A Dubai Epistle to the Corinthians

Hello from the Middle East branch of Forth Cornithians Yacht Club. I hope this finds you well this morning - we're 4 hours in front of Scotland so it's 9.30am here while its still silly o'clock in the UK. All is well here although it's the middle of winter the weather is still quite nice, warm sunny days but cool at night. Dubai is quite quiet considering that its the height of the tourist season but there still seems to be a lot of tourists about especially in the Dubai Marina area where we live. The Dubai shopping festival is in full swing at the moment so the malls (and there's a lot of them) are quite busy.

I am heading back to Scotland for a week in early April and would hope that I can get through to Edinburgh to say hello at least. We missed Dennis on his way through Dubai a few weeks ago but hope to catch him on his way back.

Haven't had any sailing so far this year but we are booked onto a dinghy sailing course at the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club in March. It should be hysterical as Mark and I are going together. But as there will be an instruction at least he won't be able to boss me about too much! We've also booked sailing in Greece for July but this year we will be cruising the Saronic Islands in the Agean rather than the Ionian. The floatilla kicks off from Athens and we can fly directly from here so we took the plunge as it were and just booked. July in Dubai is killer hot (approaching 50 degrees) so Greece should be quite pleasant by comparision. Mark has decided however that I should take a fleece with me as it was about 24 degrees here the other day and I was complaining of being cold - changed days! He has been well warned that as crew I reserve the right to mutiny if he turns into Captain Ba***rd at any point during the cruise - it will give me the opportunity to practice my man overboard drill!!!

I hope everyone in the Club is well and looking forward to the start of the new season. What word of the development of the middle pier, are you still in talks with Forth Ports about the yard? We check out the website quite regularly and the new one looks really good. Could you email me a copy of the latest edition of Fairwinds - Dennis was telling us (by email) that it looks really good and that there is new person doing the editing and we'd love to read it for ourselves. Is it going to be posted on the website?

Take Care

Mhari Rodger