of most of the noise, using a series of pulleys and blocks to lead the lines away from chafe points, but Leander still wasn’t noiseless.

Our anchorage in Pandeli. We are two boats this side of the gulet, with the tan sail cover. Can you see the wind on the water?

When we saw that the forecast called for 40 knots plus in the coming days, we figured it was time to move.  If Pandeli was uncomfortable in normal conditions, we could only imagine how bad it would be if the wind got really bad.

On one of our long hikes, we had visited another village on the southern end of the island, a place called Xerokampos.  It looked calmer and more protected, and the guide books confirmed this when we later checked.  So we decided to come here.

When we scouted Xerokampos on foot, it looked calm and peaceful.

We arrived yesterday, and took a mooring about 100 yards from shore, in just 20 feet of water. And today the winds did arrive, right on schedule.  When we paid attention, we saw gusts of 30 knots, and it was probably the case that some were higher.

Earlier today, I went for a run, and on shore I bumped into a Dutch couple, Jope and Anneke.  Their boat was also on a mooring.  As I was rowing back to Leander, I saw Jope suddenly sprint back to his dinghy, and then charge out to the harbor.  I looked to where he was headed, and saw that his beautiful forty-foot yacht was floating free, heading for the rocks on the far side of the bay.

Leander at anchor in Xerokampos. We are the sailboat on the far right, and the boat furthest to the left is Jope's.

A sailor’s worse nightmare.

Jope got to his boat, which had drifted about half a mile away from its mooring. Fortunately, the boat had moved sideways, its hull sailing crossways to the wind, rather than heading straight out to sea.  If it had done the latter, Jope, with his small dinghy, might not have been able to catch it.  As it was, he was able to jump aboard, start the engine, and back it away from the rocks.  As Jope headed back toward us, I rowed our dinghy to a nearby mooring, and then helped him secure his boat.

We joined Jope and Anneke later for a drink. (One beer for me and one glass of wine for Sima – we don’t drink much in general, never at sea, and only a little in an unfamiliar anchorage.)  Anneke told us how scared she had been.  “You have nightmares about such things, but you hope that it never happens!  And then today, it did!  I think that I will have unpleasant dreams tonight!”

We thought the same, as we returned to our boat for dinner and then bed.  The wind had really picked up, and was causing Leander to sail back and forth, jerking at the mooring, sometimes agressively.  The groaning of the line helped elevate the stress, but also our alertness.  We checked the lines again.  At 9:00 p.m., Sima and Alexander were able to fall asleep, and I dropped off a little while later, using a book to help take my mind off of the noises out and about.

But it was probably a troubled sleep.

“PAUL!!!! PAUL!!!!!! WAKE UP!!!! THE BOAT!!!!  WE’RE LOOSE!!!!!!!!”

I shot out of bed.  It was 1:00 a.m.

“WHAT?!!  What’s happened?”

I tried to blink the sleep out of my eyes, tried to see.  But I couldn’t make sense of the world right away.  Just what was Sima saying? What had happened? Wasn’t everything OK?  Couldn’t I go back to sleep?

“Turn on the engine!!  We’ve moved!!  We’re loose!!”

It wasn’t a dream.  Drat.

I went on deck.   I still couldn’t really see.  I tried to clear the cobwebs.  The wind howled.  My eyes squinted and blinked some more.

I started the engine. Sima turned on the instruments.  I kept trying to make sense of the world, but still couldn’t really do it.

It finally registered that we were floating loose.  We had drifted to the side of the bay, the other side from where Jope had been.  I looked at our depth, and saw seven feet.  That’s not much.

I put Leander into reverse.  Are we moving? Did I put it in gear?  I did.  Were we aground?  Even though the depth read seven feet, maybe the rudder or the bow was in sand?  On a rock?

As the cobwebs cleared, I realized that the reason that I couldn’t see much was because it was pitch black.  But I could see that we were moving.  And I could to some extent orient myself with the lights on land, but the darkness and my fogginess combined to confuse me as to where I was, how I was moving, and where I was going.  I turned on the chartplotter, and now its screen blinded me.  I pushed buttons to dim the screen, but a process that usually takes a couple of presses took me about ten.  I kept on looking up from the screen to try to see what was happening, but with the bright monitor now inches from my face, saw little.

Finally the screen was dimmed.  Now I worried about where we were moving.  My first concern was the land from which I’d backed away.  Were there rocks nearby?  I maneuvered Leander to the deeper part of the bay, and watched the depth under the keel grow.  That was good.  Now we had to worry about other boats in the harbor, and the several other mooring buoys.  We couldn’t see much of anything on the water.

Can you see?

Sima took out our enormous spotlight, and illuminated our immediate surroundings.

I headed out of the harbor, slowly, to catch our collective breaths, get some room, and to make a plan.

Sima took the wheel, and I went forward to see what had happened.  The mooring line to which we had tied was thick and beefy, but it had chafed completely through at the bottom, where it had attached to the cement block underwater. It should have been chafe protected.    We cleaned up the jumble of lines at the bow to ready ourselves to take a new mooring.

As we headed out of the harbor, downwind, the seas began to pick up considerably, and we turned back in.  As we nosed Leander back into the wind, we felt its full force.  It was a gusty wind, and would abate for a moment, and then blow again like the dickens.

We discussed whether we should drop the anchor or take another mooring.  We decided on a mooring.  There were eight other boats that seemed secure.  (The Dutch boat had slipped because his line had come undone, rather than the mooring line.)  And it would be a challenge to find the space to swing at anchor when everyone else was moored.

As we headed back in, Sima shone the spotlight on the obstacles, and we dodged the other boats and the outer moorings.  Alexander helped immensely by calmly observing his surroundings, seemingly inured to the stressful overtones in his parents’ voices.  We picked a mooring close to shore, and headed for it.

We’ve become pretty adept at picking up moorings, and I can’t remember the last time that we didn’t grab it on the first pass.   But tonight was more difficult.

Sima got the mooring briefly in her hands on the first pass, but she couldn’t keep hold of it.  Nor could we get it on the second, third, or fourth passes.  The wind was really blowing hard.  It was pitch black.  The feeder line on the mooring was string-thin, and very difficult to grab.  And young Alexander was also involved.  Sima had earlier gone back down below, dressed him in warm clothes and his winter hat, and put him into a pouch and on her back.  I drove the boat, getting us as close as possible to the mooring, and Sima’s job was to grab it with the boat hook and pull the line aboard.  With Alexander hanging onto her neck, it was a challenge for Sima to bend down around the bow rail and get hold of the mooring.  One is somewhat less dexterous with twenty curious pounds on your back, trying to help but really just getting in the way.  In addition to moving the boat about, the wind also made communication between the two of us difficult, and its force gave Sima only seconds to grab the mooring before the boat was pushed away .  And I couldn’t see any of this very well from back in the cockpit.

On the third pass, Sima hooked the buoy with the boat hook, but the wind began to blow us off before she could pull it on.  I ran up to help, and grabbed the boat hook.  But the wind was too strong, and we couldn’t hold the line with the boat hook.  The line, however, had no problem holding the boat hook, and pulled it from my hands, just after it bent in two.  Something to add to the “To Purchase” list, I noted as it bobbed away.

We have a spare boat hook, but it is only half as long.  Sima’s job, which had been difficult a moment before, now became just about impossible.

On the fifth pass, the wind abated a little bit.  Leander nosed up close to the buoy, and Sima was able to get it close.  I took the boat out of gear, sprinted forward, and was able to bend down and scoop the feeder line as it began to drift away.  I pulled it aboard, got hold of the thicker mooring line, hauled for all I was worth, and we were able to secure the line to a cleat.

Tied to the new mooring, at last.

Ten minutes later, we were properly re-tied to the mooring.

The end of our mooring!

Back down below, Sima and I hugged – partly to give congratulations for good teamwork and a job well done, and partly in relief.  That wasn’t much fun.

How had Sima woken up? Paul had heard nothing!  Sima said that she’d heard a thud and then a bang at the back of the boat.  Even when she sleeps, her ears are closely tuned to hear anything exceptional from Alexander.  This bump in the night must have been on the same frequency.

Our adrenaline was still pumping.  Alexander’s too!  He and Sima crawled back into bed, but Alexander wanted nothing to do with it, crawling to and fro, laughing and giggling, and generally kicking up a ruckus.  It’ll take him a while to relax.  Us too. So at 3:00 a.m., I write this note, while Sima tries to ease Alexander back to la la land.

Alexander was as wired as we were, and had a tough time getting back to sleep. Here, he pops up like a whack-a-mole, as Sima repeatedly tries to pull him down to nurse.

It is early October, and we’re still sailing.  In the last several weeks, we’ve moved back and forth between Turkey and Greece. For the last three days, we’ve been on the island of Nisyros.

Nisyros is in the Aegean, just south of Kos, and not too far from the Turkish coast.

Nisyros was somewhat of a surprise destination.  We were supposed to go to Kos, and we had set sail for there.  But we made good time.  Sima kept Alexander company while Paul read some more about Kos and the surrounding islands.  Kos didn’t sound that appealing, being crowded and touristy.  But a little bit further down the road was Nisyros.  Paul read that Nisyros is a dormant volcano with a supposedly picturesque crater at its center.  “Where are we going,” asked Sima, peering out to see that we were bypassing Kos.  “Nisyros,” said Paul.  “Isn’t that the volcano?” asked Sima.  “Yup,” replied Paul.  “Yippeee!” cried Sima.

We Med-moored to a wall along the boardwalk in Pali, a small village on the island’s north coast. Soon after we were tied up, we walked down the waterfront to a car and moped rental shop called the “Eagle’s Nest.” Mike, the proprietor, has a good reputation.  He had lived in NYC for thirty years, before returning home to Nisyros several years ago. He spoke flawless English (well, as much as New Yorker can do so).

