#2: [01-Jan-04]

#3: [28-Jan-06] (incomplete)

08-Dec-2002 -- One intention of our holiday trip from Finland to UAE was besides a visit of my brother, there is also a Confluence. The original plan was to make a desert expedition to the 23N 53E point. We also got email from confluence hunter Alasdair MacKenzie and were planning a joint trip with him to that point. Because our schedules did not match the joint trip and even we got the waypoints and route to 23N 55E point from Alasdair, we decided to make a desert expedition without confluence visits. Reason for this was that we could make a journey of two off-road cars only and for safety wanted to go to areas, which where more familiar to our group. My brother also wanted to make his first confluence visit to a point that was not visited before.

We had a very pleasant couple of days desert expedition from Ḥumaym in the Liwā area east to the Oman border and then north via al-`Ayn back to Dubayy. After that journey we turned our sight to the sea.

The confluence 25N 55E is situated twenty km from my brother’s place, but it lies about two km from the coast at sea. After a quick consideration we abandoned swimming, canoeing and sailing to this Confluence from our favourite beach at Jabal `Aliy and we decided to combine fishing and (confluence) hunting.

From Jabal `Aliy Hotel & Golf Resort we rented a fishing boat for four hours. Having told boat captain Mr. Akela about the confluence project and presented him the GPS device, he kindly promised to steer the boat to the 25N 55E point. At two o’clock we left Jabal `Aliy Hotel harbour and headed for the sea and within 15 minutes captain Akela skillfully found all required zeroes for the GPS device.

After taking the necessary confluence pictures, we travelled over 15 km from the coast to the area where Mr. Akela thought the fishes would be. Merja got disappointed when our captain figured that trolling would be useless at the circumstances. So for three hours we did bottom fishing with squid baits on a calm and quiet sea, changing the place a little bit every now and then.

After sunset at twilight time we returned to the harbour with our catch: fifteen sheri fish, of which we grilled four big ones later at home, one quite big catfish and one barracuda both caught by Ulla, and one Confluence.

Within the feature called "The Palm Jabal `Aliy", in the water between the stem and the lowermost palm frond to the right, about 200 m from land.