Late yesterday afternoon we anchored for the night in between some reefs. There was only a small sand islet about 100 feet long to call land. We raced to get the dinghy ashore there before the tide came all the way up. It sounded like a rookery with all the screeching birds. Quite a bit of plastic bottle litter & even some large syringes????? Then we hustled back to Freebird to give her another salt water rinse as she is just covered with running mud. Being Easter Sunday we invited SunDance (our only neighbor) over for quesadilla's. Festive, right???Even though the reefs were fully submerged they gave us protection from the waves. The wind came in from the north about 20 knots. The moon was late coming up. Our anchor was set in 40 feet of water. We laid out 250 feet of chain and felt secure enough.

We pulled anchor at 0630 and headed out into 20 knots of wind..... Beating. We fought our way through the menagerie of reefs to open water. The waves built and Freebird began to hop from wave top to wave top. Not fun. By 2:00 PM we were anchored in the inner harbor of the city of Suakin, Sudan. We picked up our agent to check us in. (Mohammed again) He was a personable chap and arranged for our check in and to have fuel delivered tomorrow morning. So far, no internet! There were only 2 other yachts in the harbor. One is the yacht "Integerit;y" They have been here for 4 weeks. Their engine blew up and they have been waiting for their friends Dave and Betty on the yacht "Sundance" to come to their rescue. David is a mechanic and has also agreed to help them with towing if necessary... to Egypt.... No small feat.. It's hard enough just getting your own boat up this merciless Red Sea. Tomorrow we are going to take another look at their engine to see if there is any hope. Judy is headed off to the market with the girls for some veggie shopping....