We talked to Mike about renting a car. The island was not terribly big, but there were four separate villages, a ton of monasteries, and some not so small mountains in between (topping out at 2,200 feet).   Mike was congenial and informative.  He spent a half hour with us and a map of the island, telling us what we should see.  We left, and told him that we’d probably come back for a car the next morning.

The next morning, however, we still hadn’t made up our minds about the car.  Paul wanted to hike.  Sima was somewhat less inclined to do so.  We didn’t really know the trails.  It would most likely be very hot. We would have to carry Alexander the whole way, in addition to our water and supplies.  On the other hand, we have loved the hikes that we’ve gone on, and tend to be able to see so much more along back roads and trails than we see flying about in a car.  And Alexander tends to like them.  OK, we finally decided.  We’ll hike.

We went back and saw Mike on the way out of town, and gave him a small tip, plus two banana muffins that Sima had baked.  He laughed and graciously accepted, and then gave us some more guidance about the island.

So, at about 10:30, off we went.

Mike had sent us out of town along a short cut, some stairs that led straight up a steep incline, and avoided the snaky main road.  We started climbing, and within minutes were both sucking wind.  Uh oh, Paul said to Sima.  What have we gotten ourselves into?

We got to the main road, and then walked about two kilometers to where, supposedly, there was a path that branched off the main road and lead up to a monastery.  We stopped at a gas station to ask for directions.  The woman at the counter stepped outside, and pointed us towards the next coastal town, but said that the monastery was “very, very far.”  No, we protested, we’re not going along the road.  There is supposed to be a path somewhere right around here, we said, gesturing with our hands.  Another fellow from the garage joined in, apparently understanding that we wanted the path, not the road.  “No, no, no!” said the woman. “They have a baby!  They can’t take that path!”  We’ll be just fine, we said. Where is it?  She walked to the road side, and pointed to a gap in a fence 100 yards down the road. “It’s there, “she said.  “But the baby! You shouldn’t go!”

So off we went!

The path was fine. It was steep and twisty, and led over and through a series of terraces up the hillside.  We sometimes lost its thread, and would find our own way up through the terraces. After about two hours of it, and having climbed over a couple of fences and walked along the border of a farm, we happened upon the monastery, about where we thought it should be according to the map.   We took the camera out of the backpack, and began a day of picture taking.

Nisyros from sea. We anchored in the town seen as white buildings on the lower right.

Paul and Alexander at rest on the roof of Evagelistra Monestary. The building fronted a small plaza, in the middle of which was a fresh water well.

Alexander was intrigued by the bell.

The scenery on the climb was wonderful. Here, you can see the island of Kos furthest left, and the Turkish coast in the distance. The island direct center, with the bleached white exposure, is Gyali, and is being mined for pumice. In the foreground, note all of the terraces on Nisyros. They were all over the island, and represented an enormous amount of work. The terraces are old, and probably ancient, and were no doubt built over many generations. But when were they built? What crops were grown? When were they abandoned? And why? We asked some of the locals, and found no reliable answers. We know that they were probably abandoned no more than a generation or so ago. We have read that it takes only 20-60 years after abandonment for the terraces to become overgrown with scrub and brush. Certainly, that hasn't yet happened here.

Sima and Alexander take a feeding break higher in the mountains, at another monastery, this one called Dlavatla. We've seen it written that some of these ruins are "neolithic", but the arches on these buildings are a giveaway that they are post-Roman. But maybe some parts are older.

There were villages and dwellings along the way. The arch above this house seems to say "NI 193," but maybe we're misreading the Greek. And maybe there is one more number after the "3?"

We didn't see anyone anywhere in this part of the mountains, and yet the church was in remarkably good condition and, obviously, still used.

A simple altar.

The houses look ancient, but from their condition one suspects that they were lived in only a generation or so ago.

Four and a half hours of hiking brought us to the center of the island and its volcanic crater. With the spewing gases, pungent smell of sulfur, and pools of boiling water, you wouldn't think that the volcano has been dormant for thousands of years. To provide a sense of scale, you could probably fit three or four professional sports stadiums in the crater.

Before the islanders went to work on building terraces, the landscape would have looked like what you see in the distance. Just imagine what they would have looked like in use, green with leafy vegetables or flush with olive trees.

Leaving the volcano, we started up one of the main roads, which ran behind the volcano around to the south side of the island. We had, at this point, six or so hours into the day, hiked up a mountain and down its back side. Our legs were starting to feel it. Now we are going back up again, this time headed to the village of Nikia.

Gaining elevation from the volcano.

From the paved road, we were trying to find a path up the mountain. Found it! Looking like something out of a fairy tale, it snaked up the hillside toward Nikia, a small village that we wanted to visit. But we couldn't figure out how it could possibly reach all the way up to the village, perched precariously high and seemingly separated from us by a couple of shear cliffs.

Looking down a well near the side of the path.

The road became even more magical as we hiked. It was a stone path! Oh the work it must have taken to build it!

Up we climbed through the terraces, gaining height once again.

We came to one corner, at the top of an incline, and wondered what would lay around the bend. We knew we had to get across the ledges, but wondered how the road was going to do it. Sima moves forward to see.

Ahh, this is how it goes! They built the road out from the side of the ledge! It was such a beautiful climb.

Wild goats were everywhere. We were warned not to hike on Wednesdays, Saturdays, or Sundays, "because those are hunting days." The two fellows are actually about a mile away from the ledge from which we took this picture.

Many of the houses had these circular structures on their roofs or in their yards, which were used for threshing grain.

All the dwellings and farms were abandoned. It must have been even more beautiful when the farms were working.

Yay -- we finally reached Nikia! It was beautiful.

The village playground.

Paul and Alexander go for a walk in the town square.

Alexander makes friends everywhere. Here, a new friend from Nikia.

A view of the volcano's crater from Nikia. In the foreground, the road on which we hiked before turning on to the path up into the hills.. Can you see the precipitous drop down to the crater, and how we wondered how we'd be able to climb to the town, which seemed to be straight up above us?

On one of the few flat places in town, the villagers built their basketball court.

This black cat has found a nice place in the fading sunlight to get some warmth. The sun WAS fading, and, after seven hours of hiking, we found ourselves seven miles from the boat through the hills. Should we hike back, or call a taxi? Paul was sure that Sima would vote for the latter, but she wanted to walk!

So off we set on the road back to Pali. Here, Sima works to keep Alexander entertained, who is being carried, forward facing, by Paul.

Looking back at Nikia, a blaze of white in the fading sun.

Due south, the island of Tilos.

What would a Greek island be without a church or two set on the mountain tops? Here, Agios Theologos. Just try to pronounce that name without sounding Greek!

Sima pushes on.

The sun sets behind one of the island's peaks. (And Paul said, after he snapped the photo, "Darn those electric cables!")

No more daylight! But we have a flashlight, a half moon, and a good wide road. On we go.

Alexander asleep on Sima's feet.

Done! Just the last kilometer down hill to our berth at Pali!

One day in early July, after we’d finished some back-breaking projects that we hadn’t been anticipating, and as we prepared to get back to sea, Sima noticed that the refrigerator wasn’t very cold.  In fact, it was at about room temperature.

We investigated.

We’d been low on refrigerant before, and it was simply a matter of attaching the necessary gauges and a refill can to bring things back to normal.  This time, however, we found that system was drawing a vacuum.  Our manual says that when we see this, we’re to “call the manufacturer.” Uh oh.

So we did some more reading and investigating over the next two days, and figured out that we must have a leak somewhere.   But we didn’t know where, nor whether it could be fixed.

On day three, we had a vendor come by and re-pressurize the system, and the leak made its presence known with a large hissing sound.  It was in the line connecting the condenser to the evaporator. The vendor told us we couldn’t repair the line or the evaporator to which it was connected, and offered to custom build a new holding plate for us for about 650 Euros. It took us another day or so to figure out that this solution wouldn’t work.

The next day, we met some folks at the dock swore that it was easy to repair a leak in a refrigerant line, with the right welding tools and careful work.  Although this was counter to all that we’d read, they provided the name of a vendor, and so we arranged for him to come by.

He came by the next day.  He conceded that he wouldn’t be using welding tools, but rather  epoxy glue.  Even if I wanted to pay someone else to do an epoxy job, epoxy has no chance whatsoever of sealing a high-pressure aluminum refrigerant line.

Another couple of days had passed, and we had now come to the grim conclusion that we’d have to replace the entire refrigeration system.  We also came to realize that if we would be permanently installing new components, we’d also need to address some long-standing problems with the physical structure of the refrigeration box itself.

We have no “before” picture of the inside of the fridge, but trust us — it was a mess.  It had always been much too big, and we had cut down on some of the space by cutting up Styrofoam boxes (that we’d picked up at a fish market in Sri Lanka) and using them to raise the floor and decrease the width. The unit had originally been designed as a literal ice box, which meant that it had an extra, foot-deep space at the bottom, covered by a wooden grate, into which one was supposed to stock ice.  When it was changed into a real refrigerator, however, that dead space at the bottom, covered by a teak grate, did nothing but increase size without offering any storage space.

It was colossally difficult to pull the heat from such a huge space, and our refrigeration system has long been a huge draw on the batteries.  You might be able to imagine all the jig-saw-shaped pieces of Styrofoam that had to be propped into just the right places to make this work. All the Styrofoam looked ugly, was impossible to clean, and didn’t really do the trick making a smaller box, because it wasn’t sealed and the cold air could flow through the various cracks in our packing job.

(To add insult to injury, the Styrofoam floor had hidden the fact that an inch of water had collected along the real floor.  The evaporator line sat in this water.  Electrolysis set in, and a the leak had developed there.)

