Albania May 29

arriving in Sarande in a lovely fresh nor wester

We have had such limited email access in Greece  but every now and then we find a
tendril of wi-fi and can send messages, even ( I hope) photos of us
sailing in to here.

Today we have had our first proper sail and we are now in a different
country! we have arrived in Albania, only 15 nautical miles from Corfu
town, but it could be another planet.

The Promenade, Sarande

It is only twenty years since the fall of the Communist era, and only
100 years since Albania was an independent country.

This city is Sarande, which is near an archaeological site called
Butrint that I am very keen to see. We will go tomorrow. We have an
agent here who arranged our berth and immigration all very efficiently
for sixty euros. Now we have to go and get some of the local currency,
the 'lek' ( about 138.5 leke to one euro apparently)

This city has all the communist era hallmarks, and surprisingly few
trees. Albania has a population o f 4 million and many more sheep, a
bit like NZ. The local languages are Gheg and Tosk. Hard to tell them
apart, really! Place names can have about three variants depending
whether they are Gheg, Tosk or Italian-derived.

Funny how your world on a boat diminishes on the one hand into whether
things are working on the boat ( sails and lines,  electrical systems,
plumbing, engine etc) and then, depending on where you get to, it also
expands enormously! We are thrilled to finally have the alternator working properly thanks to Panegiaros the marine electrician/mechanic in Corfu. This means we can motor at more than 4.5 knots! Freedom!

Albania is a place that all the yachting pilot books say to avoid ( so
naturally we are here). I think the books are out of date but we will
see. they say that the economy here is detrimentally and very directly
affected by the Greek downturn.

Anyway that's it for now - we have found so far that the Albanian
internet is considerably faster ( and cheaper) than the Greek version.

Our berth - we feel very secure next to the coast guard boats! 

New York, New York!

I sat next to Ana, from New Jersey, on the Lufthansa flight from Newark. I told her I’d just made my first visit to New York.  “Oh, New York is so overrated!” she declared.

Ana was on her way to tour Turkey with her fellow fabric arts students.  I asked how this visit would inform her studies. “Well, I’m a rising sophomore” she said, “we’re developing fabric technology --- GPS transmitters in shoes and jackets for people with Alzheimers.”

I quietly wondered who would remind those people to put on their shoes and jackets.

“And we’re going to look at wool, see it growing on the sheep and being made into cloth.”

At this point I considered telling her that I came from New Zealand, where we were familiar with the first part of that process, but it was already apparent that she had absolutely no curiosity about me or where I came from.

In that respect, she differed from many we met in New York, who were of course unsurprised to meet people from elsewhere, but very courteous and conversational.

We were privileged: this morning we sat on a lush lawn on Morningside Heights, won in battle from the British 240 years ago, and were treated to commencement speeches from the faculty of Columbia University and from Tara Sonenshine, newly-appointed  Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs in Hillary Clinton’s team.

We were there for Rupert’s son Tim’s graduation. We sat in a crowd of ferociously proud parents. The graduands’ hopeful futures were echoed in the blue sky, the blue Columbia academic gowns and the bright sunbeams warming us.  Ms Sonenshine used this metaphor to inspire thoughts of saving the world, one inspiration at a time, one conversation at a time.

A headline in the New York Times today: “Whites account for under half of births in U.S.  - Majority of minorities”.  This would accord with all the Spanish, Italian, Creole and other tongues we heard all around us, in every part of New York.  

We shopped, we watched the Yankees at their Stadium, we visited museums, met an old friend for coffee, went to amateur night at the Apollo in Harlem,  and got to know our short term host Kate, a Ukrainian Kiwi New Yorker whose campus apartment we sublet for a few nights.

Food of course was as always a priority: standout meals were Mexican ‘mole’ quesadilla at 2:30 am on the night we arrived, the 9 pork ribs Rupe had at “Dinosaurs” next to the Cotton Club on the Hudson River shore, and the New York cheesecake at the diner where Obama had $1.99 breakfasts during his Columbia years, later renamed ‘Monks’ by Jerry Seinfield

We caught buses, trains, taxis and the Staten Island Ferry, with Manhattan sparkling behind our  Coastguard escort: and we decided that we had seen only part of all the many wonders of this city.

