We left Marsa Fijab, an idyllic anchorage at 07:30, a slight delay while Jofric freed his jammed mainsail furling. We then had a somewhat inauspicious and nailbiting start, but went on to have a fantastic day, and a lovely Easter.

Our problems this morning stemmed from the complete unreliability of all charts of this area, even the updated electronic ones. Basically the reefs are all unsurveyed, and the charts are worse than useless, because they give a false sense of security. After freeing ourselves as we thought from the fringing reef and heading out apparently into clear water, it slowly dawned on us that we were getting trapped in a cul- de-sac, with reefs all round, and rapidly shoaling water. (The forward looking echo sounder a great help). The depth had fallen to 5 metres, and it was impossible to find a way through.

Then we had the good fortune to meet some fishermen in a small boat, and in exchange for some fish-hooks, some cigarettes and some coca cola, they kindly stopped fishing, and showed us a way out of our impasse. If we had tried to get out before light, which we briefly considered and rejected, we would for sure have ended up on a reef.

Thereafter, though, we had a wonderful sail in 12-14 knots of east-north-easterly wind, and we've made great progress. Now (20:00) the wind has dropped, and we're motoring towards the Sudan/Egyptian border, which we should reach tomorrow evening. It's now less than 1,000 miles to Turkey.

Anyway, we had a memorable Easter with boiled eggs for breakfast, a wonderful fresh salad for lunch, and chicken stew for supper: not bad, given that it's now 14 days since we left relative civilisation in Djibouti.

We remain unbelievably fortunate with the weather - almost all the other boats have had to face up to 50 knots+, and the worst we have had was 35 knots, and that was from behind. Apart from the hammering we had approaching Massawa, and the pasting en route to Port Sudan, we have had no problems.

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