2012 10 08 Mesharifa has been generous!

Our guests regularly arrived on board of Sherazade on Monday afternoon, October 8. Landing with Fly Dubai on time and fast landing operations. 

 

We’ve decided to sail away and leave after dinner in order to go northwards, weather forecast was very good for the whole week, gentle winds from NW or absent. By doing so we woke up in Merlo. An ideal reef for the first dive, to check the diving apparatus and the arrangement in a shallow-sea, between 20 to 25 metres. A gradual start in company with a beautiful and luxuriant reef that we’ve left the last season in June and found again now in good health, despite the sweltering summer. Then it follows diving in North Merlo, Angarosh, Abington and an afternoon dedicated to Mesharifa and looking for mantas. The temperature of the water is about 30°, the air 33°. 

It’s pleasant to sunbathe in the morning and at sunset, while the air conditioning is really comfortable during the hottest hours at midday. We stop and anchor each time surrounded by a parade of migrating swallows, alighting tired and for this reason quite trusting, a bit everywhere. In the evening instead small flights of bee eaters arrive, preceded by gentle modulated call notes, almost gloomy, adding magic to the starry sky: they settle on the upper deck usually after the sunset and the leave again before dawn. It’s always extraordinary having the chance to sail and dive so peacefully and above all in solitude. Our guests fully enjoy this calmness: we are the only boat in this area and the sea is really, totally for us. Far from the Egyptian summer months full of maintenance works, Sherazade comes back to its life, its rhythm and breathing, animated by the guests and a hard-working crew. There is no wind and a breath of enchanting smell comes out and raises from the kitchen doors, winding us into a cloud, alternatively scented of delicacies or cakes or bread in the early afternoon. Mesharifa has been generous! We anchor in the Mesharifa lagoon (16 miles west of Shambaia) to search mantas.

Manta rays meet together to breed in Mesharifa from August on.

We found them, a lot !!!! With the quiet surface of the sea, in the absence or with little wind, it is easy to spot them. We could see them following the thread of the current, where one after the other glide elegantly with their open mouths filtering the water, chasing the concentrations of plankton. They are so quiet and intent that we could easy swim together without drifting away or scaring them!!!!!!!! Fins, mask and snorkel are enough, since they slip fast or linger in an unpredictable manner and the tanks would be merely an obstacle for a free swimming. A spectacle of nature in solitude, a natural symphony! Hooray!