Why the Suez Canal is my Watford Gap

If you come from south eastern England, there is a good chance you have heard of the Watford Gap. It has gained a kind of mythical status as the gateway to London and return to civilisation from the savagery of the North. It is a modern day Hadrians wall where south represents normality, and the comforts of home and North is where you venture only to see your Great Aunt Mabel or because your team is playing away. For most southerners passing the Watford gap represents leaving the north behind, the taste of a cup of Tetley's almost in sight. In reality of course it is just ubiquitous service station on the M1 a fair distance North of London.

The Suez Canal is, in reality is just a 100 mile long ditch in the desert that allows ships to visit the pirate hunting grounds of the Southern Red Sea without having to circumnavigate the continent of Africa first. For me however it has that same mystical status of the Watford Gap. Passing northbound through the Suez means you are departing the unfamiliar cultures, dialects and cooking of distant lands and returning to the warm familiarity the Mediterranean, almost understandable languages, familiar looking people and of course decent beer.

Today we are passing northbound through the canal, returning to the blue waters of the med after a 5 month absence. In 10 days or so we will reach Ukraine where Tania and I will disembark DIscovery, our home for the last 9 months, and take a well earned rest. But first I get to visit two new countries in two days, a remarkable feat mainly because I am running out of new countries to visit. Tomorrow we will be in Beirut Lebanon, which quite honestly is something I didn't expect to be doing, the following day I will be in Syria, number three of the five "Axis of Evil" countries proclaimed by George W. Libya and Cuba are the other two I have been to, in case you were wondering.

But for now, I am just enjoying our slow and steady passage North in this desert ditch, swatting flies and dreaming of a cup of Tetley's

No Jack Sparrows today thank you

About a week ago, we passed from the Indian Ocean, through the Gulf of Aden and into the Red Sea. For those of you that have not been watching the news, this is the area where there is very high incidents of piracy. The problem with pirates is that due to Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl, there is an impression that they are jovial, lovable rogues. They are far from it. For the month before our transit, we had been receiving extra training in how to differentiate between Yemeni fishing boats and pirate boats, the most obvious clue being that you cannot fish with an AK47 (unless you shoot the fish of course). On leaving Oman, the ship was decked out in barbed wire all around the possible entry points, a 24 hour watch consisting of about 40% of the crew was placed, after dusk the exterior doors were sealed and exterior lights extinguished, onboard was a Royal Navy piracy expert. Our usual safety drills were postponed and instead we carried our a pirate attack drill and all non essential satellite communication was shut down.

We entered the safe corridor at 18 knots, basically flat out, as pirates very rarely get above 14 knots for an attack, all breakables were secured incase the ship needed to make severe maneuvers, out of sight but not out of mind was a Royal Navy ship keeping a watch on us and other ships passing through the corridor. It took about 36 hours to transit the safe corridor and for all intents and purposes it was a safe passage. However for those on the bridge, listening to radio transmissions, there was an attempt on a container ship a few miles behind us and on the very same day, pirates took the Maersk Alabama.

So here we are safely in Egypt, the pirates behind us but unfortunately ahead we have Egyptian hawkers, who quite honestly are the land lubbers equivalent of your Somali Pirates. Only worse. And of course we have the lovely Egyptian sand flies, who seek out moisture from 200 meters, the said moisture usually being my eyes.

In a few days we will leave all the drama behind and head for Beruit. Whoever would have thought of that!

A Day in Aqaba

In the end I decided not to take the D3 into town, Tania (my fiance) and I are at the end of a 10 month contract that has seen us go from Northern Europe, through the Mediterranean and Black Seas, across the Atlantic, down to Antarctica for three months, across to South Africa up through India and the Middle East to where we are now. Of course I could have just paraphrased the previous sentence by saying we are bloody knackered. So we decided to have a quiet day, coffee and internet at Gloria Jeans, a bucket of fired chicken from Pop-eyes and a wander around one of most favourite places in this part of the world.

Its actually the people that make it so pleasant, Jordanians are friendly welcoming and open. They have the Arab instinct for selling but unlike their Egyptian neighbors, they do take no for an answer and accept it with great grace and a smile. They like the British, their King was trained at Sandhurst and Jordan itself has had close connections with the UK for a long time. Aqaba is a relatively modern town, but with lots of old world Arabic charm, beautiful gold shops, fresh cashew nuts on every street and halal chickens being spit roasted in the windows of the cafes.

We wandered out for dinner in the evening and being thursday night, the Islamic equivalent of saturday night, the town was buzzing. People sitting in the parks, making last minute purchases in the bakery, smoking hookahs and generally enjoying themselves. We decided to eat at a place called the Tikka Hut, which serves delicious halal grilled chicken and makes fantastic fresh lime and mint juice. The place was packed, two large Jordanian families and their filipina nannies taking up half the available and limited table space.

