Although the wind howled at 20-25 Kts all night, we slept like babies through it all. Feeling somewhat human again this morning, we started the day off with a proper South African cooked breakfast, one we haven’t had in years, albeit that the ingredients were from various parts of the world; bacon, sausages and tinned mushrooms from Thailand, eggs and zucchini (aka baby marrow) from Djibouti and aubergine (aka brinjal / egg plant) and tomatoes from Sudan, followed by a slice of toast of Roy’s freshly baked bread accompanied by fig jam, the latter just to get our tastebuds ready for Turkey.

With the freezing temperatures and howling winds, we spent most of the day in bed, under a duvet and a blanket; synonymous, at a stretch, with “Eat, Pray, Love” our day was a case of “Eat, Sleep, Read”. It was as much as we could muster, with the exception of enjoying a chat to Hasan, off Kandiba, to whom we’re very grateful for his kindness and generosity, providing the opportunity for us to be online again and post a few extra photographs of our passage from Suakin, Sudan, to Soma Bay, Egypt, with the blog.

We also heard via Hasan that the agent in Port Suez had confirmed the safe arrival of Talulah Ruby III and Golden Spirit this afternoon, much to our relief, given the conditions we were experiencing in a protected anchorage. The only other people we could see out braving the weather were the windsurfers; even the kite-surfers and dinghy sailers had decided to stay on land.

Then, at around sunset, the wind suddenly stopped, literally. It went from howling to dead calm in a few minutes. Another look at the forecast didn’t indicate any lull for at least the next few days and, in fact, had forecast for conditions to deteriorate further. It wasn’t even an hour or two later, when the wind returned with vengeance and blew at 25 to 30 Kts for the remainder of the night!