Another problem was that the two top-loading doors did not fit properly, and there was a gap between them through which the cold air escaped.

We put our thinking caps on.  The first job was to find the fridge we needed, no easy task in Turkey.  Turkish chandlers are terrible for this sort of thing.  No one carries stock, and we learned it would take upwards of five weeks to get the parts shipped in.  And we knew from past experience with Turkish customs that when the parts finally do arrive, you get held up again until you pay a hefty customs fee.

We didn’t have the time or patience for that.  Eventually, we found a vendor in Greece, “Alex Marine,” with a system that would work.  George, our contact there, said he could have them waiting for us in Rhodes in just two days.  As Rhodes was a short sail away, this was a good result.

We made plans to check out of the country and head to Rhodes!

As if a vendor would actually do what he promised!  After paying for two-day delivery, we received our refrigerator TWO WEEKS later.

We went to work on the reconstruction of the box while we waited, and installed the fridge when it finally came.

Here’s what we did:

The start. The white snakey looking thing rising up above the locker in the background is the offending line in which the leak developed.

Here is the fridge interior with a piece of the old Styrofoam still floating about. Envision a brick wall made with this stuff, although the pieces were in general larger, and you have a sense of the disorderly nature of our previous setup. The teak grating sat upon the lip that runs along the wall to the left and right, and the small black dot in the floor is a drain, useful for when this was an actual ice box. I'm going to fill the space up to the lip with layers of extruded Polystyrene cut to fit the space, covered with a new stainless steel floor. Note the metal bracket and spring support at the top left, used to prop the door to open. In addition to being yet another source through which cold air would escape, it is a terrible practice to prop the fridge doors open for any length of time. These will be removed.

The old compressor/condenser just after being pulled out of the locker to the lower left. The copper snake is the continuation of the refrigerant line. Although the compressor still worked, it had to be replaced because it had been filled with R12 refrigerant, which has been banned in most countries. We could find R12 in Turkey, but we are replacing the evaporator, and most of them come pre-charged with the newer refrigerants (R134A, for example). You can't mix the different types of lubricating oils found in the old and new refrigerants. Also, with the hole in the refrigerant line, there was a good chance that moisture had made its way into the compressor, which would freeze and plug the evaporator.

Cutting the Polystyrene. The boat got messy, and would only get worse, as the Polystyrene cutting would be followed by work with gooey epoxy, glass mat, epoxy filler, spray foam, epoxy paint, and 5200. Boy, this project was a handful.

After the Polystyrene was packed in, there was still a small, uneven gap between the top layer and the ledge where the new stainless steel floor would sit. I used spray foam as needed to fill the remaining, uneven gap, sanding down these uneven globs to a flat surface. Can you tell that spray foam is messy to work with in open spaces?

A local metal worker fabricates the new stainless steel floor, putting the finishing touches on a new drain. But we later re-read Don Casey's book chapter on the subject, and he convinced us that drains are a bad idea as they pull cold from the fridge. It would be sealed over.

"Ha ha ha, Dad's still working on the fridge! Ha ha ha, ho ho hodie harr giggle. Snort!"

The new Isotherm refrigeration unit finally arrived! The evaporator came as big flat panel, and needed to be bent into a rectangular shape to fit the freezer space. This was made all the more challenging by the fact that the evaporator had certain "no bend" zones and because the corners would be rounded rather than square, so that one needed to calculate where the bend would start and finish along the panel. It took a long time to figure out if and how the panel could be made to fit. But we figured it out. Here, I'm putting in the first bend.

The stainless steel floor in place. The edges were first filled with epoxy filler, and then sealed with 5200. Getting this completed felt like a major milestone. Note, at the top left, that the brackets and door braces have been removed. And the drain that we had thought to include has been filled with 5200 (the white dot in the middle of the floor).

The parts to the new wall. To provide strength, the extruded foam has been covered with a priming layer of epoxy resin, then glass mat, and then four more layers of epoxy. The glass mat can be seen protruding, fuzzy-like, from the edges of the blocks. The long skinny piece on the right will be a new bar that rests between the two doors, allowing them to seal more tightly. And the piece on which it rests will be the wall that separates the freezer from the fridge.

The new walls have been sanded smooth and put in place. A hole was left in the top so that the empty space behind the wall could be filled with spray foam insulation, the first layer of which is protruding from the bottom. The dividing wall is also in place, separating the freezer, to the left, from the fridge, at right.

The empty space behind the wall has now been filled with insulating foam, and the hole atop the wall sealed. The wall's yellowish tint comes from the epoxy filler, which has been used to smooth the joined edges and also the uneven surface created by glass mat. This will now be sanded smooth.

The finished bottom and new wall. A coat of white epoxy paint has been applied to the new wall. The noodly looking things on the far wall consist of foam that has oozed out of some no-longer-used screw holes. They'll be shaved smooth and then sealed with epoxy.

Here, MarineTex has been used to cover the drain. This would later be sanded smooth.

Isotherm only supplied four plastic spacers, used to keep the evaporator away from the wall, and the evaporator plate had pre-drilled holes in only two places -- at the ends -- where the spacers could be attached. We'd bent the evaporator into a square, and so four spacers weren't enough. So I made my own spacers from some elecrical conduit plugs, and used 5200 to stick them to the walls. I also made some small plastic wedges (cut from a neoprene washer) to keep the evaporator from resting on the floor, and they can be seen in the corners.

The separating wall in place, with holes now cut in the middle, sealed with epoxy and epoxy paint. This will be a "spillover" fridge. That is to say, all the cooling takes place in the freezer section, and cold then "spills over" through the holes cut in the divider. The holes can be opened and closed with plugs to get an appropriate balance. The covered plug for the drain can be seen as a gray circle at the bottom of this picture, and it has cleaned up nicely. (We would eventually install a small fan in one of the holes, controlled by yet another thermostat, to create better air flow in the fridge and decrease frosting in the freezer.)

The separating wall is here topped with the new divider, which will nestle up between the two otherwise poorly designed top-opening doors. There was a big gap in the protective insulation between the two doors, which this divider will fill.

With the construction of the box now mostly completed, I could now turn to the installation of the compressor. Here, electrical and refrigerant lines are led through a galley storage locker.

Isotherm supplied a mounting bracket for the condenser that had a side wall. If mounting on the floor, the side wall served no purpose other than to diminish air flow. Here I take a Dremel Tool to it, cutting away the unneeded side.

Preparing the installation of the new Isotherm compressor.

Wiring and refrigerant line exit the fridge through a new hole drilled for that purpose.

Re-wiring the exhaust fan, left, and thermostat, right. The thermostat turns the fan on when the compressor compartment grows too hot, and the fan draws air into an adjoining compartment.

Final wiring and plumbing of the compressor. The bus bar at the top was added to deal with the proliferation of junctions.

The holes through which the wiring and refrigerant lines ran in the fridge were sealed with insulating foam.

Applying new gasket. See the gap between in the doors above that I am talking about? They will now close around the divider. How could the person who did the original design not have addressed that?

The old teak grating was in pretty sorry looking condition. It could be put to good use, however, at the bottom of the freezer.

The re-sized grate inserted in the freezer, after cutting, cleaning, sanding, and oiling.

The old baskets were too big for the newly sized fridge, and so I needed to cut them down and then sand them smooth.

The baskets cleaned up and inserted in the fridge.

Done!! Hallelujah!! Frozen things!!

Refrigerated things! Including a bottle of cold bubbly to celebrate the fact that we have the ability to make cold bubbly!

Ahh -- a sweating glass of ice cold tea!

Game On

This is a story about hockey.

We had been following the Bruins closely from over here, seven time zones removed from Boston and ten time zones from the site of game seven.  This is not exactly hockey territory.

Keeping abreast of the NHL from here takes more effort than turning on the TV.  On game days, or, rather, on the morning following games, we learn results from the sports websites, with only a quick glimpse if the B’s have lost, but a full hour reading stories from  Boston and Vancouver in the event of a win. (Yes, “we.”  Sima followed the series as closely as I did, although admittedly she lost no sleep.)

As the series went to games four, five, and six, I had been getting up at four or five a.m. to “watch” the last period on one of the sports websites.

I say “watch” because I was following the game by reading “live” text commentary, rather than watching video or listening to radio.   Following a game in this fashion is a little limiting and very annoying, as the typical postings combine live-game commentary with tweets from the unwashed masses, so you get something like “Goaaaalllllllll!” followed by “I can’t believe he let that one in,” and then “this series is sooo over.” After what then seems like an eternity, a couple of minutes will pass before you are able to learn important details, like which team scored.

As the series crept toward a seventh meeting, we started to think about finding a way to watch the game.

We had been trying to locate an on-line radio station or a website that streams the games in Turkey, but weren’t having much luck.  Many of the available pay-per-view sites are blocked in Turkey.  We did find that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation allows the games to be streamed for free, but, alas, one must be in Canada to take advantage of that offer.  Maybe you have to be Canadian, to boot.  I dunno.

We came across this exchange on one Internet forum while during our research:

Query:  “Hey, does anyone know where I can stream NHL games for free?”

Answer (chosen as most useful by others in the forum):  “In hockey heaven.”’

That option not being readily accessible, we began to look for others.  The NHL doesn’t have many fans here, and it didn’t help that the game would start at 3 a.m. locally.  Sima, began to make telephone calls.   She learned that the game would be on Fox Sports Europe and, further, that Fox Sports Europe is carried by one of Turkey’s largest cable companies, Digiturk.  This was a good start.

But from there the road got a little bit bumpy.  Sima called a handful of sports bars.  They’d be closed.  She found one that would be open, but, alas, it would be disco-like loud with music by 3 a.m. and, even if young Alexander could have dealt with that, it was going to close at about the time the third period would start.

