Richard W. Frank

Cyprus to Kenya (I)

     Troy, 27, Aussie from Broome living in the foc'sle cabin in the bow next to mine. Pearl diver, spear fisherman, dive instructor, he is a man that lives and breathes the water and the outdoors. Fresh off another yacht in Thailand he is the most experienced of us yobs and is trying to make crewing a profession. Lean and tan with a black goatee and buzzed hair. Quote: The kangaroo hit me first!

 

     Aaron, 26, a vintage Los Angelino in the starboard amidships cabin, Wharton business school frat boy; spent the last six months partying around Europe. A penchant for Vegas, porn stars, and partying. Balding already, stylish, of Spanish descent, thin but with a bit of a decadent paunch. Does pushups on deck. Quote: Swingers was MY movie, man!

 

     Jon, 23, Vancouver native in the port amidships cabin, game designer, also six months around Europe and one of the funniest people I've met. He's always on. Way too northern and light blond...ah, someone I can beat in the tanning contest. Up for almost anything. Quote: It's cheaper to run the skipper on rum than the boat.

 

     Zac, 18, Brit public school boy on his gap year, bleached blond wild hair, upturned collar, climbed in Switzerland this summer, running own web design company back in the UK. As the youngest, he is designated whipping/cabin boy in the best cabin next to Alex astern. Hard working. Quote: But I'm not a virgin!

 

     Mark, 31, Brit nuclear submarine designer sharing Troy's cabin jetting out just for seven-week holiday on the Salamandra. Scrawny, pale and seems much older than the rest of us (Not around long enough to get a typical quote).

 

     Looking forward to getting underway when Alex gets back from immigration. he hasn't bothered to tell us our watches...or how to sail for that matter, and we are all a tad apprehensive on finally setting out on our little three-hour tour. I hope that the two-day sail to Port Said, Egypt will help us get used to the boat and each other.

 

Day 8- 13 Nov 00 Suez, Egypt 400nm sailed

 

     Back on boat to find that Mark has disappeared. Apparently that night in the calaboosh in Cairo was a little too much. Must have been his first time in jail. It appears that our crew is drawn to trouble: the taxi driver couldn't find the pyramids, a night being kept awake by that sadistic guard, our extremely drunken debate on whether we are working class or not (found out that I am), swimming ashore to wander around a mine field...detained by the fuzz again. The five of us are starting to feel like a group--a white trash crew crashing through seven millennia of history in Cairo and Luxor in several whirlwind days. It's a good feeling to be with mates having a good time and making the world our Saturday night. Won't get much thinking done this trip, but will go through a Bloody Mary or two.

 

     When underway we work four-hour shifts with eight hours off: two hours at the helm then two on sail watch. The first night I was alone at the wheel when Mark dozed below steering standing up with head through the hatch with the Milky Way rotating overhead and headed down wind with two sails up. Night vision fully developed with the only light the blood red of the compass and the medical green of the radar. No sea traffic and my imagination wandered to those others that had sailed these waters: Phoenician wine merchants, Antony and Octavian, scholars headed to Alexandria's library, Athanasius in triumph and exile, Napoleon and his army, now ME, Richard Frank, explorer, adventurer...seasickness sufferer.

 

Day 30- 5 Dec 00 unnamed island off Eritrea 1100nm

 

     Last night of a week of snorkeling and spear fishing off some virgin reefs. Marked the occasion with a BBQ ashore our last deserted island before heading to Yemen. Didn't let Alex cook. Fresh fish the others caught (the target fish I managed to wing caused much merriment...at least it made good bait for some real fish) potatoes cooked on the giant bonfire, boxed wine piled high on the sand. We gathered at least 300kg of dead wood, Zac and I bouldered for awhile and then we tried to get through as much of that 60 liters of Cyprus' finest (we had both kinds: white AND red). Things got a bit wild...and then Jon brought out the Absinthe. Luckily the only one with scars from that evening was the deck chair with yet another leg off. Amazed that you can still use it with only two legs.

 

     Eritrea is a country recovering from war and our first view of sub-Saharan Africa. Sailing into Massawa after five days down the Sudanese coast we saw a port lined with spectacularly bombed-out mosques, government buildings, and sunken ships left as a very visceral reminder of Ethiopian bomb raids (some as recent as 1994). 

 

     The five soberest of us left the chaos behind as we sped to the capital Asmara, at 2000m a refreshingly cool town of flowers, and Italian colonial churches, good coffee and pizza (and no flies). The only other mzungus spotted were four Canadian UN soldiers on R&R from patrolling the border. The locals treated us much better when they found out that we were tourists not soldiers. They don't get them in that part of the world much, and were therefore curious, friendly and scrupulously honest.

 

     Back on the boat we were glad to put steamy Massawa and the shit-splattered Sirens behind us and head for a lazy week in the Eritrean islands toward the bottom of the Red Sea. No night watches, days playing with rays and turtles, catching fish and conch, making my famous chowder (I still got da magic), practicing the perfect swing dive, sleeping on deck under the stars (to be woken by a naked skipper and told to pull the anchor as the wind's shifted), not worrying about laundry because you wear your swim suit all day every day, seeing your tan deepen, hair getting increasingly wild and encrusted with salt. enjoying making a good dinner and watching them devour it with enjoyment oozing from every pore. Running the generator at night to keep the sausage cold and watching Cypriot B-movies that always lacked the last twenty minutes. Then, the BBQ night. In a word: paradise.

