With stitched sails and a stitched chef's arm, the Coveney ketch is heading towards the Suez Canal on the home stretch of its round-the-world journey.
Gunfire off the Saudi Arabian coast and a bumpy introduction to the Red Sea has marked the Golden Apple's passage since it left Djibouti on the north-east African coast earlier this week. The four Coveney crew expect to enter the Suez canal early next week, the first anniversary of their father's death, and will slip into Mediterranean waters early next month.
Speaking to The Irish Times from the vessel yesterday, skipper Mr Rory Coveney reported that there had been little sleep both on and off watch over the past 24 hours due to the weather conditions.
"We have the wind behind us now so we have been making good progress, but we are expecting it to go northerly, so it will be a fairly rough voyage up to Suez," he said. "With Eritrea to port and Saudi Arabia to starboard, it is not the most hospitable territory, so our course will be right up the middle."
The journey from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean to Djibouti was the second-longest leg of the circumnavigation, and took its toll in terms of wear and tear on sails and crew.
A spinnaker ripped 150 miles from Djibouti, by which time the bread on board was too mouldy to cut crusts off, and a box of 48 Mars bars had run out.
Since leaving Thailand after Christmas, the yacht has made landfalls in Sri Lanka and the Maldives with little apparent difficulty. The crew were obviously shocked by economic conditions in Sri Lanka, a preparation for similar hardship which they witnessed in Djibouti.
North of Male, in the Maldives, the yacht's anchor slipped during strong winds and they were forced to navigate out into open sea through reefs and coral heads in complete darkness.
An arm injury suffered by Mr Tony Coveney, the chef, en route to the Maldives last month has begun to heal. His sister, Ms Rebecca Coveney, administered the stitches when a winch sliced into his arm. "We just realised this week that we won't be swimming in the sea again 'till we get back to Cork, because of water quality, temperature and location. Our last dip was in the Maldives. It makes you realise how short the time is," Rory said yesterday. Last weekend in Djibouti, they encountered two Irish members of the French Foreign Legion who are stationed there. Sean from Dundalk and Eugene from Kerry gave no surnames, for security reasons, but were delighted to hear the familiar accents "using bad French," according to the skipper.
Eugene was redeployed to the French colony after a tour of duty in French Guiana, and Sean had previously served with the British army. "We had gone up to a bar to try and catch the international rugby match when we ran into them."
The Sail Chernobyl Website is recording 1,000 hits a day, the Scoilnet project with schools has aroused great enthusiasm, and fund-raising efforts for the project in aid of the children of Belarus are continuing. Some £3,000 was raised by three Irish men who took part in the annual race up the Empire State Building in New York last month, and there have been football marathons, fasts, barn dances, cakes sales and even a fund-raising wedding. A Dutch couple who heard about the crew's efforts asked their guests to donate to the Sail Chernobyl fund, rather than give presents.
Sail Chernobyl Website is at http://www.aardvark.ie/ccp/sail-chernobyl, and donations, which will go directly to the Chernobyl Children's Project, can be made to Allied Irish Banks, South Mall, Cork, account number 11100050.
