8:58 PM Mon 26 Jan 2009 GMT
 | | 'Galle port - facilities to be upgraded'
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The Indian Ocean is becoming cruiser friendly! With India's Kochi building yacht facilities at a furious rate, and Sri Lanka's Galle port sprucing itself up with a new yacht marina, the long neglected Indian Ocean is set to take on a new look. 42 yachts in the round-world Blue Water Rally arrived in Galle this week and applauded the upgrade.
Sri Lanka's Galle port is hoping the new yacht marina will attract the high-spending sailors who sail past the island's south coast on their round-the-world voyages.
'The facilities in Galle now are rather limited for yachts,' declared Richard Bolt, head of Blue Water Rallies, a company which organises round-the-world voyages for yachtsmen
'We gain protection from the weather,' he said in an interview on the Galle jetty as a variety of sleek vessels with gleaming white hulls and tinted glass windshields lay moored alongside.
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'But you don't have good mooring facilities for yachts or other facilities. So we're delighted to see the marina being built.'
Construction work on the yacht marina at Galle began on January 15, 2009 and coincided with the arrival of 42 yachts sailing across the Indian Ocean, a variety of boats, from single hull vessels to catamarans.
In the first phase of the project to be done in six months, basic berthing facilities for 50 yachts of 15 metre length and three-metre draft will be built at a cost of about 125 million rupees.
Sri Lanka Ports Authority chairman Priyath Wickrama said they want to develop Galle as a tourist port which will attract visitors that would also help the entire tourist industry.
Bolt of Blue Water Rallies said existing arrangements for boats were far from satisfactory. 'Mooring against concrete pillars is difficult for GRP (fibre-glass) hulled craft. So it would be nice to have floating, wooden pontoons.'
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The port also needs a ship yard and 'travel lift' to raise yachts out of the water and transport them for repairs, he said. A better fuel delivery system is also needed - yachts are now refuelled using fuel drums.
Galle has long been a port of call for yachts and is the only Sri Lankan port that accommodates pleasure craft, even though the facilities are at a bare minimum.
The cruise and yacht season is during the months from October to March in the non-monsoon period when the sea is calm. The development of the marina will help attract more yachts and tourists to the island.
Richard Bolt has the last word: 'Galle has a huge attraction as an entry point to Sri Lanka - our sailors love to visit the country. We've been coming to Galle for the last 14 years - every two years.'
by Lankabusinessonline.lk/Sail-World
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