 

Day 44- 19 Dec 00 Aden, Yemen 2000nm

 

     Eight days here and looking forward to leaving as soon as the winds die down a bit. I was a bit worried sailing thru the narrows of Bab el Mandab "the Gate of Tears" at the bottom of the Red Sea, but Neptune was kind although we had to cross the shipping lane when Zac and I were on watch. The sea seemed a thicket of tankers. Pulled into Aden looking forward to fruit juices and yoghurt we had heard much about from other yachties. We passed five Iraqi ships at anchor having been captured trying to violate the embargo. The port was surrounded by a light brown mountainous coast akin to the Sierra Nevada and revealed no trace of the USS Cole.

 

     We were back in the real world during Ramadan: no tourists and no fun between sunrise and sunset. Shops are closed, people are irritable without food, water, or cigarettes, and not much gets done. Around 5:30pm the muezzin calls the end to the fast and miraculously the streets empty as the locals rush to their plates and Marlboros. During the day we explored the ancient cisterns, tower of silence, the surrounding volcanic hills and other lonely places where we could sneak a sip of water and a samosa.

 

     Jean and Les, the crazy French Laurel and Hardy duo, pulled out yesterday after being forced to cut Jean's anchor. The dinner they made on the 14th was legendary though afterwards Jean managed to single-handedly plow through a bottle of my Scotch. He paid us back with a box of cigars. Les had made his money a while back running Benson and Hedges and automatic weapons to the Comoros islands. Jean made cheese until a heart attack made him change his priorities. Man, you meet some interesting people on the water.

 

   J's engine is fried, so Les will have to tow him at 3knots an hour against the wind for 1,600nm to Reunion Island. Should take them a better part of a month. Today, while scrambling around the volcanic hills of Tawahi to burn off some cabin fever, Zac and I stumbled on a military installation, were chased, and narrowly managed to avoid the calaboosh again. Mental note: always stick to the trail. Time for the winds to get in gear.

 

To part II of Cyprus to Kenya

© Richard Frank 2007-2008. All rights reserved.

 

"A thrilling pulse beat high in me. My step was light on deck in the crisp air. I felt there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood."

                      -Joshua Slocum,

Sailing Alone Around the World

 

"Hands wanted for long voyage in small boat; no pay, no prospects, not much pleasure."

-Bill Tilman in the Times, 1954.

Back to World Trip #2

Back to Central Asia

     Two months can be an eternity or a moment depending on the situation. The sixty days from 5 Nov 00 to 5 Jan 01 that Alex, Troy, Aaron, Jon, Zac, and I spent sailing the "Salamandra" from Cyprus to Kenya were both-an eternity spending the night on the floor of an Egyptian jail; a moment alone on watch under a sheltering sky. The only way I can approach the whole is to let several days' journal entries speak for themselves or else this e-mail would be much longer than it already is. Sit back, turn off the cell phone and the outside world for a spell, and picture life lived at a different pace...and maybe be glad that this didn't happen to you...

 

Day 3- 11/08/00 Larnaka, Cyprus 0nm sailed.

 

     Slow morning on the boat as everyone is on shore spending the last of their Cypriot pounds. All stores are on board, water and fuel are full, and we have finally gotten rid of Alex's wife Sonia and the devil's spawn-this is what happens when kids aren't properly smacked around.

 

     The "Salamandra" is an angular aluminum boat 19m long with a deep 3.2m draft built in Russia three years ago. The reality of the Salamandra turned out a bit different than my expectations. Thought this would be a family positioning down the coast but the wife and kiddies are to be safely stored in Cyprus for the winter and a crew of Captain Chaos and us six ner-do-well youth are to be let loose on the high seas.  

 

     My first night on board we had a BBQ with fresh octopi overcooked by an ex-con homeless local alcoholic deckhand Tagee who tried to molest Jon and who mistakenly thought his mother had just died. This was when I was also shown Alex's cellar of 140 bottles of cheap Venezuelan rum stored under the amidships deck. With this and yesterday's freezer load of sausage and crates of baked beans and Smirnoff I could see that it should be an interesting cruise. Alex then did a little doctoring to Zac's passport to hide some inconvenient Israeli stamps. Chemicals didn't work but a Cypriot cell phone permit did the trick. Man, this guy is multifaceted.

 

     There was a BBQ last night at the yacht club (people with a lot of leisure time seem to have a lot of BBQs) where we discovered Alex's ability to carbonize even the most succulent piece of meat. Mental note: don't let him near the grill again. After dinner we sampled Cypriot nightlife which was typical of a British resort town: decent lager, late night fry-ups, puny pool tables, and a good fight or two with the locals, though those two SAS guys didn't stand a chance against those forty teenagers.

 

     But to introduce the crew: Captain Alex Bond is a larger than life character in every sense of the word, one out of Conrad or Rabelais. Thirty-seven years young, traveled Africa barefoot as a teenager and Nemo-ed the seven seas for the last eleven years. A self proclaimed "alcofrolic," a severe diabetic, red hair flecked with grey, freckled skin permanently fried from the equatorial sun, chain smoker, everyone's mate...the perfect modern Falstaff. I may not trust him on land but I hope to on the sea...its too late to use the rest of my ferry ticket to Israel. Quote: [none appropriate for the internet!]

Alex and Jon