Cyprus

The source of so much work - the new gear box, and engine water pump held steady as NANOU motored gently out of Israel and poked her nose towards Cyprus. 

A week before, in desperation at STILL not receiving the spare parts, I had come within one mooring line of setting sail without a motor.   " This is a sailing boat after all - I'll just get towed out of the harbour and then into the harbour in Cyprus", I had said to myself.   An unfavorable weather report made me think better of it and I had stayed in port until the spare parts finally arrived. After that repairs didn't take long and NANOU became whole again!

And it was lucky that I had a working motor as I would use it all the way to Larnaca Marina in Cyprus.  What little wind I found was exactly against us - except towards the end where it was "light but favourable" but the extra oomph provided by the motor ensured we'd arrive in port before dark.  Some 50,000 kilometers before I had been a purist: if there was a breath of wind I would hang in there with the sails regardless of how long the journey would take.  Now, a little wizened by time and weather, I am less anxious to prove my self over and over again; I use the motor whenever it makes sense.  Usually that's when there is less than about 7 knots of breeze.  This keeps NANOU moving along a good clip and gets me into port before I have time to ask myself too many existential questions about what the hell I am doing out here alone in a small boat...

Anyhow, there I was leaving Israel after nearly a month of repairs.  Larnaca Marina in Cyprus was my new destination - the next place I would call home for a while.   For many long distance boats Larnaca is the first place where one must moor bum to the wall.  One drop the bow anchor several boat lengths away and then backs up to the wall - hoping that someone will catch your stern lines.  Sounds easy enough but, boy, did we have some fun times watching everyone's aborted attempts.  Mine also was aborted when I arrived nicely at the wall only to find I hadn't prepared the stern lines... NANOU - 40 tons of steel and pretty rough looking - is not a pretty sight for a yacht owner to behold bearing down on his/her nice plastic yacht.  This ensures I always get PLENTY of help fending off as I dock.   So even though I sail solo, I get all the crew I want in the harbours when I really need them...

Anyhow, Larnaca Marina turned out to be a wonderfully social place with a group of die hard boaters drinking and barbecuing every night on the concrete quay to which the guest boats tie up.  Night after night of one-too-many as the sea stories grew taller and the drinks retrieved from more and more obscure hidey-holes in ship bilges, secret compartments and, perhaps, halfway up the mast.  Some of this stuff definitely tasted like it had been 6 months in a hot ship's bilge.  But the camaraderie was warming and everyone shared the same love of the sea, their boat and a yearning for adventure and far off places.

Almost everyone was preparing their boat for a future big voyage.  A few would be taking on paying passengers ("crew") to make ends meet, whilst others relied on their life's savings.  Every one was on a tight budget but had lost that "need to get richer" attitude that prevails in cities.  A simple life of following the seasons from port to port, exploring a little and   enjoying the company of the other boats one meets time and time again in the various harbours along the way (the seasons and winds are the same for everyone).   For many this is a great life but for me it feels a bit like early retirement and I still crave the action of a city or the full on adventure of the really remote and somewhat dangerous places. 

In Larnaca I purchased a replacement for my worn out dinghy (rubber boat) and, one evening,  it was hanging virginally from the aft davits when a sailboat that had left that morning poked its mast out from behind the sea wall but did not make an entrance.  This is a clear sign of engine failure.  In an instant a dozen well-oiled sailors were dashing about looking for a small boat for the salvage operation.  It came to me.  So, NANOU's small boat was dropped hastily in the water, an engine strapped to its back and, Claude, Christophe - both also single handed sailors - and I zoomed out heroically towards the struggling little sailboat.

What followed was a merry time of knotted lines and twisted ropes as all the greatly experienced cooks, cooked together!  Strapping the dinghy to the sailboat we proceeded to ballad around the harbour - aiming at the correct berth but unable to get to it - as the wind, the current and our own blood level worked against us.   In the end, however, a happy ending was assured by someone's brilliant idea of forgetting about the proper way of doing things and simply using NANOU as an island to which to tie up.  So the little sailboat became a temporary appendage to NANOU, and all the cooks returned to the BBQ.

And Cyprus?  It marked my return to the Western world even as Israel had heralded it.  Efficient and pleasant, the local port police did not ask for bribe money ("baksheesh") as had every authority from Indonesia to Egypt - but instead offered me a Coke!  

Having, in a moment of insanity, gone and purchased a dirt motorcycle with which to explore the dirt trails of the Greek Islands,  I rumbled out to Nicosia - a town on the edge of Greek Cyprus. 

The tragedy of Cyrpus is that 25 years ago the Turks, taking advantage of some local political instability (i.e. a coup), invaded the island and have since managed to hold onto half of it.  NATO did nothing - except establish a buffer zone which stands today.  Needless to say, it makes one wonder at the inconsistencies of history - the UN (and more specifically the USA) has been only too ready to help small nations under attack in other situations, yet this outrageous act of aggression went unopposed.  Turkey has many strategic US airbases and the conflict ocurred to close for comfort to the Vietnam war - enough said.

An official state of war still exists between the two sides of the island. In fact, if a yacht visits Turkish ) Cyprus it can forget about going to Southern Cyprus as it will not be welcome.  The Turks on the other hand seem more ambivalent and it is possible to visit Turkish Cyprus after the southern side.

So approaching the Greek town of Nicosia which stands on the border between Turkish Cyprus and Greek Cyprus, I was expecting to feel the same tension prevalent in Jerusalem where the situation is not very different.  But instead of seeing machine guns hanging casually from most twenty-something year olds, and instead of seeing the Rabbis equipped with a gun on their hip worn a` la John Wayne,  I found Benetton, Gucci and the other fashionable shops lined up on an elegant avenue with relaxed people having a coffee at the many outside Cafes.  Not a trace of tension here.    For some reason this reminded me of a memorable dive somewhere in the red sea where I had witnessed a shark making a dash for a small fish.  The fish had been peacefully grazing and, upon attack, darted some 2 meters to its left and evaded the shark.  I expected the fish to make haste out of this clearly dangerous area, but no - our fish resumed grazing in the most casual and relaxed fashion.  Could it be that a fish's short term memory is not long enough to remember an attack of a few seconds earlier?  A similar question comes to mind for the Nicosians.

The Turks on their side, are unrepentant and - despite the large UN buffer zone - have found a way to send a clear message to Cypriots who dream of getting their land back.   A huge Turkish flag has been carved and dyed on the mountain side overlooking Nicosia.  It stands as large as Mount Rushmore and is a reminder of the threat that stays on as the international authorities worry about their interests elsewhere.