(A brief digression, as this reminds me of a similar story that played out some 35 years ago.

My Dad was, and is, an avid Celtics fan.  My mom tells the story of the 1964 finals, when Dad, unable to get off of work, sent her into Boston to stand in line to buy tickets for a game, one-year old Paul strapped to her back.

I don’t remember that event, but I do remember that for game five of the 1976 NBA finals, I was in Ithaca, New York with my dad and other family members to attend sister Joanne’s graduation.

It was the 4^th of June, and game 5, between the Celtics and the Phoenix Suns, was to be played that night in Boston.

There was no TV in the dorm room where we stayed.  So we started walking into town.  There were probably some bars that would be showing the game, but my age, 13, would keep that from being a viable option.  As we walked down the street, we found an appliance store selling TVs.  We walked in and Dad was allowed to switch the channel to the game.  Or maybe it was already on.  In any event, we stood in the aisle and watched.

At around half time or so, however, the small shop began to close.  But the TV would be left on for us, and we could see it through the window!  So we stepped out into the increasingly darkening street, and on we watched!

We might have been OK had the game ended in regulation.  But it didn’t and, in what is by many considered to be the greatest playoff game in NBA history, play stretched into triple overtime.

At some point, maybe it was midnight, the TV snapped off.  It was on a timer! Dad and I found ourselves staring at our reflections in the window, and nothing much else.

Dad quickly went to work, and upon finding a nearby bar, headed towards it.  It was our only option now.

Dad approached the bouncer, and peering over his shoulder at the game being displayed on a TV at the bar, explained that he was from Boston.  And this was the finals.  He would be at the game, for goodness sakes, if it weren’t for this silly graduation.  Could he and his young son come in?  Dad would watch him as closely as the game.

Sure, OK.

So there we sat at the bar, pop with a beer, which he nursed because he doesn’t like beer so much, and me with a coke, which I nursed because dad told me to, as finishing it would mean that he’d have to buy me another.

Boston won in the third OT, and although I remember none of the details of the Greatest NBA Game Ever, I do remember just about every part of being with my dad that night.  It was with this memory in mind that I looked forward to finding some place to watch the Bruins with Sima and Alexander.)

Sima began to call hotels.  If we could get a room with TV that carried Digiturk, that would work just fine, especially for young Alexander.   But many of the hotels did not have TVs in their rooms.  Others had TVs, but did not carry Digiturk.  Sima was growing increasingly tired of the exercise, and we were about to pack it in.

Then she called a place called the Eden Garden Hotel. (Could this be hockey heaven?!)  They did not have TVs in the rooms, but they had a giant screen by the pool.  Does it carry Digiturk?  Sure it does.  Are you sure?!  “I’m 100% sure!”  The proprietor said that he would be willing to set us up by the pool late at night.  We were a go!

It was late on game day, and we called, texted, and emailed Seth and Jamie, our good friends from a boat called Slapdash.  They are from Vancouver, and were as eager to see the game as we were.  We didn’t hear back from them, and so figured that we’d be watching the game by ourselves.

We headed out for the game, which required that we dinghy in from our anchorage to the local marina, take a bus to central Marmaris, and from there catch another bus to the other side of town.

En route, we called Seth and Jamie again.  They would be coming!

We all checked into our rooms and, at about 10 p.m., went to sleep.

We awoke to alarms at 2:50 a.m., and trudged out to the pool.  Some golf finished up on the screen, and then, in what almost seemed like magic, the start of game seven began in full living color.

We were stretched out on deck chairs and, because it was cool that night, wrapped tightly in blankets.  But that’s the way it should be for hockey.

Everybody's happy - it must be early in the game

It was good to watch it with Vancouver fans, and knowledgeable ones at that.  (Seth is Canadian and a hockey player and a former lumberjack and brought a keg of beer to the 3 a.m. game.  You can’t get much more authentic than that!)  But it was also difficult at times, because each of us had to keep our emotions in check.  Sima and I couldn’t bounce about when the B’s scored, and Seth permitted himself only a single explicative, under his breath and through gritted teeth, when Boston’s third goal wandered in.

Alexander cooperated bravely, raptly watching the first couple of periods, then becoming fidgety in the third, which allowed me to pace about the pool, using the ruse of carrying him to and fro to hide my need to walk off the adrenaline.  Maybe he felt the same.

With five minutes to go, we were still holding our collective breaths, but, at 3-0, the writing did seem to be on the wall, and the open-netter with time dwindling sealed it.

Daybreak brought the game’s end and an unhappy Seth, none too pleased that Vancouver’s 40-year wait for the cup would continue.

The game ended as the sky began to lighten and the air to warm.  We lingered, watching the post-game ceremonies. Seth and Jamie were gracious in defeat, and we tried to be so in victory.

It was nice to win. We reflected, however, that watching the game in hockey heaven with such good friends was about as good as it gets, and would have made a less fortunate result easier to take.

Making our ocean-going sailing vessel “baby proof” is something new for us, and we look at our living space with new questions these days:  Can that hollow be converted into some type of a playpen where baby can be safely tucked away?  We’ve got little that fills that bill.  Or, with more trepidation, can anything bad come of that sharp edge, or drop-off, or spinning part?  That list has been easier to complete!

But, as Ali ably demonstrates in this video, we’re making progress.  He likes his “Jumperoo.”  We’ve had to turn a deaf ear to the comments from some of the elders here (“Stop that!  You’ll make him bow-legged!”), but it helps that he seems to enjoy it so much, creating a racket with the squeaky spring and his own shrieks, that deaf ears come easily.

Making Friends

Where to start?!

We’re in Marmaris Turkey, “we” being the good ship Leander, papa bear Paul, mama bear Sima, and young Alexander.

Our most recent blog posting was – gulp – last year!  So much has happened, and there is so much to write about, that the thought of catching up is somewhat overwhelming.

Of course, we can’t tell seven months of stories in one posting.  Do we start with Alexander and our new life with him?  All the people we’ve met — the good, the bad, and the otherwise?  Do we tell of all the boat work? The things we’ve seen?

Maybe these stories will never be told.  And if we attempted such an undertaking now, one would surely be hard pressed to slog through it.

So here, instead, following Alexander’s example, we take a baby step and share a little bit about our current status.  (Alexander has not, at six months, actually taken any baby steps, but you get the picture.)

We write on a slow and sunny Sunday afternoon.  Just now, Alexander and Sima lie aft, Alexander suckling through lunch, fading in and out of sleep.  When it appears he has truly nodded off, Sima rises to leave him, only to have his sleepy hand tighten around a strap of her clothing, pulling her back.  Sima sighs, returns to her book, and Alexander continues to nibble in a semi-conscious half sleep.

Leander at anchor in Fethiye

The boat has been back in the water for about a month.  It was on the hard for the duration of the winter, and the amount of work with which we were faced and got done was mind-numbing, a phrase which we don’t use loosely.  As an exercise in catharsis, we’ll post a separate note about all of that.

Leander at anchor in 22 Fathom Bay

We began sailing again just over two weeks ago, on May 20, and have done three short day sails along the coast, leaving Fethiye and stopping first at 22 Fathom Bay, then at Ekincik, and now at Marmaris.  We’ve stopped here (perhaps stalled is a better word) to deal with three lingering must-be-addressed boat problems.

One was knocked down easily – the new batteries weren’t charging properly, and after a morning of tests, we isolated the problem at the high-output alternator.  We removed it, took it to a shop, and after some back and forth with the electrician, saw that the internal wiring for the diodes had frayed and broken.  An inexpensive fix, a return to service, and now it’s cranking out amps at a better clip than it ever did.

The second problem was our chartplotters, which have been misbehaving ever since we left the U.S.  This could be the subject of a three page essay itself, and we came to Marmaris to meet (confront?) the local authorized technician who previously had vowed that he’d done fixed them.  He done hadn’t, but has now told us he’s contacted the manufacturer to have new units sent to us.  We’ll see.

The third problem is the rigging.  New as of 2007, it should be in the prime of its life.  We go aloft regularly to inspect it, and this time we found not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of our standing rigging cables had broken wires where the cable enters the swaged terminal.  That’s bad news.  This, too, could be the subject of a long and sad tale, but we’ll spare you, except to say that we’ll be here for a couple of extra days to get our standing rigging replaced.

These are hopefully just temporary setbacks, and we’ll get back to having fun.  We had started doing just that, a couple of weeks after the boat splashed back into the harbor.

(Sima has finally come from the back room, “Jeepers he took a long time!”  But think –if you could get the royal treatment that he does at nap time, wouldn’t you learn how to pull mom back down into bed?  This Alexander is a clever one.)

Looking back over Fethiye from the road toward Kayakoy

Before leaving Fethiye, we took a long hike to “Kayakoy,” ( “Rock Village”), an abandoned Greek settlement that lies about five miles from Fethiye, over rolling hills and through piney woods.

Alexander and Paul hiking to Kayakoy

Alexander was a champ! He likes to hike, and alternates between sleeping and gazing about at the passing scenery.  As long as he is moving, he is happy as a clam.

Ali stops for a trail-side snack

The Lycian Way

The path, part of the ancient Lycian Way, started out somewhat nondescriptly, but then became pretty cool.  The dirt path morphed into a cobbled road, about a third of the size of a traditional street, supported as it went along ledges by stone embankments.  We saw some literature that referred to the road as “medieval,” but it seems more likely to be Roman, because it has all the earmarks of their roadwork, and because from what we’ve read the folks that were here from the 10^th to 16^th centuries wouldn’t have been up for building roads like that.

