26 Nov - 31 Dec 2006 El Gouna

Northern Red Sea

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan 

Strait of Gubal 

El Gouna Resort

Abu Tig Marina +20653580073 info@orascommarinas.com

Berth C8

SY "Kamu II" with her stern to the pier and with two permanent bow moorings.

US$ 200.- per month.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our excellent marina berth:

N 27° 24.45' E 033° 40.54'

Exploring the many amenities of the fully self-contained, privately owned luxury resort town of El Gouna (her motto: “Life as it should be!”) which boasts, among other things, a dozen hotels, an airport, a hospital, an open-air amphitheatre, a golf course, a brewery, a winery, several outdoor shopping malls and the well-managed luxurious Abu Tig Marina where we were moored almost directly stern to a heated swimming pool with a well-stocked bar and a bunch of waiters living up to the term full service.

Visiting Hurghada, Egypt’s most popular resort town where it feels as if half of Eastern and Western Europe (notably Russians and Germans) has flown in on cheap sun-and-sea package holidays with all that that implied: cut-price hotels, tourists in track suits, terrible food, kitschy souvenirs and hard-faced hookers.

Matt: Practising kite-surfing, together with German kite-buddies Dominik and Thomas, off the shallow Buddha beach and Mangroovy beach, north of El Gouna’s Abu Tig Marina, and agreeing entirely with Reinhard Mey: "... fliegen kannst Du nur gegen den Wind..."

Navigating our way through the narrow, twisting canals and waterways of the labyrinthine lagoon of El Gouna with our new inflatable dinghy from Turkey, powered by our ever reliable 4-hp two-stroke Mariner outboarder, and using very unusual “marine waypoints” such as the Sheraton Hotel, the Casino of Kafr El Gouna and the Steigenberger Golf Resort.

Reflecting on the many learning opportunities that were hidden in this year's short cruising autumn of only 750 nm (with lots of motoring - 170 engine hours: Suez Canal, Gulf of Aqaba) and preparing the ship and ourselves for the upcoming cruising year of 2007 CE.

 Click below for a summary of this year's travels 

2006 Map Konni & Matt 

Click below and see more Konni & Matt Pictures 

Photos 2006-08 Abu Tig

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23 Nov - 26 Nov 2006 Tawila Island

Northern Red Sea

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan 

Strait of Gubal 

Tawila Island

Endeavour Harbour

SY "Kamu II" at anchor, at 11 m depth, on sand.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our anchorage:
N 27° 33.73' E 033° 46.88'

 



Relaxing at anchor in this remote and pristine anchorage in a stark, deserted area with just a few ruined buildings and the occasional fisher- and yachtsman, with whitesand beaches and gin-clear water.

Listening to cruising songstress Eileen Quinn’s The Anchoring Dance whilst peeking at “the others” from the safety of our own centre cockpit.

Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2006 Map Konni & Matt

Click below and see more Konni & Matt Pictures

Photos 2006-07 Taba Heights to Abu Tig


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22 Nov - 23 Nov 2006 Gordon Reef

Northern Red Sea

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan 
Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat

Strait of Tiran

Gordon Reef

SY "Kamu II" tied to one of the yellow dive-boat moorings.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our anchorage:
N 27° 59.13' E 034° 27.30'

 


DM Konni: Snorkelling and watching a cute bluespotted stingray (Neotrygon kuhlii) near the southern edge of Gordon Reef.

Click below for a summary of this year's travels

2006 Map Konni & Matt

Click below and see more Konni & Matt Pictures

Photos 2006-07 Taba Heights to Abu Tig

Recommended books - click below for your order from Canada

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21 Nov - 22 Nov 2006 Marsa Shabir

Northern Red Sea

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan 
Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat

Strait of Tiran

Marsa Shabir

Southwest of Johnson Point

SY "Kamu II" at anchor, at 12 m depth, on sand and coral.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our anchorage:

N 27° 59.52' E 034° 29.74'

 



Counting the impressive number of about 50 (!) dive boats at noon, that were all at the same time in the vicinity of the reefs in the Strait of Tiran and worrying about the impact of mass diving/tourism on this fragile marine environment.

Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2006 Map Konni & Matt

Click below and see more Konni & Matt Pictures

Photos 2006-07 Taba Heights to Abu Tig


Recommended gear - click below for your order from Germany

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20 Nov - 21 Nov 2006 Dahab

Northern Red Sea

Gulf of Aqaba

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan

Sinai Peninsula 
Dahab

El Kura

SY "Kamu II" tied up to a big rusty mooring buoy.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our anchorage:
N 28° 28.36' E 034° 29.52'

 



Sailing downwind along the palm-lined coast of Sinai, a region of awesome and incredible beauty, where row upon row of barren, jagged, brownish-red mountains fill the horizon, surrounded by relentlessly dry, yet colourful, desert plains.

Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2006 Map Konni & Matt

Click below and see more Konni & Matt Pictures

Photos 2006-07 Taba Heights to Abu Tig

Recommended wine - click below for your order from Germany

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19 Nov - 20 Nov 2006 Nuweiba

Northern Red Sea

Gulf of Aqaba

Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan

Sinai Peninsula 
Nuweiba el-Muzeina
SY "Kamu II" at anchor, west of the ferry pier, at 9 m depth, on sand and coral.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our anchorage:
N 28° 58.16' E 034° 39.52'

Bumping into an Egyptian Navy corvette, about 3 nm off Nuweiba, being stopped by force and eventually being able to talk its skipper out of going alongside and boarding SY “Kamu II” in order to check our papers.

"Soldiers will always do what soldiers always do."

(Paul French)

Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2006 Map Konni & Matt

Visit the Konni & Matt online albums and order high res travel photos

Konni & Matt Travel Photos


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16 Nov - 19 Nov 2006 Taba Heights

Northern Red Sea

Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat
Africa

North Africa

Arab Republic of Egypt aka Most Democratic Touristic Republic of Pyramidistan

Sinai Peninsula

Taba Heights Marina

SY "Kamu II" alongside the harbour office, at 2.5 m of depth.

US$ 10.- per night.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our harbour berth:

N 29° 22.54' E 034° 47.63'

Re-entering the Egyptian territorial waters with valid multiple-entry tourist visas from the Consulate of Egypt +96232016181 in Aqaba/Jordan and clearing uneventfully into Egypt at the Taba Heights Marina +20693580046, a new official port of entry for cruising yachts, paying the agent fees of US$ 40.- in cash for the full-scale arrival procedure (immigration, customs and harbour master), passing the wily Muslim counter-espionage guy's sly language test (“Ah-tah m’dah-behr ee-vreet?” - "Ah-neelo m’dah-behr ee-vreet!”) and buying a relatively cheap Egyptian cruising permit, valid for eight months for US$ 10.- per month; shalom aleichem, Mitsrayim!

Following the serpentine camel path uphill to the top of the 2,285 m high summit of Mt. Sinai where Moses, according to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religion, received allegedly the Ten Commandments (at Mt. Sinai, God and the Hebrews clinched a deal: in return for their rescue from the Egyptians, and deliverance to the promised land of Israel, Jews would follow only one God and his laws, as outlined in the Ten Commandments and the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament), and taking thereafter the 3,750 Steps of Repentance, laid by one monk as an act of penance, back down to the ancient 4th-century CE St. Catherine’s Monastery where we plucked a leaf from the Burning Bush from which God had supposedly spoken to Moses.

"If I thought the Lord was speaking to me I'd check myself into Bellevue,

and I think you should too." 

(Bill Maher in Larry King Live, 11 August 2005 CE;

in response to a called-in question

if he would become a believer if the Lord spoke to him) 

"Jesus is great - is there a better role model? No. It's religion, it's the people who get in between - the bureaucracy, you know ... It's the way people abuse Jesus. Was there ever a greater victim of name dropping?"

(Bill Maher)

Discussing the five great linguistic distortions in the history of the Old Testament, as we know it today, (i) the 3rd-century BCE Septuagint, the allegedly oldest rendition of the Old Testament, from Old Hebrew into Old Greek, (ii) the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century CE manuscript used by later scholars to confirm biblical texts, (iii) the Vulgate, the first “translation” from Hebrew directly to Latin and its major revisions in the 16th-, 18th- and 20th-centuries CE, (iv) Martin Luther’s tinkering with the Vulgate, removing parts for his Lutheran faith, and last but not least, (v) the 17th-century CE King James Bible which proclaims itself authorised and genuine but whose translators never saw the original in Old Hebrew, renewing our principal doubts about the authenticity of the Bible, an ancient novel full of murder, corruption, bestiality, incest and cruelty and the most widely used form of propaganda and control in the world, and watching afterwards Bill Maher on Larry King Live on our laptop.

Click below for more blog posts about interesting ports of entry
26 Aug - 11 Sep 2007 Aden/Yemen
12 Aug - 18 Aug 2007 Massawa/Eritrea
22 Jul - 26 Jul 2007 Suakin/Sudan
30 Aug - 01 Oct 2005 Lattakia/Syria
04 Oct - 21 Oct 2005 Beirut/Lebanon

Click below for a summary of this year's travels

2006 Map Konni & Matt 

Visit the Konni & Matt Online Albums and order high-res travel photos

Konni & Matt Travel Photos

Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United Kingdom:

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