November 28 - Bab-el-Mandeb

It’s Tuesday, our 3rd sea day since leaving Safaga and we’re still in the Red Sea.  This evening around 7 PM our time (we’re 8 hrs. ahead of EST) we’ll make our transit through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb which lies between Yemen on the Arabian peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African continent on what’s known as the Horn of Africa.  Apparently the name in Arabic means the gate of grief and lately that’s been a pretty apt name.  It’s from that place in Yemen that the Houthis have been launching their attacks on a couple of freighters and even one of our navy ships patrolling in this part of the world.  The first time we went through there years ago we could see people with guns walking on the beach in Yemen.  That’s how close we were.

Last night I had dinner at the Captain’s table; in fact I sat next to him.  He told us that the bridge is in constant communication with the naval forces in the area and we’ve been given the green light to make our transit into the Gulf of Aden.  I’m not worried but I think a few of my fellow passengers are.  I just know that the ship wouldn’t go there if there was a problem.

Anyway, it was an interesting evening at dinner.  The captain is from the Netherlands and when he was 18 he wanted to be an airline pilot for KLM.  He was accepted to that airline’s aviation academy but it turned out they had accepted too many people so they had a lottery and his number wasn’t drawn. Instead he enrolled in the Dutch maritime academy.  Some years later he still wanted to fly so he took a break from the sea and went to a flight school in Chesapeake, VA.  Because of his time there he was very familiar with my area and we could talk about some common things.

Ed and Cyndi, he came to Seabourn from Holland America and knew Captain Albert from your world cruise quite well.  Instead of a myth today I’ll tell you a real-life story he told us at dinner.  When he was a 3rd officer on a freighter,  they were carrying a load of beef from Argentina to Aqaba, Jordan in refrigerated holds.  The ship made it across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal without problems  and then the ship had to navigate through the Strait of Tiran to get from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aqaba.  Our captain, who was a junior officer at the time, was asleep when he was jolted awake by the ship making a tremendous noise.  He said he ran up to the bridge and found that the ship had run aground on a reef (not on his watch).  This happened back in the late 1980’s and there weren’t as sophisticated navigational systems as now, but the master of the freighter was in a hurry to get the refrigerated meat to its destination and he was going at full speed, something our captain  said you should never do in narrow straits, at night and especially in unfamiliar waters.  The upshot was that the ship had to be pulled off the reef by a tug and towed sailing backwards to Suez, the port at the Red Sea end of the canal.  The Egyptians were rightfully angry because it was in their waters and there was a fuel spill.  The whole crew, including the captain were arrested and he spent one month in an Egyptian jail until things could be sorted out.  The captain of the freighter wasn’t so lucky and spent a much longer time in jail.  I don’t know, but I doubt that in an Egyptian jail they worry much about prisoners’ rights.  The captain said it was not an experience he would wish on anyone. 

We stayed at the table so long that I missed the show.  My friends told me it was no loss when we met in the Club later.  We had some new additions to our dance party.  A couple of junior officers (women) joined us as well as a German couple who were feeling no pain.  The German man was the only male on the dance floor with all us ladies. What is it with men and dancing? Once again we closed the place down.

Since I don’t have any exciting pictures of land to post I thought I’d post a few of my cabin so you can see my home away from home and a couple of random ones from around the ship. So here goes…

My bedroom and sitting area with the veranda beyond

The bathroom with 2 sinks, a tub, and a shower you can't see in the lower left

My walk-in closet and the elephant I'm sharing my room with

The moon over the Red Sea