The abandoned village of Kayakoy

Kayakoy itself was haunting.  The settlement is hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old, and occupied through to the last century.  When the Greeks and Turks exchanged populations in the 1920s, the entire site was evacuated.  Some exchanged Turks came to replace them, didn’t like it, and the place has been crumbling ever since.  The Turks called it “Kayakoy” because the homes, streets, shops, walls, and churches are built entirely of stone.

We got a ride back to Fethiye on a dolmus (a Turkish mini-bus), shopped for a kilim in the markets, and then had a spectacular and well-earned dinner of pide (a kind of Turkish pizza) before finally going home to collapse on Leander.

Alexander's first passage

Alexander was similarly easy going during our three sails.  He fusses sometimes, but no more than usual, such as when he wants someone to play with him, or he’s hungry, or sleepy. He may be getting a little bit seasick, as one of the early stages of it is sleepiness, and he seems to be more sleepy than usual on passage.  But he is certainly not becoming visibly sick or crying endlessly, something we had feared.

Leander at anchor in Ekincik as viewed from the mountain trail on the way to Kaunos

We did a second hike with him earlier this week, a longer and more arduous trip from our anchorage in Ekincik, again over pine-covered hills, to the ruins of ancient Kaunos.  These hills were much steeper, and the path, at times, extremely hard to follow.  We lost its trace on several occasions, especially when a newer dirt road intersected with or ran alongside our very old trail.  Sima, however, proved to be a pathfinder extraordinaire, repeatedly finding trail markers hidden deep in the woods, across a graveyard, or further along the road.  Her skills kept us going in the right direction, and we eventually passed through the village of Candir and then closed on Kaunos.

Sima in the theater in Kaunos

Kaunos was impressive.  The ruins are being excavated slowly, as in over many years, with the vast majority of the site still engulfed by tall grass, scrubby trees, and thorny bushes, through which sheep, goats, and the occasional cow wander.

We arrived, hot, sweaty and utterly exhausted from the hike, via a back entrance and away from the part of the site that had been cleaned up.  At first, on a distant hill a half mile distant, we saw another group wandering the ruins.  But they soon abandoned the place, and it was once again left to the wandering vegetation and livestock.  And to us.

We tramped down a steep embankment along a narrow path into the ruins, and met a local coming the other way with a bag of seaweed he’d harvested from the briny marshes below.  “This hill is tough,” he shared, and then pushed on after opening his bag to show us his haul.

We, in turn, moved down through the underbrush.  The back entry was certainly not the way to go, and we repeatedly found ourselves pulled at by the prickly bushes, clambering over uneven rock piles while trying to keep the thorny limbs from taking junior from us.

What we saw, initially, left much to the imagination, with stones lying in undulating mounds, and thousands of pieces of crushed terra cotta scattered about as far as one could see.  This piece looked like it came from an old pot.  Maybe that was part of a roof.  Who knew?  But these fragments, and the village itself, dated to the time of Christ and before, and it was fascinating holding the pieces in your hand.

(We later were befriended by a watchman, whose job it was to patrol Kaunos’ at night.  After a heavy rain, he told us, top layers are removed and the stuff of antiquity is spit up.  He’s found copper coins dating to the Roman era, he tells us.  We had looked, but found only terra cotta, rocks, and animal droppings.)

An ancient but recently excavated road

But as we came to the part that had been well-excavated, less work was required of the imagination.  Here, a church from the sixth century.  There, a temple to Zeus from the time of the Romans, with other remnants unearthed from the Hellenic period.  Over there, a street that had been buried under several layers of town that, when uncovered, was as shiny, new, and ready for use as those we had seen from Kayakoy, abandoned only three generations before.  Except this street was in use Before Christ.

A sixth century Christian church

Blinking in the sun on the church’s stone terrace, gazing out at the now-silted harbor from atop the 5,000 seat theater, and stepping down the stone stairs towards the outdoor temple, it wasn’t hard to imagine a time when children ran about the streets, neighbors gathered to gossip, and merchants hawked their goods from colorful storefronts.  One hundred generations ago.

Eventually, we too abandoned Kaunos, and walked on toward the nearby town of Dalyan, looking for a ride home.  We found instead, at first, a family ending their day out on their terrace and, after striking up a conversation, were invited for tea and cookies.  Alexander was passed around, with smiles and giggles from his admirers and him both.  A ride was arranged, and as the sun set, we were driven home.

These were good first forays into the continuation of our journey with Alexander.  It appears that he is a good addition to the team.

Leander has been hauled out of the water, and sits in a yard in Fethiye, in the south of Turkey. She will rest there for the winter, giving us time to welcome our coming child, and, later, to do some repair and maintenance work.

The boat had been at Setur Marina in Finike, but we don’t like staying at commercial marinas. Fethiye is also easier logistically. We have set up camp for a few months in Istanbul, requiring that we fly back and forth to the boat from time to time. The local airport down south is far from the marina in Finike, but it’s a shorter hop to Fethiye. (Don’t worry – reading these blogs doesn’t require that you keep separate in your head place names like “Fethiye” and “Finike.” Paul is still learning the Turkish language, and the names sometimes swim in his head. Erzurum or Erzincan? Izmit, Izmir, or Iznik? Throw in some slight dyslexia, a fast-speaking Turk, and little bit of stress, such as, say, when trying to grab a last-minute bus from the airport, and a mild panic can set in. Did he just say he was going to Alana, Adana, Antakya, or Antalya? Amasya? Alaca?!)

In September, when we were staying in Bodrum (easy to distinguish from Batman, in the eastern part of the country . . .), we took a couple of days to drive the coast and scout out marinas. We visited the boat yard in Fethiye. Filled mostly with Turkish gullets and only a handful of fiberglass cruising sailboats, we took to it right away. We met the proprietor, Levent, and he said all the right things about providing outside workers access to the yard and seemed laid back about things in general. We asked around, heard good things, and so to Fethiye we decided to come.

The boat yard in Fethiye where Leander will sit for the winter.

But how to get the boat from Finike to Fethiye, a two day sail?! Sima, at eight months pregnant, was encouraged not to take the trip, though she longed to do so. (“What do you mean you’re going to sail the boat without me?!) Paul figured on finding another cruiser in the marina at Finike, but did not look forward to sailing with someone that he didn’t know.

Paul flew down to Finike at the end of October and began to prepare the boat.

October 29 is Turkish Independence Day, providing a good distraction from the need to move the boat. The day started early with the thump of drums and martial music rolling over the marina. Forgetting the need to find another sailor for the moment, Paul donned his running gear, packed his camera, and went out to try to find the source. Out on the streets, he ran into another cruiser, Martha, of the New Zealand flagged sailing vessel “Silver Fern.” She was looking for the source of the music too, and so they travelled together along the streets of this small coastal town in the south of Turkey.

Where was she from? The U.S.? Paul too. She was from Boston? The North Shore? She used to work in Lynn?! What a small world. A quick friendship was formed, and when Paul and Martha found the stadium where the bands were marching and the students parading, they took up seats and enjoyed the festivities together.

Turkish Independence Day: The lead drummer signals a change in cadence. She was nothing but business throughout the celebration.

Martha was returning to the U.S. in a few days. Where to find someone to help with the boat?

Enter Samet!

We met Samet Bilgen and his wife Gugi at a wedding in Bodrum, and took to them right away. Samet is himself an avid sailor, and we had talked for a long time at the wedding about boats. Gugi had given birth to their first child, Bora, about five months earlier, and so we also talked about the birthing process and caring for toddlers. We ended up changing hospitals and physicians based upon comments that she made, and agreed to stay in touch.

Gugi found out that Paul needed help moving the boat. Samet was on the phone to Paul within minutes, asking about particulars. It would be difficult, he said, because the holiday weekend was coming up, but he said that he would make some calls to see if he could make it work.

He called back a short time later. He could make it work. He arranged travel, absolutely refused help from Paul with the cost, and was at the boat three days later.

Samet pilots Leander in the early morning light.

Samet was a treat to sail with. Paul and he talked about sailing, Turkey, reading the weather, and a host of other topics. The days passed quickly and effortlessly, and they arrived safely in Fethiye Harbor two days later. In harbor, we had slow dinners where Samet displayed skills at uncovering very good Turkish food in mediocre restaurants by drawing it out of the waiter. He also, unfortunatley, forever ruined for me Turkey’s staple beer, Efes, by helping me taste the sugar that is added at the end of the brewing process. My taste buds were perhaps happier in ignorant bliss.

The view from the boat yard in Fethiye Harbor.

Fethiye is a pleasant place to be. It is nice to hear the banging of hammers and rasping of saws instead of the whine of high speed power tools and the beeping of forklifts maneuvering in reverse. Here, calmly, in the midst of the soon-to-be snow-capped mountains, Leander will rest for a few months, while her crew prepares for a new member.

We’ve posted additional pictures in the photo gallery, which can be accessed top left.

We went home to the U.S. for several weeks.

The boat is in Turkey, and has been since August. We’ve drafted a couple of catch-up blogs, taking us from our last post, in Egypt, to the boat’s current position, in Finike, Turkey, and we’ll post those soon. We’ve been busy.

We’ve actually been home twice – the first time to comply with INS obligations with respect to Sima’s Green Card, and the second time to attend a wedding of one of Sima’s friends.

We also accomplished some other things while at home, including spending time with Paul’s parents, and attending a baby shower. For Sima.

Yup, Sima is pregnant, due in the latter half of November. Our current intent is to see if the little tyke wants to come back to sea with us when we get back on the boat in, say, April.

Being home was mostly a joy. The entry the first time wasn’t. We took flights separated by about four hours, and Sima, traveling by herself, was hassled by the Customs and Border Protection folks. They were not courteous.

Waiting for her at the airport, I learned that she had been sent to “secondary screening,” and so went to the CBP window to find out about her status.

