I had spent all night on a Friday in early April close-tacking my way to Gezerit Zabargad, a two-mile-long island marking the eastern border of Foul Bay on Egypt’s southern Red Sea coast. The Imray pilot says the island has several moorings, donated by U.S. AID to protect the coral reef from anchors. I saw none and found nowhere to drop the hook. Too bad because the reef-protected lagoon was as clear blue and pretty as any I had ever seen. Into a light head wind I motored Saltaire, my 1966 Cal 30 sloop, the last 30 miles to Ras Banyas, a narrow, God-forsaken strip of sand extending southeast from the coast at the north end of Foul Bay.
Perhaps I was trying to prove something to myself. Or maybe it was just an irrational need to cover as much ground as possible in the wake of my attack by Somali pirates near Al Mukallah, Yemen, a month earlier. Since leaving Dinfein Island, 60 miles north of Massawa, Eritrea, I had sailed five days to Ras Banyas, Egypt, tacking up the middle of the Red Sea and bypassing both Sudan and most of Foul Bay, knowing fully well there were plenty of safe anchorages lining the Sudanese coast.
To be sure, there had been no clear, logical reason to beat to weather in 25-knot northwesterly winds and rough seas. Other cruising vessels were enjoying a more luxurious passage up the Red Sea, motoring among the reefs lining the Sudanese coast in relatively settled weather. My determination had possessed me like a curse that compelled me to move north as fast as possible. Onward I pushed, as if running from a burning house with my clothes ablaze.
The Somalis had left me bereft of my radios, so Bill and Lisa Bailey of Apollo (Honolulu) lent me their little Grundig Yacht Boy shortwave receiver while we were anchored in Massawa. At least now I could listen to weather reports from other cruisers on the Red Sea Net. The net had predicted 15 to 18 knots of wind out of the northwest, just right for a brisk, windward bash. Before resuming my trek, I decided to take a rest, sew a tear in the genoa UV cover, and attend to a few other minor repairs for a day or two. At 0900 the anchor landed on the first try in a sandy hole in the coral at Ras Banyas.
While bubbles still fizzed from the claw anchor’s flukes, a guy in military fatigues standing on the beach tried to get my attention by whistling and yelling. I waved, raised the Egyptian courtesy flag, went down below and ignored him. Though he no doubt needed to check my documents, I’m sure his real intention was to shake me down for a pack of cigarettes. I figured I’d leave the next day and leave the repairs for the next anchorage.
Early Saturday morning, the 44-foot steel sloop Wallaby Creek (Australia) dropped anchor next to Saltaire while I was working on the genoa. When my last canvas needle broke, I rowed over to meet Alan Phillips and his young French Swiss wife Natalie, their 18-month-old daughter Lisa, and crewmembers Henry and Nathan. Henry is an Aussie geologist, and Nathan is a computer engineer from Boston. My main reason for the visit was to borrow a sewing needle from Alan. The ulterior motive, of course, was to weasel out of my chores and socialize. We spent a couple of hours drinking Sri Lankan arrack, a high-octane spirit made from coconuts, and regaling each other with stories of high seas adventure.
Alan invited me over again that evening for more arrack and a dinner of freshly speared cod, courtesy of Henry and Nathan, and honest-to-goodness mashed potatoes. Nothing like a hot, freshly cooked meal—and so much for my plan for a quick get-away the following day.
Alan had circled the globe once before as a much younger man, navigating the old-fashioned way with only a sextant, a compass and his charts. He said he had worked at a “normal” job only five years of his life. This colorful character reads Tristan Jones, listens to Bob Dylan and doesn’t let facts get in the way of telling a good story.
Having sailed solo extensively, Alan understands the loneliness and psychological peculiarities of the singlehanded sailor. “All singlehanders are crazy!” he bellowed with a thundering voice and a slam of his fist on the salon table, nearly knocking over my glass of arrack. “But it’s not the sailing that makes them crazy,” he was careful to point out. “They’re crazy to begin with!” I plead no contest.
By Saturday, the wind had risen to 25 knots again, making it difficult if not impossible to retrieve the anchor, which was now wedged under a coral head. The wind didn’t deter me, however, from accepting an invitation from Jeff and Ann Brooke on the latest arrival, High Drama (Arizona), to gin and tonics and the opportunity to watch a movie on DVD. I rowed so fast through the heavy chop to their 52-foot double-ender, salivating like a starved dog for the taste of Tanqueray gin and Schweppes tonic on ice—they even had fresh limes onboard—that I was halfway done with my first drink before I noticed I was clad in only my tattered undies. Oops!
