Sifah boat trip

Recently, my boss Maha very kindly invited Jenny and I to join her on a family day out on her friend’s boat. Although using the word boat does not seem to do it any justice. The term “gin palace” would seem much more appropriate. For anyone interested, the boat was a 56 foot Gulfcraft, aptly named “Majesty” and was absolutely stunning.

We left Marina Banda Rowdha early on Friday morning and headed along the coast to Bandar Kharan, where we were one of the first boats to park up in the crystal clear waters for a dip to cool off. Our swimming was shortlived, when we discovered masses of jellyfish swarming round the boat. It turned out that these were actually only baby jellyfish and were not harmful as they didn’t have any tentacles, but still it had put us off a little bit and so we moved on to find another spot.

It turns out that swimming and relaxing in the sun is very tiring work and we headed further down the coast to Sifah and my favourite restaurant As Sammak. You may have seen from my previous posts that the restaurant is right on the beach, and this being a big boat meant that we couldn’t just pull up to the beach, jump out and paddle to the beach. After a number of phonecalls we were met by a fisherman on a small boat who was able to ferry us to the beach.

After a very hearty lunch (I love this restaurant) we convinced another fisherman to take us back to our trusted steed and made our way back to Bandar Kharan. This time it was quite busy (nearly as bad as Castle Court on the last Saturday before Christmas) with many other boats looking to make the most of the weather and the weekend.  A bonus for us, was that the “Flyboard Oman” guys were down there and gave us a demonstration and one of the guys on our boat Samir, a chance to test it out. This looks a lot of fun.

As the sun started to set, we headed back to MBR and Muscat after a very relaxing day, which was long overdue!

Kayak & SUP Safari

Stand up paddleboarding is becoming quite popular in Oman and a number of our friends have their own boards. January seemed to have been a busy month for many of our friends, recovering from the excitement and overindulgence of Christmas. For us, it was a busy time at work and also we had the pleasure of entertaining our friends from Chicago, Sinead, Valerie and Barry (Barry not so much of a pleasure!) So, a plan was hatched to do a bit of a paddleboard safari around Bandar Khayran and a camping trip. I’ve tried SUPing a few times and whilst it’s OK it doesn’t rock my boat, so to say. I’d much rather be in a kayak. So that’s what we did.

There’s a little road that leads down to BK from the highway, which is only accessible by a 4x4 – which meant a long walk for Anna!! Despite the location being relatively inaccessible, it was still quite busy with families picnicking and enjoying watersports, so we decided to set up our camp on one of the neighbouring beaches. As the tide was out, loading up the kayaks and the paddleboards and wading round the corner wasn’t too much of a big deal.

Bandar Kharyan is a small bay inlet about an hour's drive from The Wave on the road to Sifah. The scenery is absolutely stunning. Sadly, it was a bit windy and the video doesn't really do it justice, but hopefully it gives an idea of the crystal clear waters and beautiful coastline.

Now of course, it would be wrong for us to leave Ralph at home whilst we're off enjoying ourselves and he loves to get involved. He got to try both SUPing and kayaking, and whilst he was particularly skilled at SUPing, I think he prefers to be in the water rather than on it. 

The placement of the tent is very important and we thought we were being clever and all Bear Grylls by looking at the tide mark before deciding where to set up camp. However, it turns out that we weren't so smart as we were enjoying our barbecue when the tide came right up and through the middle of the area where we were sitting. Fortunately, it just missed the tents, so we were good for a dry night's sleep!

So the idea of having a nice quiet beach away from everyone else was a good idea on the night before, the morning after we had to resolve the issue of getting all of our stuff back to the car, now that the tide was in. After a bit of head scratching we decided to lash together three of the SUPs and load our kit onto that. I then towed everything back to the cars in the kayak. It was a bit hairy at times, making sure I kept it all balanced, but we made it back in one piece with everything still dry. That just left the others to swim round!