8:05 AM local time
Hi Everyone,
We still haven’t seen much beyond the harbor. Randal has been and is still working on the air bubbles in our fuel system. After that he’ll try to find what went wrong with our primary autopilot. Today, however, we will do a bit of exploring in center city and the historic Dutch fort area.
Ru
DoraMac
Galle # 1
Mediterranean Mooring
We’re on the end of this plastic floating pier. The way it works is this: you drop your anchor and then back up to the pier where your stern lines are then fastened to the pier. The anchor and lines hold you in place so you can park next to another boat without the benefit of finger piers between the boats. It also means that you have to climb off and on over the back rail of the boat and then quickly squeeze under the constantly moving dock lines. It sounds worse than it is and anticipation was worse than actually doing it. Getting back on is definitely easier than getting off.
Climb over the swim platform rail and go under the lines kind of like a kid’s rope game.
The plastic path sways and makes walking a bit tricky: the stairs up to the dock aren’t so bad.
It really heavy winds I think I would crawl rather than walk so luckily this isn’t a heavy winds time, supposedly. We are at the far end across from what looks to be a commercial boat yard of some kind. This is Galle Harbor and not a marina so there aren’t facilities or luxuries. The concrete docks have power lines to the boats but not water. The docks are full with the Blue Water Rally boats probably going toward Turkey. When they leave here, maybe we’ll move to a concrete dock. If we don’t we most likely won’t do any land travel because we don’t trust these plastic piers and don’t want to bash into the sailboat next to us or into anything else for that matter.
Once you are safely off the blue pathway and up the white stairway, you walk through a commercial / government area (also a field where men play cricket in the evenings) to the end of the complex where there is a guard stand. No one goes in or out without a pass. We were given one by the officials yesterday when we checked in. We, like everyone else, used a clearing agent who helps with the paperwork, officials, forms, etc. Entry and exits from a country, or from different states within a country, can most often be done without an agent. Some countries like Singapore, where we didn’t but should have, Indonesia, where we did though we didn’t know we were, and here, where it seems to be required have different rules and you just have to do what they say. And they are pretty strict here. You have to come close to the harbor and contact your agent who tells you to drop anchor just outside the harbor. (You must come in daylight hours because the harbor is closed off with a boom and the military won’t take kindly to a boat approaching at night. Sri Lanka had the “issue” with the Tamil Tigers.) Shortly after dropping anchor you are visited by some men with big guns who drive around the boat several times and then ask for cigarettes. We had bought some in Langkawi just for this purpose. Then we waited for several hours until two naval officers came aboard DoraMac. We chatted a bit and I offered them something to drink and some cookies and one asked for more for the 3 men in the boat who transport the officials. Of course we handed out more drink and cookies. The two uniformed men filled out some forms and then asked to look through the boat. They opened drawers, looked into closets…. One fellow helped himself to some chocolate bars and then opened a canister of peanuts and took a handful. One of the officers was greedy, the other just seemed to ask for what he needed which was a pair of sun glasses. We had none that weren’t my prescription lenses. Our agent was not on the boat at that time. The officers seemed to be looking around more from noisiness than to really find contraband which we didn’t have anyway. They asked about guns and we said no. On our form we said we had some cases of beer, a few boxes of wine, and two bottles of spirits. They didn’t hunt for them or pull up carpets to open hatches though they did want to look under our settee where Randal keeps boat parts. They asked for hats but I told them they couldn’t have my Red Sox hat. NO WAY! They absolutely believed me. We gave them some Pen Marine hats we’d been given in Batu Maung during the Malaysia Rally. They stayed on the boat with us as we entered the harbor and helped us attach ourselves to the plastic blue pier. I gave another group of men who also helped something to drink and then they asked for hats! Well, we only have so many hats that don’t have some sentimental attachment. But I came up with 3 more hats and again explained that NO WAY WERE THEY GETTING MY RED SOX HAT!
Soon our agent Nuwan Windsor came and he was a very polite, professional, young, and we both immediately had great confidence and trust in him. He helped us fill out more forms. Then the customs man came. Before his arrival our friend Bill from BeBe had given us a photocopy of a sign he had photographed. It said in three languages that asking for or offering bribes was a punishable offense. We’re not sure if the customs agents saw the photocopy, but they went away happy with the “gift bag” we had made ahead of time having been warned ahead by other cruisers. The bag had all kinds of stuff. A 6 pack of “aged” Tsing Tao beer imported all the way from China, some “airplane sized” bottles of alcohol, cigarettes, coffee packets, flag bandanas, chocolate. The agent asked Randal how much whiskey we had on board and Randal said two bottles and showed him the two in the “gift” bag. (One of the original bag bottles had gone with the greedy naval officer who had looked inside the bag and had wanted a bottle. At least he hadn’t taken the whole bag!) The customs agent laughed, took the bag and he and his assistant opened their empty briefcases and tried to stuff the bag inside. That didn’t work so they just climbed off the boat carrying the bag. We were literally afraid to leave any of the officials in the boat where we couldn’t see them. It was a “head shaking” experience and a sad introduction to a new country. That was Monday, January 17th and 11 days after we had left Rebak Marina.
On Tuesday I went for a walk out of the complex to top up the 3G SIM card that had been passed along to us by Rick and Suza from Voyager. I walked the blue plastic dock path, up the stairs, and around the small park and up to the gate. The officers looked at my pass and wrote down the pass number and out I went. We had been told there was a shop to buy phone minutes just past the gate short of the main road. I saw the shop that sold Dialog phone cards, went in. Instead of asking for a card, I asked for more minutes and confused the shop ladies. Luckily a tuk tuk driver had come in to buy some cigarettes and he helped me explaining to them what I wanted and to me what I should ask for. He showed me how to check the time balance on the phone and how to add the 400 minutes. 400 minutes cost $4. One Sri Lanka rupee equals about 1 cent US.
These small vehicles are tuk tuks and seem similar to the small vehicles we used in Subic Bay in the Philippines. Randal says they are different, and maybe mechanically they are, but visually they are similar. And you climb in and out the same way.
Street scene.
I really didn’t walk far; still a bit tired from our passage and it was very humid.
I walked to this near bye “grocery store” where the prices seemed high though probably not. I bought Randal a Snickers bar that cost 150 rupee, so about $1.50, a loaf of better wheat bread for 300 rupee and a few other things. That came to 580 rupee and I paid with a 2,000 rupee bill. 1000 Sri Lanka rupee equal about $9 US
On Wednesday, Randal and I went out to the center city and Dutch fort ruins, but it was January Full Moon Day so shops and offices were closed. The ATM was available, thankfully though we’d earlier traded Indian Rupees for Sri Lankan Rupees to Rick and Suza so we did have about 3,000 R. We had lunch in the Fort area and tuk tukked back to the boat.
English is about the 4th language on the list spoken here and it is spoken in a way that makes it hard for us to understand. We, of course, speak no Sinhalese, the main language. The main religion is Buddhism.