As with all first-time U.S. Permanent Residents, Sima had been provided with a temporary two-year probationary Green Card. At the end of two years, a letter was sent saying that the two-year probationary period was extended for another year, while USCIS reviewed and considered a supplementary application that we had submitted. While we were sailing, that supplementary application was approved, and a Permanent Green Card was sent to our home in the U.S.

As she entered the country at the airport, Sima had with her the temporary Green Card and one-year extension. Arriving home before her, however, I was able to get the new 10-year permanent Green Card at the house and had it ready at the airport as I waited for her flight, just in case someone wanted to see it.

When I learned (from a woman at the airline) that Sima was being detained, I went to the window, told them who I was, and that I had Sima’s Permanent Card, if that mattered.

“Give it to me,” said the officer.

Uhm. OK. “Could I find out why she’s being detained?”

“She’s not being ‘detained.’ We don’t ‘detain’ anyone.”

Right. Got it. “Could I find out her status?”

“No, you can’t.”

I see. OK. I’ll just wait outside.

“She should have had this card already, “said the officer. “The issue [read- the reason that she is being retained] is probably that she’s trying to get in to the country on an expired Green Card. This looks old to me,” he said, holding the week-old card up to the light, as if some defect would thereby reveal itself.

“Well, no sir, I don’t think that’s correct. You see, her probationary period was extended for one year, and she has the official letter from USCIS on her person, which includes language that specifically allows her to travel, including this flight into the country.”

Blank stare. Set jaw.

“Well, I’m going to wait outside. Would it be possible for someone to contact me if there is any sort of problem?”

“No.”

I mean, there is just no reason for the surly behavior. I’m a U.S. citizen, for goodness sake. Sima is a Permanent Resident. It is important to protect the borders, of course, and even to be serious-minded about it. But there is no reason to treat people poorly.

Sima had an even bumpier ride. First she was stopped by the officer in the check-out line. “I don’t see your extension letter on my computer.” That was a bit misleading, as it does not appear that he would ever see such an extension letter on his computer.

Sima was asked to go to a nearby office, where she was interrogated by two officers after a wait of thirty minutes.

“Do you own property in the U.S.?”

“No.”

“Do you rent?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not a resident here, are you?!”

“Well, actually, I am. I maintain a residence with the parents of my husband, in Lynn, pay taxes here, keep my finances in the U.S. and certainly don’t have a permanent residence anywhere else.”

“Oh, from Lynn!? Where did your husband’s parents come from before Lynn?!”

[Now they've got her! They're probably from Vietnam or Cambodia or some Hispanic country, and not here legally themselves!]

“From Lynn. I’m pretty sure that they have been there all their lives, and certainly all their married lives.”

[Actually, parts of my family have been in North America since before the American Revolution, and fought in that war and the War of 1812.]

There were some more such questions, and finally Sima was allowed to pass. Maybe the fact that she speaks completely unaccented English and was carrying a Harvard backpack played some role. Such interrogations must be especially difficult when one is not fluent in the language. There was an attempt to intimidate me, even, and our case is pretty clear cut.

We traveled together on our second trip home, and had only an initial screening, but the questions were similarly off-base.

“Do you reside permanently outside the country? It’s OK, you can tell me.”

But home we finally came, and spent some good time with Paul’s family. Hours perusing genealogical documents with Paul’s mom at the kitchen table. A nephew’s soccer game. A visit to some work mates. A visit to Paul’s cousin’s new cheese shop near NYC. A wonderful wedding in DC.

My pop is getting older, and does not remember things quite as well as he used to. But he’s still pretty sharp, and clever as ever, and a joy to spend time with.

Some friction has always existed between my Dad and me with respect to Dad’s tendency to collect things. Is “hoard” too strong a word? In our basement, there are TVs and radios, some dating from the 60s (50s?) waiting to be restored. And lots of other things too. All of the Robertson boys have tried their hands at helping pop to clean up, perhaps none more earnestly than me, but dad’s a tough nut to crack.

For many years, we had a motor boat in the yard. It was an old wooden boat, about 18 feet long, with a 35 horse power motor. We kept it for about 15 years, and I worked on it for a couple of summers in an effort to make it seaworthy. The task was too big for me, however, and the boat gradually rotted away in the driveway. Finally, Dad got rid of it when it was clearly beyond hope.

The engine, however, stayed put, taking up residence in the driveway with a couple of non-working lawnmowers, a snowblower, a cement mixer that hasn’t been used in decades, and some other stuff. I had approached dad many times about getting rid of the motor, in particular, but pop wouldn’t budge.

On this visit, like many, dad spent hours working in the front, side, and back yards. Fruits and vegetables abound in dad’s garden, and, in season, we never want for tomatoes, rhubarb, squash, blueberries, cherries, peppers, and so on. And the yard does look good – neat and trimmed. But one must work around the collected things, and they’ll not go before he does.

But who knows how many more visits I’ll get with my dad? He’s 87 now. And although he still works out for two hours a day, he doesn’t travel quite as quickly over the same distance that he used to.

On the last day of our stay, as Sima and I finished packing our bags, Dad called me out to the driveway. “Could you help me move something?”

Sure I could. I put on a pair of gloves and followed him out to the yard. There he stood, over the boat engine, which had fallen over, with its stand, into the grass. “Help me pick that up, will ya?”

Of course. “What are we doing with it? Can we get rid of it?”

“No one will take it, will they?”

“I bet they will. Let’s put it out, with a sign.”

“OK.”

OK?! OK? Wow. I was having chills. Really.

I wheeled it out to the front of the house. “What about these four jerry cans? Get rid of them too,” I asked?

“Sure,” he said. He also let me wheel out one of the lawnmowers. This was a big day.

A pickup truck drove by. “Hey, are you tossing those things?”

“Nah, we’re selling them, I said. “$20.”

“10.”

“$15.”

Deal.

They threw the things on the back of the truck. I patted my dad on the back. He said, “you’re something,” referring to our quick profit.

I gave the money to him. “Nah, it’s yours,” he said.

“Let’s split it,” I suggested.

Deal.

Endeavor Bay, Tawila Island, Egypt

Just as we have found some Egyptians to be genuine and warm while others are less so, some parts of Egypt -the ancient parts mostly – are stunning, while others – say, anything done after about 1000 B.C.- are less picturesque.

Cairo, for example, is no Singapore. It was, in fact, by far and away, the most trash-laden city we’ve ever been in. And we’ve been to some doozies.

We read that Cairo produces something like 13,000 tons of trash every day, but collects only a fraction of that amount, the deficit being left to pile about. The evidence of the running garbage deficit is everywhere.

As our train rolled into Cairo, it felt like the tracks had been routed through a garbage dump of unending length. The locals simply chuck their trash over the fence, where it collects in enormous piles, an approach taken not only along the railroad tracks but in open lots, highway underpasses, fields, and just about every other open space in the city. Goats are everywhere amidst this sea of trash, chewing through the plastic bags to get at the goodies underneath.

Not that there is much open space into which to put the trash. Cairo has about 30 square centimeters of green park space per person, which is about the size of your foot, and somewhat less than the urban planning ideal of 15 square meters per person.

The air quality follows suit. Cairo is home to more than 4,500,000 cars (!), the majority of which are more than ten years old, and none of which are controlled by meaningful emission standards. Similarly, lead and copper smelters, and other unregulated industries, belch gases into the air. There is no real wind or rain to blow any of this stuff away, so it stagnates.

One can get used to this, right? Well, not really. We read one report that estimated that as many 25,000 people die in Cairo each year from air-pollution-related respiratory illness.

It may not change any time soon. Along water front promenades on the Red Sea, we watched workers clean walkways by sweeping the trash onto the beach below. At sea, we watched dive boats toss full bags of trash into the sea, doing so in the dark, pre-dawn hours of the morning to avoid detection by their overseas guests.

Some places, such as Port Ghalib, were comparatively clean, but this was the exception, and probably related to the fact that there were three workers for every guest at the under-populated resort. But as soon as you departed the resort itself and moved off into the dessert, you found the landscape awash in garbage, with each road-side scrub decorated with its own plastic bag collected from the wind. Some unlucky bushes had two or three bags. We’d seen the same thing in Sudan.

(Something needs to be done about plastic bags. When you buy something at a local convenience store – a piece of fruit, an ice cream, a can of ice tea – the local proprietors typically tuck it into a plastic bag or two. What can one expect but that, with so much synthetic wrapping being given away at no cost, a good amount ends up blowing around the city streets and surrounding desert.)

But once you step over the trash, duck under the smog clouds, and make it safely across the street and through the speeding traffic, another Egypt exists. And that is really something else.

The pyramids are even more impressive in real life than you’d think.

The engineering tolerances are simply amazing. The blocks weigh 2.5 tons on average, with those at the bottom heavier and the granite blocks used for the roof of the king’s chambers weighing between 50 and 80 tons each. Yet the gaps between these blocks are typically less than a millimeter, and uniform across the block’s length.

The bases of the pyramids are level, today, to 2 centimeters, and that difference may well be related to a shifting earth rather than a shifting pyramid. Each of the sides of the Great Pyramid is 230 meters in length, and they are identical to a tolerance of less than one centimeter. This was done without lasers or telescopic tools. Today, even using modern measuring standards, there is some argument that the differences in length are actually undetectable.

And if the pyramids look awesome now, at the time of completion they were even more stunning. The step-like blocks that make up the sides that we see today were originally covered with a limestone casing, still partially visible in places, so that pyramids would have sparkled the bright white of the U.S. Capitol or the Washington Monument. And most were topped by capstones, some made of gold, that would have gleamed in the sun or moonlight. They must have been something to behold.

When you enter the pyramids, and move along passageways that have not been exposed to the elements, the precision engineering becomes all the more apparent, with precisely squared corners in chambers made of blocks weighing tens of tons.