New York, overrated?  No, Ana, I don’t think so.   

RIP the wonderful Maurice Sendak

Thank you for inspiring the name of our boat and all the wonderful Wild Things who have sailed with us since 2007

Rumpus ashore in Preveza, Ionian Sea, Greece

After a VERY long hiatus, some more to say about Rumpus. She had an amazing 2011 season, with the Billingtons, the Reeds, the Morrisons, the Caugheys......and many others enjoying some incredible sailing from Marmaris, Turkey, through the Dodecanese and the Cyclades, to mainland Greece and then the Ionian, where she is waiting for some antifoul on her bottom and a slip and a splash into her element! We join her in a few days, after some time in New York for a Columbia graduation (Congratulations Tim Wilson!!).

Oh...and this time, we will be doing it as a married couple. Would you believe it!

https://www.facebook.com/kristin.percy

Salaam Alekhum from Lebanon

Rupe is now a graduate of the Beirut Driving Academy - we hired a car and drove over the mountains to the Bekaah valley, a very fertile part of Lebanon which is effectively the headquarters of the Hisbollah....they try to sell t shirts to tourists with the design of the upraised fist with a machine gun - perfect garment to win friends and influence people! We went to Baalbek - a wonderful ancient site, in some ways even more magnificent than wonderful Palmyra. ON the way back ( a very long way back!) we went across the mountains past the ski resort of Becharre and through the cedar forests - and on the crest of the mountain ranges there was snow! Then today we travelled up the coast and back in time to Tripoli ( not the one in Libya, the one in Lebanon) and went to an amazing old market in the shadow of a huge crusader castle - if you have ever wondered where your remote control or old clothes, furniture and electrical gadgets ended up, this is the place. Lovely vegetable stalls, although we gave everything a jolly good wash when we got it back to the boat. Departure for Israel tomorrow, looking forward to a smooth sail and to the Bycrofts joining us.

We are in very hot sunny Syria  - we sailed here from Turkey having bypassed the port of Iskendurun because of PKK Kurdish independence separatists attacking the Turkish Navy. So we skipped that port! All peaceful here though.
Not entirely sure what will happen in Israel as they recently attacked a Gaza aid convoy and there are some tensions but we will find out when we get there.

There are three NZ boats and one from South Africa ( a couple from Capetown) in our rally fleet of 70. All really nice people.

Even just to use the internet in a little side street cafe like this one we needed to provide our passports so they can record our details. Some of the kiwis went off on their own with a group of Aussies and they didn't take their passports yesterday. They spent a few hours this morning in prison!!!

Today we decided to skip the organised tours and came on our own to the city of Tartus in Southern Syria - off shore there is the only island in Syria, where the locals go for day trips. Lovely narrow windy alleyways, kids everywhere, rubbish everywhere! a traditional boatbuilding yard and an ancient castle.

A couple of days ago we went inland in Turkey and went on a balloon trip over the amazing landscape in Cappadocia. We stayed in a rock cave hotel; rooms carved out of the rock - beautifully cool all year round. We hired a car and drove there; on the way we saw a donkey on the road with its saddle slipped under its belly and hobbling its back legs, so we stopped and took its saddle off - not sure what the owner will think (he was nowhere to be seen) but the donkey was delighted - cantered off to the roadside gravel and had a luxurious roll with all four legs in the air!

Pictures won't load here, maybe for the same reason that Facebook is inaccessible in this country! I will try again, sometime soon..........

Stıll ın Mersın ınstead of on our way to Iskendurun

We were plannıng to saıl wıth the rally to Iskendurun but that ıs sadly the locatıon of a PKK separıtıst group attack on the Turkısh navy on the same day as the Israelı attack on the Gaza relıef expedıtıon so rally plans have been altered and we are on our way to Lattakıa ın Syrıa tonıght....photos of Cappadocıa trıp to come when wıreless permıts ( not so easy rıght now)  !!