Again is the keyword here. Not because we've been turning on the engine a lot lately. No-no-no-no-no-no! We pretty much turned it on in Eritrea and switched it off here in Egypt. To those of you whose geography is not too strong: There's a pret-ty big country in between there called "Sudan".
All right, that might not be totalally true, but almost. There's anyway no point of letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Here's what happened lately:
First of all we left Yemen embarking on that final 24 hour passage that would take us to safety past pirate-waters and into the Red Sea. We said goodbye to Rad, an awesome 80-something Indian professor-type who stayed there at the time in his self-built revolutionary katamaran, spoke fluent Swedish and had a perfect understanding of Norwegian after having lived in Sweden for three years FIFTY YEARS AGO!!!! Thanks for all the great meals and the drinks Rad!
About 24 hours after leaving Aden and Yemen behind we entered through Bab-El-Mandeb, the Gates of Lament, Tåreporten, whatever you wanna call it. This is literally the gate to the Red Sea, a little gate where Africa and Asia almost meet, narrowing the gap down to just a few miles across. This place is infamous for producing crazy southerly winds at this time of year. If it blows
20 knots elsewhere it normally blows 40 in the Bab. We were therefore expecting 45. It didn't come. We cruised through and caught our first glimpse of Africa in relatively calm seas and agreeable winds. "Awesome" we thought to ourselves. Two hours later we were still thinking "awesome" but in a totally different way.
The wind picked up after we went through Bab El Mandeb, and was soon going up to 40 knots, and the waves where "awesome", just in a not-overly-positive way. We soon took a massive broach when one wave from behind picked the boat up and sent her on a speed-trip only to have number two and possibly number three increase that speed until we were surfing down the face of wave numero tres. Unfortunately the windvane was steering at the time so Egil were not able to correct the broach soon enough. I was below decks making dinner, definitely not contributing positively to the effort. As the water started flowing faster and faster past the open galley-window - and as the boat leaned over; coming closer and closer, I was convinced we would be knocked down and dip the mast into the seas. Egil was thinking the same in the cockpit. Luckily it didn't happen. We were both sure we would anyway come upright again, the question would be how many hundreds of liters of seawater would have time to enter through the open window and the companionway. We never found out. The guy who sold us Liberty said she didn't surf. We can now tell him that in the Red Sea she does! Awesome!
Next stop were Eritrea.
We cleared in in Massawa, great place, but expensive to stay.
We didn't want to spend 15USD pr day staying there, and getting visas to travel overland proved a lengthy and tiresome exercise, so the planned trip to Asmara and inland Eritrea didn't happen.
After Massawa we cruised over to some small islands to fish, swim and freedive. Still with Thira. In the evening we cruised over to a small village and had a look at some old Italian gun-emplacements that materialized there. 
That little history-lesson over we joined the villagers on the beach, they provided some firewood and we grilled our fish and we all shared a meal, eating with our hands, communicating through the only two guys in the village who spoke a little English. Later they showed us around in the village, and late in the evening we set sail again. Go north young man!
And this is about where all the "fun" began.
Red Sea factbox: Going up or down the Red Sea you WILL have the wind and current in your back half the way. Depending on the year and which way you're going this might be in the beginning or the end of the trip. The observant reader might already have gathered from the above that going north in the beginning of March you have the wind and current with you in the beginning. ...then you start motoring.OK, in short we have motorsailed hard on the wind ever since. ....Whenever the contrary winds have not been too rough to go at all. Then we have been anchored in one of the many "marsa"s - small sheltered bays, or behind a reef somewhere out there. The waves in the Red Sea picks up fast and have tremendous boat-stopping qualities about them. This in combination with contrary currents made it impossible for us to go with sails only. We would still be in Eritrea. We have already with the engine spent plenty of time doing around 3-3,5 knots. As if that is not sad enough that would be on a tack about 60 degrees off the desired course, so that we would actually just make 1,5-2 knots towards our target.
But we made it anyway, and even had the chance to stop and freedive and hook up with Cedric and Mike on Thira a couple of times. Sadly the only Sudanese soil we ever tread on was underwater, but hey, that counts doesn't it?
When we finally made it to Pt. Ghalib we met not only Thira, but three other boats that we met on the Maldives. Some of them have met in the Pacific already - some as far back as South America - and kept bumping into each other ever since. Good times, good drinks.
Allright, now we're making our way up towards the Suez Canal. We have a weather window of a couple of days now where there is little or no wind, sometimes even with a southerly component, so we're making use of it. ...to motor in relative comfort.... But; sailing out from Pt. Ghalib, with the wind almost straight from the side? Of course it couldn't last!
PS: Egil may now, after visiting Africa, and having had his crazy two-guys-one-moped-let's-start-in-LA-and-end-up-in-Buenos-Aires-trip (mopeddagboken.blogspot.com), be congratulated with visiting all six continents. And that in the space of a year-and-a-half!
PPS: We're having a discussion whether or not Antarctica is a continent to be included. Of course I mean that it is and that there is therefore no reason to congratulate him on anything whatsoever!