And all this was done not tens or hundreds but thousands of years ago, and the methodologies they developed were not understood until modern times. When one Arab sultan tried to dismantle a pyramid thousands of years after it had been built, he couldn’t figure out how to do it, and threw in the towel after managing only to remove enough stones to scar one of the sides.

We also traveled to Luxor, which also knocked our socks off. (Actually, they were already off – It was H-O-T HOT! registering 45 degrees Celsius, or 115 degrees Fahrenheit on more than one day. And it felt even hotter in the sun. The good news, though was that we were typically left to ourselves, unmolested by the scores of tourist buses that usually flood these sites.)

In Luxor, we saw paintings and wall carvings that were remarkable for their craftsmanship, with paint still sticking to rock walls and still looking fresh three thousand years after it had been applied.

Most of the objects that have been found in the tombs and temples in Luxor have been removed to the national museum in Cairo. And boy, is that place a disaster. The building sprawls with artifacts, but there is little rhyme or reason to the collections, and index cards that were obviously typed before the advent of the computer age provide little interpretive guidance as to what one is seeing. The Tut collection is somewhat of an exception. It has been loaned out from time to time, and has thus benefited from the organization and analysis that came as a result. But the rest of the museum has the look and feel of a poorly organized rummage sale.

(Some explanation for this might be found in the absence of meaningful leadership at the top. We read an editorial in a local newspaper by Zahi Hawass, the supposed dean of Egyptian Egyptologists, and individual responsible for the direction of modern-day Egyptology in this country. We came to the conclusion that he is a bit paranoid at best, and off his rocker at worst. In the editorial, he railed against competing foreign Egyptologists, “who are just hungry for fame for themselves. One in
particular believes that I do not know him, but I am aware of everything he says.” Hawass said that he doesn’t need to take credit for the work of others, as he has been accused of doing, because “some of my archeological projects have become the most important in Egypt.” You don’t say! He continued about “another anonymous person [who] has said that my work is just opening holes here and there in the Valley of the Kings. I know who this person is and I think he should go see our excavations . . . to see the difference between our work and his, which people actually do refer to as holes.” Go get ‘em Zahi! What he should actually do is stop digging holes, or any merit, and give up the editorial writing for a couple of weeks, and organize the mess collected at the museum.)

But when we sifted among the treasures, we found truly amazing things. For example, we were awed by full-size carvings of a prince and his consort. They are seated, carved in wood, painted with accurate flesh tones and clothing colors, staring straight ahead, and looking as lifelike as could be. The craftsman did an especially wonderful job with the eyes, which sparkle with frank gazes. We spent 15 minutes in front of the pair, trying to understand the technical skill that went into their creation but mostly just unthinkingly appreciating how lifelike they were. We read (not in the poorly interpreted museum!) that when the tomb was first excavated and a light shone on the figures, the workers shrank back in fright, convinced that the prince and his consort where actually seated in front of them. We don’t blame them.

Red Sea, Egypt

We’re in Endeavor Bay, on Tawila Island, Egypt, in the northern part of the Red Sea, just short of the Gulf of Suez; 160 miles from the entry to the Suez Canal, 215 miles from the Med, and about 550 miles from Turkey. We’ve been creeping up the Red Sea, sneaking out to grab a few miles when the forecast calls for the winds to moderate, often to find that they haven’t really moderated. But we’ve broken up some of the brutal sails with some quality time on land.

We haven’t written in a while. As Sima’s friend Erkut once observed about our blogs, the rate at which we post seems to be inversely proportional to the pace of our lives. This has the unfortunate consequence that when we have lots to write about, there is no time to do so. And the stories get harder to tell: they risk getting scrunched together, watered down, and leveled out. Details fade a little bit with time, and collecting so much in one note can be difficult to digest, let alone record.

But maybe there are benefits to such collective posts, too. Events are seen in context and themes emerge. Certainly, when you post more frequently, the tempo can be livelier, but maybe by waiting the loss of pace is balanced against some small amount of perspective gained, and humor emerges from experiences that seemed less than enjoyable at the time.

We’ve had time to reflect on Egypt, having been here for something short of two months. In light of this time here, we are, of course, completely unqualified to make the following broad-sweeping generalizations, but if Bill Bryson can sum up a town based upon a five-minute drive through without ever leaving his car, surely we’re qualified to take a shot at Egypt.

So here goes: Egyptian people are kind and big-hearted, capable of great warmth and astonishing acts of munificence. No, wait, they are untrustworthy and scheming, and wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on the leg! Of the country itself, Egypt, is a repository of stunning antiquities carefully preserved for thousands of years. But those objects that have been preserved are some small fraction of the things that the ancient kings actually left, and we have them only because generations of Egyptian tomb raiders couldn’t figure out where they had been hidden.

Sure, our conclusions are based upon anecdotal experiences only, but many of the anecdotes are fun, and so we share. Here we’ll talk about the people we met, and cover the places we have seen in a subsequent note.

We had last written after arriving Port Ghalib.

Port Ghalib is a “starter” resort city on the coast. A wealthy Kuwaiti family picked the area to develop a modest resort on the scale of, say, Disneyland, in a desolate part of the Red Sea Coast, making something out of nothing in the desert. Maybe more on the idea of Las Vegas, actually, than Disneyland, as the latter actually had some people living nearby before work started. There was nothing here before but dust.

The Egyptian coast of the Red Sea is covered with many such ventures. Some of them, like the city of Hurghada, have flourished. Hurghada has grown from a several thousand residents to more than 150,000 in a twenty-five-year time span, all based on the tourist trade. Those numbers are not an exaggeration.

But for every Hurghada, there seem to be a dozen projects almost as grandiose in conception and perhaps equally spectacular in their failure. Certainly they provide that image collectively. To sail along the coast is, in parts, to be reminded of those old Westerns where cowboys trundled through one-street ghost towns, except that there are no tumbleweeds here. But there sure is at least as much dust!

In Port Ghalib, they dredged a small, shallow marsa, converted it into a giant, labyrinthical marina, and then set up a number of sharp looking hotels, clubs, restaurants, pubs, and parks around the water’s edge.

It’ll be quite nice when complete, and even now is a pleasant place to be. But it is also a bit like a theme park in the moments before it opens in the morning. Everyone is in place and ready to go: ticket takers at the gate, costumed characters with permanent smiles affixed, ride operators ready to send folks wheeling into the sky, cotton candy vendors spinning their first treats. Except with Port Ghalib, the crowds never actually show up, and the workers – dozens of them, from waiters to shop keepers to hotel clerks and so on (although there weren’t really any costumed characters nor cotton candy vendors . . . .)- nonetheless go about their days as if the place WERE full. It feels a bit like the Truman Show, with everyone there just for you. We’re overstating this a bit, but not by much. We’d see some other people from time to time, and big crowds came once each week when new tourists came to join the live-aboard dive boats and the previous week’s divers sat about waiting to decompress – literally and figuratively — before they flew home. In general, however, the place was about as far from crowded as you can get.

But we rather enjoy the absence of crowds, and so it was a relaxing stay, and relatively inexpensive to boot. So stay we did, hemmed in by adverse weather anyway. And we came to know some good Egyptians, and some not so good ones too.

We had chosen Port Ghalib as our entry port because it is meant to be the smooth handle by which to grab the reportedly deceitful Egyptian officialdom. It turned out to be a good choice.

We had busted tail to get to Port Ghalib in time for the U.S.’s opening World Cup match against England. We arrived at 4 p.m., providing us, we thought, a sufficient cushion for the 9:30 p.m. game.

As we coasted into the marina, we were directed to stop at the customs dock, which is about a baseball’s throw away from several bars where the game would be shown. But we were told that the boat couldn’t leave the customs dock until we finished the clearing in process.

(Lest some of you harbor the misguided belief that it was only PAUL that sought to make it to the game on time, you’ve got it wrong. Sima is as much a fan as Paul, and with Turkey not having qualified, she became a dyed-in-the-wool U.S. fan. She kept track of ALL the games on a scorecard, was upset when we were late to important matches such as, say, New Zealand versus Slovakia, and when the U.S. doesn’t perform well, it seemed to take Sima longer to recover than Paul. In fact, this was an actual conversation:

Paul: “Who else is in the group with France and New Zealand?”

Sima: “Slovakia and Italy are with New Zealand. But France isn’t in that group. The third team is Paraguay. What are you asking about? France’s group or New Zealand’s?”

Paul: “Never mind. “)

On the dock, we were greeted by a junior port official, and officious he was, a good warm up for some of the others we were to meet. We turned over our paperwork, and then told him of our hope to complete formalities in time to see the game. “We should be able to get you finished by 10 p.m.,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard our request or, if he did, as if he didn’t really care. That might not work, we said, because we’d have to move the boat after we cleared in, which would take about 45 minutes, and that would be 10:45, which would mean the game would be over.

There’s not much he could do, he shrugged, and explained that immigration officials would have to come from the airport to review the paperwork, that they make a once-a-day visit to the port at about 8:30 p.m., and that after that, the paperwork would have to be sent to the airport, and then be returned. After the third time he explained this, each version a little different and making less sense, we gave up trying to understand, and asked politely if he could do the best he could.

Then we asked, “If the papers do get back here as late as 10 p.m., could we leave the boat on the customs dock for the night and make the short walk over to the bar to watch the game? He looked at us coolly: “If the boat doesn’t move, neither do you.”

Well, OK.

Captain Sharif Fawzy is the Manager for the marina at Port Ghalib, and he has a sterling reputation among cruisers for integrity and candor. We’d been emailing him in the days before we arrived. Now, we called him at his office in the nearby customs building, and, without repeating our exchange with the junior officer, asked if would be at all possible to get cleared in by 9 p.m., so we could watch the game? I don’t see why not, he said.