Nikon D3 after one year

Almost exactly one year ago, I ordered a Nikon D3 from Grays of Westminster. I had wrestled with my conscience for weeks even months, I had tried to convince myself that I didn't need it, it would do nothing to improve my photography, why move from a D2x to a D3 when the megapixels are the same? All very valid, lucid, rational arguments completely overruled by an irrational desire to possess something that was going to cost me the best part of £4000.

In the end, as is often the case in my life, the irrational gained the upper hand, partly swayed by the not insignificant fact that because I was working on a ship out of Aqaba, Jordan, I would not need to pay the VAT on it.

And so at the beginning of April 08, I sat on a large cruise ship, nervously awaiting news of whether my D3 would arrive. Grays had sent it, Fedex had delivered it, but somewhere along the line, the paperwork was not correct. It was now sitting in a warehouse near Amman International awaiting customs clearance. The hero's of the day were to be a company called Amin Kawar and Sons. they were the ship's agents in Aqaba and dealt with all the issues, kept me informed and on our last visit to the city delivered me a 10kg Fedex box containing what some sports photographs have come to call "Black Gold", the Nikon D3.

So any regrets, well, I could have waited and got the D3 cheaper even without the VAT, but then I would have missed taking some wonderful images, of our journey back to the UK through the Mediterranean. Could I have taken the images on my D2X? Yes almost certainly. Would they have been so good? In my opinion no. In later editions of this blog I will try to convey a little of my relationship with the D3 over the last year but for now, I am going to give it a little clean in preparation for a return to its spiritual birthplace. For tomorrow, almost exactly one year from taking my first D3 images of the evening skyline of Aqaba, I return to that city on the Red Sea and of course my D3 will come with me. Possibly also my Canon G10 but that's a story for another time.

Apples and Nikons

In September 2006, I bought a white Apple Macbook laptop. It wasn't my first Mac, that honor went to a little Powerbook G4, two years previous, it wasn't the most powerful computer I had ever owned, my previous windows desktop was infinitely more powerful. It was however a life changing purchase. You see, although I loved my G4, it was to slow, had low memory and had a small 12" screen which made photographic editing use very difficult. My desktop PC had whatever screen I choose to join it to, plenty of memory but unfortunately ran Windows. And so I walked into a large technology store in Lithuania with a vague idea of buying a Mac laptop and 30 minutes later was the proud owner of an Apple Intel powered, Macbook.

Its screen was only 1 inch bigger than my G4 but my photographs just popped out of it. The operating system, Apple OSX was an absolute joy, very little learning curve, and no annoying messages. If I plugged something into the USB, it just sat up, paid attention and said, "oh a Canon Printer, very nice, heres a good little driver that will make your lovely printer work" Of course it didn't say this but you felt that if it had a mind, its the sort of thing it would say. Plug anything into a Windows machine and its silent voice will shout "What the f**k is this, are your going to tell me, or am I going to have to have a tantrum and get all blue screen about it?"

You see this is the thing about Mac's. They just work! No dramatics, no questioning, no nannying. The operating system sits quietly in the background, looking pretty and working hard. I just plug my Nikon or any other camera in and get on with my work. Efficiently, effortlessly and dare i say it pleasurably. Most of my images are shot in Nikon's NEF raw format. OSX recognizes the files, lets me see thumbnails and full size previews and , lets me catalogue or adjust them them in iPhoto.

Of course as a professional photographer the pleasure of using my first Macbook has led to me buying a beefy Macbook Pro, 20in Apple display and now my collection of 20000+ travel images is managed by Apple's pro application Aperture.

My raw files are stored and backed up on Firewire 800 external drives and of course when I plug them in, my Mac silently says "ooh, a Western Digital firewire drive, lovely, your ready to go" Could i ask for anything more?

Is slow internet better than no internet?

So here I am, sitting in the middle of the Red Sea (on a ship, I am not Moses), typing the first entry on my new blog. I should be impressed, after all, I am not connected with any cables, I am moving at 18 knots which for land lubbers is about 22mph. But am I? Yes through the wonders of satellite technology I am simultaneously uploading high res photos, typing a blog, transferring a domain name but unfortunately growing a beard. The beard is an unintentional side effect of the ridiculously slow internet connection very often suffered by satellite communication, and by god its frustrating. One problem is the limited bandwidth, the other is people skyping, uploading, downloading and generally sucking the life out of the bandwidth. I know I should be grateful that we have internet at all but honestly sometimes its so frustrating I would rather stick needles in my scrotum. Anyway I will finish for today because undoubtable by the time I have finished typing this, I will have lost the connection and quite possibly the will to live.

Stay tuned for more agonising slow blogs form the ocean waves