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the wind finally died. The sun was still rising when Saltaire and Wallaby Creek weighed anchor and headed north. After an hour of motoring, the wind came up to about 15 knots. I put up double-reefed sails, just to be on the safe side, and assumed a course of 40 degrees true. Hurghada was only 218 miles away, and Jeff had encouraged us with a prediction of favorable conditions for the next few days, so I figured I could make it in three days of tacking to weather.
The barometer had been rising steadily; I read this as a positive sign. At the same time, the wind had become a bit erratic. Having sailed north-northeast for the first 16 hours out of Ras Banyas, I was forced to tack back to the west side of the Sea to avoid the main shipping lanes. But a westerly shift in the wind had me sailing southwest, right back from where I had come. Salvation came at around 2230 when the wind died, allowing me to motor the rest of the night. At 1400 the next day, I killed the engine, hove-to in the light breeze and got a couple hours of badly needed sleep.
Some hours later, the breeze freshened to about 9 knots out of the northwest. I headed due north under full sail at a comfortable, steady 3 knots. What was left of the previous day’s pasta sauce provided a base for a breakfast of Spanish rice. A can of chili-flavored sardines, a prized delicacy on Saltaire, complemented the rice perfectly.
With 157 miles left to Hurghada, progress was damned slow. By the same time the following morning, I was only 55 miles closer to Hurghada.
Five days of partying at Ras Banyas and a couple days of soft, easy sailing had lulled me into a state of languor and a false sense of security. Making matters worse, relatively benign conditions across the Arabian Sea, through the Gulf of Aden, and in the Red Sea up to this point had led me to underestimate the potential significance of small fluctuations in barometric pressure. What could a rise or fall of a few millibars mean? Twenty-five knots out of the northwest again? Big deal.
The wind died completely early Friday afternoon, so I motored the rest of the day. At about 0100 Saturday, the wind started rising quickly out of the northwest. But rather than leveling off as a strong breeze, it gained strength, rapidly surpassing the 25 knots I had anticipated. By 0330 the wind was howling at 40 knots.
I broke out the new storm trysail, custom-built in Queensland, and fumbled around in the dark as I tried to remember how to deploy it. The small, 10-ounce wonder worked like a charm, keeping Saltaire hove-to at 50 degrees off the wind, easily cleaving the oncoming seas. The problem was that she was drifting east at 2 knots. Within a few hours I would start wandering into the southbound shipping lane. Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity to test the new trysail and, once the sun came up, to take a couple of cool photos.
What I really needed at this point was a couple hours of shut-eye. Hoping the wind would ease after a few hours, I lay down on the settee at the port side of the salon and tried to think of how best to deal with the situation if the gale persisted.
For half an hour I tossed and turned, trying to rest. I got up for a moment and poked my head out the companionway, noticing the storm airvane on the self-steerer had snapped off and taken flight. The windvane wasn’t deployed, so I decided to deal with it later.
Another half hour passed. The nagging fear of being run down by a huge cargo ship in reduced visibility finally convinced me to run downwind to the town of El Quseir, less than 40 miles south of my position. I had been trying to shove the idea out of my mind because I had come so close, only 35 miles, to Hurghada. Time wasn’t really an issue. The only thing at stake was my silly pride.
With another airvane perched atop the vane gear’s turret, Saltaire ran under trysail at a fast clip toward El Quseir, and I beamed with self-confidence at having made the right choice. I lay down again and closed my eyes, content with the knowledge I would be in a safe anchorage before nightfall.
The boat surfed down the steep breakers, at some points stopping short as she drove her bow into the back of a wave. The short wave period had me worried, but sleep deprivation had lulled me into a state of languor. Then without the slightest hint of warning, the vessel gently broached over toward her port side and lay idle for a moment in bubbling, gurgling water. Still heeled hard over to her port side, she rose abruptly, like a dead whale coughed up by a spasmodic sea. Higher and higher she rose, while I lay pinned to the back of the settee.
Confused and disoriented, helpless to do anything, I held my breath. And then, SLAM! The crest of a breaker hammered Saltaire onto the flat water at the bottom of a trough, where she landed after falling at least eight feet. She had pounded the water at a 90-degree angle, smashing every loose item in the cabin against the port side and tightly compressing my rib cage, forcing the air out of my lungs like a steam roller running over a party balloon. And then with a deep groan, the old dowager slowly righted herself. Had the boat landed on her starboard side, the massive force of the impact almost certainly would have broken some bones, or perhaps even delivered me from the woes of this world.
I quickly scrambled to my feet, slipping in vegetable oil, broken eggs, pancake syrup, ketchup, and millions of pieces of broken glass. Now was not the time to bother with cleaning up, not with seas topping ten feet. It was time for a long day of hand steering under sail, which, thanks to the windvane, I hadn’t experienced for more than a few minutes in a long time.
