On Fri, 04 May 2007 16:29:07 +0000, Larry wrote:

Although it comes from a stereotype, one is often warned about French
boats. They have a reputation in Europe and in other places as being
light fingered towards other boats.

There is a saying "The English equip to cruise, the French cruise to
equip".

Once in a harbour in Spain, Cartagena, where boats were moored stern
to the jetty, tightly packed and only seperated by fenders, a French
boat a couple down from us sailed out in the early morning with both
his neighbours' fenders in addition to the few old ones he had of his
own. He had untied the ropes of the fenders from their lifelines and
retied them to his own, something not noticed at all by them. The
harbour master's boat that pursued the Frenchman was told by him that
they were his. Being unmarked with any boat name that proved
otherwise, he was allowed to escape with the fenders. A neat trick
perhaps, but not an isolated incident. It was then that I wrote my
boat's name one each of mine with a large marker pen.

I have seen people move such as boathooks, buckets etc to below when a
French flagged vessel ties along side.

The Israeli's have the same reputation in Cyprus. The Customs officer
(Christian) I had a daily coffee (proper, with mud in the bottom of
the cup, not dishwater - Vic) with in his office whilst we swapped
Nasrudin stories once warned me "There are 21 Israeli yachts coming in
today as part of a race; put everything removeable below and lock
your dinghy and outboard". - No, I am neither anti-Jewish nor anti-
French. The previous year, one was pursued and stopped leaving Larnaka
harbour with an inflatable with another yacht's name painted on it.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that I discovered that the
Nasrudin (or, more properly - Nasr u Din) as told me as a little kid
by my grandfather are popular all throughout all the lands once ruled
by the Turkish Empire. I have swapped these stories in cafes from Oman
to Gfreece. As a Greek kid I was told they were Greek. They are not
and are now becoming very popular in the West, especially in the USA.

The cruising element? We drove for hours (whilst cruising Turkey) to
see his tomb in his home village of Akshihir and trudged through the
snow. He left instructions to be buried with only a locked gate at the
foot of his grave - no fence, just the gate. His stories, though very
humorous, are actually Islamic Sufi teaching parables with multiple
deeper meanings, depending upon the listener.

An example:

Several visiting dignitaries were hosted at a feast to which the
public were invited in a town Nasrudin happened to be visiting. As his
robes were old and patched, he was placed at a table where he realised
it was going to take a long time to be served, and with not the best
of cuisine. He went to his friend's house and borrowed a magnificent
robe and turban and returned to the feast. He was ushered respectfully
to the head table and plied with delicious dishes such as peacock
tongues in aspic and the like. After every few mouthfuls, he would rub
some of the food onto his garments and turban.

Entranced by this, someone asked in a respectful manner "Effendi, we
cannot help but notice that you must be from a different place and
thus have eating habits which appear strange to us. Would you be so
kind as to explain why you smear food on your clothing?".

Nasrudin replied between mouthfuls "The clothes got me in here, surely
they deserve a share of the food?"

Bill Shakespeare got it wrong.

cheers
Peter





Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Oh, is that what they are called? We used to call them "flyspots" as
kids and thought that they didn't wash.

Peter


Have you tried licking them off? I've been unsuccessful, so far...(c;

Larry