Bob & Eds voyage: Middle East at last !

Beirut.What a place . Definitely one of my bucket list destinations as a place heard about and seen on TV since prep school.Like most places if not more so ,people are really friendly ,helpful and the difference is they haven't all got their hands out!

Leaving Ayia Nappa was straight forward although about 5 hours out I had a chunder , up came satsuma, banana and beef jerky. Apart from being a land lubber for 2 month,s coffee apparently is a common catalyst along with < 2m swell at about 6 sec interval made for a rocking horse ride. Although it was a minor spurt it does leave you effected for 24 hrs and sleep was going to be one of the issues

As is my usual intention to use the engine as little as possible, thankfully the wind only dropped on a few occasions but came back and during the night I was doing 7.3 kts for about 6 hrs ,this is a cracking cruise rate for my old tub.

The other minor issue was that at about 2am I lost GPS which gives ground speed and position .The weird thing here was that my nav phone lost it as well. Was I in a black spot, had the satellites gone down or been suppressed who knows , but to arrive in a strange country with out a chart or position on my gadgets is definitly not good.Any how it came back and no further issues.

Having arranged an agent one would expect at first radio contact at destination for the recipient to be aware of my details and hence not have to phonetically spell all information over a garbled radio to an Arab, three times to different people! that was a pipe dream. I bobbed around for 3 hrs at 5 am 12 miles out waiting for permission. In the end I gave up and started towards my marina .They did come back to me at some point but I could'nt make out what they were saying so arrival at the marina was going to be even more of a chore. As it happens every thing was fine .

The view of Beirut to my right coming in was brilliant through the smog and snow on the mountains a head was equally inspiring.

There was the usual buggering about concerning berthing as I don't go stern to unless there's dingy assistance and all I got was a young bloke on a moped who didn't speak English or French my second language! Then he tried to get me to go down a channel which was too narrow with boats mooring lines coming out to the middle.Very hard to explain that if it went pear shaped as it was going to, reversing and extrication was going to be chaos so to clarify everything I raised my decibel levels and I was moved to the maintenance pontoon where they were polishing and sanding.I turned the decibels up another notch and piled in to the office where Pierre and a girl who speaks great English found a spot along side. Skilfully controlled, I arrived where I am now which is safe, secure and although it doesn't have moorings lines to the channel, it is definitly the best option,The other advantage is that because for no apparent reason there is a lot of rocking ,I will maintain sea legs which I lost in Cyprus.

Next day I bused into Beirut which was every thing I expected .Debris from the explosion 5 years ago still not sorted because of insurance investigations- what a surprise.Buildings damaged in the civil war and fighting since. Ultra modern new buildings.Everything runs on dollars. The biggest US embassy building is just up the road from my boat ,which ironically and not surprisingly offers security from Israeli attacks but not from Hezbollocks as this is the christian area and they seem to stay down in the south ,easier to poke the Israeli bear from there.

I also visited an Armenian church where chatting to an Armenian I learnt about their Genocide around 1915 and how popular the Turks are to them!The little monument was quite thought provoking and brings home how nothing really changes in the world just the gadgets to make life easier but don't really.

Usual hassle with sim cards ,passport checking to buy one and admin but everything seems doable and the locals just want to get on, so good luck to them.

Off up the coast tomorrow, argument with the agent planned ,then see if I can get a flight to Jordon for a few days.This is infinitely better than Egypt was going to be!