The real damage was immediately evident outside the cabin. First, the cause of the broach had been another broken airvane, an easy target for the 45-knot gale. When the airvane was sheared off, the boat lost steerage, allowing her to turn broadside to the seas.
The forward stainless tube of the spray dodger had collapsed so low I couldn’t see through the plastic windshield. Above the spreaders, a bend in the mast formed a slight bulge to port; luckily, all of the rigging was intact. The one thing that had eluded me at first finally hit me: Saltine, the dinghy, which had been anchored firmly to the foredeck, was gone!
My first reaction was pure, unbridled jubilation. What had started out as a wafer-thin, chop-gun Fatty Knees knock-off eventually had become a mottled fiberglass quilt, a scarred veteran of seemingly endless banging and dragging over beaches, boulders, coral beds and gravel. I was free at last, never more to see that ugly, pregnant spaghetti strainer.
That fleeting moment of euphoria quickly dissipated, and the larger reality struck me like a brick. Not only did I not have radios, but now I had no way of getting to shore. Neptune had placed me under house arrest!
The full knockdown was unquestionably the nadir of all my years of sailing. A dark cloud of depression began to engulf me, nudging me toward feelings of paranoia. Why me? In deep, brooding, morose reflection, I uttered to myself, “Now I know how Job must have felt.”
Fortunately, the wind tapered off as I approached El Quseir. I had to crank on the engine just to keep up with the seas. As I approached the huge gantry marking the entrance to the small harbor, the 50-foot sloop Silver Girl (New Zealand) came into view. I was still paying out chain at the windlass when crewmember Rich Macey raced over quickly to gawk at Saltaire’s crushed dodger and dinghy-less foredeck, and to extend a hearty welcome. Rich and I had become drinking partners while Silver Girl and Saltaire lay at anchor in Aden.
Rich read the defeat and desperation in my eyes. Though he’s nearly young enough to be my son, the young Englishman, an aggressive advertising rep for the BBC, immediately assumed command of the situation. “Bill, get your towel and a change of clothes and get in the dinghy NOW,” he snapped. “You have a hot shower, a hot meal and cold beer waiting for you. I’ll help you clean this up all day tomorrow, no matter how long it takes.”
Aboard Silver Girl, Terry and Yvonne Grant, along with their five-year-old son James, treated me to a feast that could have had the Sphinx drooling: sweet and sour chicken with mixed vegetables and rice, washed down with copious amounts of ice-cold Heineken beer. On the scoreboard, the acts of kindness were still keeping a healthy lead over the horrors.
By mid-afternoon the next day, Rich and I had finished cleaning Saltaire’s cabin and bending the dodger back into proper shape. We each enjoyed a cigar and a few glasses of Eritrean gin (I’ve developed an immunity to such things but was worried Rich would break out in a rash or suffer breathing difficulties) before returning to Silver Girl for more of Yvonne’s culinary miracles.
Monday morning, Don and Nick, delivery crew of Omani, sold me 15 gallons of diesel and brought me a dozen eggs, two loaves of Egyptian bread, and 2 kilos each of potatoes, tomatoes and onions. The price was a bit steep, but worth every penny under the circumstances. A late spaghetti lunch charged me up to motor overnight the remaining 65 miles to Hurghada, and then to Abu Tig Marina after clearing in.
Rich and Nathan were ready at dock’s edge to help me tie up. Without sparing a moment, they dragged me over to the watering hole only a few steps away, where I recounted for them the latest episode of the Saga of Saltaire. Later, we ambled across the marina to Wallaby Creek, enjoyed a fish dinner, and spent the rest of the evening smoking the last of the cigars and getting plastered on arrack.
My first week at beautiful Abu Tig Marina in El Ghouna was exceptionally productive. Don and Katie on Klondike (Santa Cruz, CA) sold me their back-up ICOM VHF radio for 20 bucks—at that price, a true act of charity. The talented shipwright Bill Bailey designed and built me a new dinghy in less than three days, using Egyptian plywood and scraps of fiberglass we scored from other cruisers.
Seeing this guy work with wood, even on a relatively simple dinghy project, is to watch a performing art. With the mother of all belt sanders in his right hand and a delicate, three-eighths-inch piece of pine molding in his left, he can shape both ends of that molding to fit inside the curved sheer of a small craft within a few thousandths of an inch in less than a minute. It’s “Zing, zing, zing,” then move on to the next piece. That’s the difference 30-plus years of experience makes.
A crowd of cruisers showered Saltine II with half-liter cans of Sakara beer at an official christening ceremony. Bill and I, heeding the call to duty, brought the ceremony to its grand finale by rowing the dink around the marina in 30 knots of wind. The healing had begun. Putting the events of the previous month into perspective, though, would take a lot more time. n