Muscat: A 61-metre Omani boat set sail on Tuesday for a tour of the GCC states on the directives of Sultan Qaboos Bin Saeed to revive the Omani maritime heritage.
The Royal vessel - Zinat Al Bihar - will tour all the GCC ports as well as Iran in a bid to enhance ties between the Sultanate and other nations.
Zinat Al Bihar will proceed to Kuwait’s port of Al Shuwaikh, its first port of call in the GCC region. The vessel will arrive at Al Shuwaikh on December 20 and dock there for three days. Its second port of call will be Salman Port in Bahrain which the ship is expected to reach on December 25, where it will anchor for four days till December 28.
Then Zinat Al Bihar, which first sailed in 1988, will conduct a three-day visit to State of Qatar’s Al Doha Seaport.
Later, the vessel will proceed to Iran’s ports of Bandar Abbas and Makran.
Zinat Al Bihar will return to Port Sultan Qaboos in Muscat in the second half of January 2011.
The voyage comes in pursuance of earlier tours of Arab, Asian and European ports. The vessel’s visits seek to enhance ties of friendship and amity and to embody the Omani people’s seafaring history and their role in transferring civilisation and encouraging human and cultural dialogue.
The boat has already taken part in the 815th anniversary of the foundation of Hamburg Port in Germany, covering 6,500 nautical miles in the marine venture. It also participated in the Barcelona Maritime Festival in 2004.
