I'm in one of the sailor's offices having a glass of whiskey and hearing his excitement of reaching the Indian Ocean. “When we're out in the open, we'll drop anchor and enjoy the isolation. We normally have a barbecue on the deck. At one party we had the chief officer up on the bridge, then he dived the hundred odd metres down into the ocean.”
But before that the boat will drop us off, then pass through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea where they call in at Jeddah. “We have to be careful entering Saudi waters,” he says, nodding at the whiskey, then at the pin-up calendar behind him. “It all gets stashed under the floorboards, otherwise we'll land ourselves some mean fines.”
“Which reminds me!” Tomorrow we will be landing in Port Said. The officer leads me and Markus down to the provisions store, and as we wait in confusion, he piles carton upon carton of cigarettes into our arms. We're then led to the captain's office, where we hide the cartons in various cupboards around the room, like setting up a treasure hunt.
Sailing into Port Said is an arduous process than can be stalled at any occasion by the whims of the port authorities. The only way to appease them is with cartons of cigarettes, a common practice which, despite adding thousands of cigarettes to the shipping company's bill each time, is far cheaper than a fine into the millions that the inspectors could issue for, by way of example, a loose door-handle somewhere on-board.
We are told to prepare for an elaborate pantomime when the authorities set foot on-board tomorrow morning.
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