With his guidance, clearance was completed in little more than an hour; we parked the boat, and watched the U.S. hang on for a 1-1 tie against England.

And so began a lesson that was repeated many times during our stay in Egypt. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground – people were either warm, genuine, kind, and generous to a fault, or officious, lazy, incompetent, and dishonest.

From people that we met at the less agreeable end of the spectrum, we started a list of the top ten lies we were told in Egypt. We soon found we would have trouble limiting it ten. Here are some examples:

Pinocchio No. 1: A sign in the lobby of our Hotel in Luxor read as follows: “Tonight: USA vs. Algeria! 5 p.m. Terrace Bar.” During the day, we confirmed with reception that the game would be shown. And so at 5 p.m, we arrived at the Terrace Bar with a handful of other Americans, to see that the England Slovenia game was being broadcast. What about the U.S.? “We’re so sorry,” said one of the wait staff earnestly, “We don’t get that game here in Egypt.” A crowd of several other of the service staff gathered, chiming in. “You might as well come here. Eat. Drink. England will be a good game!” Not playing anywhere in Egypt? “Yes, we are sure. But there will be regular update of the other game on this channel. Come, sit down!”

We didn’t. We headed out into the street, and the first coffee-house that we came to was showing the U.S. game, filled with Egyptian men watching intently and smoking their water-pipes. We went back and collected the other Americans from the hotel. (The hotel also had each of the games on the TVs in the rooms, but disabled the relevant channels at game time in an attempt to get people out of their rooms and downstairs to the bar.) The hotel staff shrugged as we exited.

Pinocchio No. 2: At the pyramids, a stern faced ticket-taker asked for our passes. This seemed odd, as we were already produced our passes when we entered the gates, but we hesitatingly handed over our tickets again. “These are insufficient for this part of the pyramids,” he said, waving vaguely into the distance. “To go in this next area you must pay an additional 20 Egyptian Pounds.” It seemed somewhat credible, as at some sites in Egypt there are additional entry fees for special places, such as King Tut’s tomb at Luxor. But we smelled a rat, snatched our tickets out of the man’s hands, and calmly but deliberately walked by him, even as he initially blocked our path and then shouted in our ears as we passed. “Hey, where do you think you’re going!? You must pay!” he yelled angrily. “It’s forbidden. What are you doing?!”

He was a fraud.

After we’d gone twenty paces, he gave up, and we heard him approach another group of tourists and sternly demand to see their passes.

(That was another thing about many Egyptians. It was seldom “May I seat you?” or “May I speak to you please?” but more typically a command: “Sit here!” from the waiters. “Come here!” from the marina staff. And “Tell me where you are going!” from passing taxis. And there was a constant and aggressive pestering by taxi drivers and other vendors of all kinds. You had to grow a callous disregard to the shouts that became so effective that sometimes, to your eventual embarrassment, you’d ignore actual acquaintances shouting your name from a few feet away.)

Pinocchio No. 3: “Pssst. Mr. Sir. Come, quickly. This part of the tomb (or museum, or site, etc.) is closed, but I will take you in, quickly, while no one is looking. We must hurry!” This ruse was used over and over again at almost all of Egypt’s ancient sites. As you followed them to some “forbidden” zone, guides would look over their shoulders, as if they were trying to avoid detection from some sort of Antiquities Police, even when there was not a soul around for miles or when you were several hundred feet underground. You’d then be whisked somewhere “private.”

You’d look. Oooooo, isn’t this special?

And then the baksheesh-seeking hand would come out. We didn’t mind this so much, as we’d pay only a dollar for such privileges, which may not seem like much but was to them. Typically, the places they showed us were a bit farcical, and it was obvious that a rope had been placed arbitrarily segregating some area of the tomb, no different than the rest, so that an additional fee could be charged. But on a couple of rare occasions we were actually treated to something special, such as when we wandered away from the crowds at Karnak Temple, and into a construction zone, and were taken into some rooms that were more dazzling and freshly painted than any we’d seen anywhere else in Egypt. Or the guided tour we got of King Tut’s tomb. For that one, although no special areas were shown, the guide was clearly excited about what was there for everyone to see, and we gave him a healthy tip. After a while, though, such as when we were invited to take “forbidden” pictures at the museum, we simply paid a tip up front, and forwent the picture taking opportunity. We thought that this was the better approach, but we were soon being approached by what seemed like every guard in the building, greeting us with a friendly smile and a wiggle of the eyebrows.

Pinocchio No. 4: The cashier at the marina used a raised voice and offensive language when we questioned the added service charge for paying by credit card, a fee that the merchant is supposed to bear. When we asked his name, and confronted him about the language, he said that he really hadn’t realized what his language meant. “I just saw it in a movie. It isn’t OK?”

Pinocchio No. 5: An agent in Hurghada told us that we had to pay $50 to return our cruising permit to customs before we left the country. We didn’t fall for this one, and a call to Capt Fawzy confirmed that this was an untruth.

Pinocchio No. 6: “The standard fair for a ride down town is $15,” said the taxi driver. We knew that it was $1. We agreed on $2 Egyptian. At the end of the ride, we handed him the money, and his face darkend. “Two Egyptian?!” he bellowed angrily. “You said two Euros!” We quietly closed the door and walked away, with him calling after us that we had “broken a promise.”

Pinocchio No. 7: We met some young children hawking cheap postcards at the pyramids. Sitting under the Sphinx, they chatted us up, and they eventually forgot about selling product and kept us company for a while. We gifted them with candy gum with a prize in the package. One of the girls pocketed the prize, and then, with the saddest puppy-dog face you’ve ever seen, pleaded for more because she hadn’t gotten a prize!

And so it went. And these are just the lies that were obvious, and also don’t include stories about more general boorish behavior , such as the rude comments that Sima was often subjected to when she went out on the street by herself. Even when we were together, men would give her long, lusty up-and-down stares, often pausing in stride to complete the effect.

But just when you were about to give up on the place, you’d meet someone whose generosity and friendship would dazzle you. Captain Fawzy was one such person, and we can’t say enough about the help he provided. Hanni and Marina, from the HEPCA boat, and whom we wrote about in our Dolphin Reef blog, were of a similar ilk. There were many more examples, and the gifts they gave of themselves vastly outweighed the energy sucked away by the Pinocchios.

For example:

• At Captain Fawzy’s direction, Tarik and Waleed at Port Ghalib organized a trip to take us into the dessert to ride camels and all-terrain vehicles, followed by dinner with some local Bedouins, and later took us back into the dessert to attend a raucous late-night dinner party at a club disguised as a fort. No payment would be accepted for any of it.

• Ali Amr, and his cohorts Madda and Amina at HEPCA in Hurghada were such wonderful friends, and did so so much for us. We had met them, when we were anchored near the HEPCA boat at Dolphin Reef, and we looked them up when we arrived at Hurghada. They treated us like family. “Mi casa e su casa!” they cried, and they meant it. They graciously allowed us to use the internet facilities and make use of their home and office as we needed.

You had to be careful with Amr Ali, the director of HEPCA, whom Madda and Amina call “Santa Clause,” an allusion to his generosity. We’d no sooner mention a predicament than he would be on the phone working to make it go away. We only now regret that we set our sights too low! We should have mentioned in passing that we needed new sails or an engine overhaul, and watch him set to work. As it was, when we told him of a costly cruising permit issue, he was on the phone with the local Coast Guard official, who promised to set things straight during a visit to his office the next day. “But you’re right, ” Amr told us. “It will cost you – $1.00.” This was a bit less than the $200 we’d been quoted by the agent. “This Coast Guard fellow owes me,” Amr explained. “I let him beat me at Play Station.”

• Baha “Bob” Gad and his wife Hayat Yazidi in Port Ghalib, who treated us with great hospitality at the chain of restaurants they managed, gifted us with movies that they liked and souvenirs of Egypt, and with whom we spent many hours sharing stories and watching World Cup games.

• Sombol, our taxi driver in Luxor, who took us around the sites in Luxor for a whopping $25 each day, and then took us home to meet his family over tea when we had finished.

• Captain Muhsin Ozer, a Turkish boat captain living in Port Ghalib, who watched our boat each day while we traveled, treated us to a spectacular fish dinner at his home, and spent a good amount of time giving us guidance about our trip up the Red Sea.

• Faizal, whom we met through the HEPCA folks in Hurghada, who provided us guidance on our anchorages in the Red Sea, put us in touch with a Captain to help us with our Suez Canal transit, and called us repeatedly after our departure to make sure that we were OK.

• Hanni, about whom we’ve already written, and whom we met up with again in Hurghada, and who again followed us around and called us repeatedly: “Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?” When we said nothing, he gifted us with six-packs of beer and bags of fruit and vegetables.

• Serhat Bas, another Turk, whom we met while berthed in Hurghada. He drove us around town in his rental car to help us look for parts, put us in touch with a reputable agent to help with our canal transit, and, as with Hanni and Faizal, called us repeatedly after we set up the Red Sea to check on our well being. His mother, Esen, took great care of Sima in particular, feeding her all manner of Turkish delicacies every time she stepped aboard their boat.

• Local Bedouin leader, Abdul Salem (“Baba” (father) to his charges),, who honored us with an invitation to dinner at his home in Marsa Alam after we had met him during our camel excursion in the desert.

Listing all these acts of kindness seriatim does provide good evidence of the generosity with which we met, but also seems, in a fashion, to trivialize the relationships themselves. People didn’t just do things for us. We did things for them too. And we got to know them, sharing drinks on the boat, watching World Cup games together, or just hanging out.

In other words, we were able to develop some genuine friendships here, and contrary to the sentiments expressed by other cruisers who’d been here before us, we will be sad when it comes time to leave.