Position: 14:39.93N
017:25.68W
Date: 16 November
2009
Anyone who thinks that swanning
around the west coast of Africa in a yacht in tropical
heat in mid-November is a stress-free and relaxing experience can think again. I
am near the point of exhaustion, largely due to Colin. He is the sort of maniac
who thinks that sleep is a waste of time and anything more than four hours a day
is a sissy self-indulgence. He then insists that I join him on all his madcap
adventures. With that and the nervous exhaustion of trying to fix the various
problems on board and I am more tired and stressed now than I was when I was
working a 70-hour week in the pressure cooker of the City six years ago.
First of all, let me update you
on the saga of the water-maker motor. Arona, the electrician who has twice
failed to fix the motor for more than 2 hours greeted my return to
Dakar on Saturday with the excellent
news that he had acquired a new big Jabsco water pump which he was going to try
and adapt to work with my water maker. It would be done by Sunday. Sunday
arrived and went, and I’ve now been told that if I call him this afternoon
(Monday) he might be able to tell me whether and when it might be fixed. I’m not
staking my life on whether this will be a long term solution so I have asked
Oyster after-sales to get a new motor couriered from the US for Peter to bring
out to Cape Verde (as usual the team at Oyster, Ally and John, have been
providing a superb service – a real life-line in times of crisis).
Meanwhile a further problem
materialised when I came ashore yesterday to find that my laptop would not
communicate with the internet – either by wifi (used onshore) or by Iridium
phone (used offshore). I tried everything including turning it off then back on
again (normally sorts most problems) – but nothing. This meant that I could not
send or receive emails, would not have access to weather data for the passages
but worst of all I would not be able to update this blog. I now have a devoted
fan club and I know that the lack of blogs would create a void in the lives of
all five of you – something had to be done and done fast.
Colin had sweated himself to a
shadow yesterday traipsing around
Dakar in pursuit of a computer
specialist, not helped by the fact that notwithstanding it is a Muslim country
everything is shut on a Sunday, but he did manage to identify a number of
potential computer shops.
Colin is desperate to get out to
the Isle de Madeleine, a nature reserve off the coast of
Dakar with all the bird life
necessary to bring his tally from a monumental 72 species to a record-breaking
round 100. But I insisted he join me this morning to quickly whip into town and
get the computer fixed. We left at 0730 fully expecting to be up and running
again by 0900. To cut a very long story short, we met someone who knew just the
chap who could solve the problem -
at 1000. At 1030 he turned up but looked at the laptop like it was the first
computer he had seen. But not to worry, he knew someone who knew all about these
problems and we were carted by the “expert” and his introducer through the back
streets to another centre of hi-tech excellence where we were met by yet another
blank _expression_. Another phone call later and a further expert arrived. Over
the next hour half a dozen more experts were called in. Once a Senegalese
latches on to you he never lets go, so on our final trip through the less
salubrious parts of Dakar we were surrounded by an entourage that Barack Obama
would have been proud of – and all of them computer experts. Eventually we gave
up exhausted and depressed. I went back to the hotel which is our land base in
Dakar whilst Colin was at last
released to see if he could get the necessary permit to visit the Isle de
Madeleine. I ran some virus software, found that the computer had indeed been
infected (by a Trojan?) and I seem to have acquired a degree of connectivity.
How long it will last I don’t know so if I go off the air suddenly, please bear
with me.
Having now spent eight full days
anchored off the city centre, today was the first time I had actually found the
time to venture into the capital city of
Dakar in daylight. It is an
extraordinary, bustling, colourful, dirty and, for naïve European visitors,
slightly threatening city. The
streets are lined to bursting with street traders, beggars, and vulture-like
opportunists all vying with each other to take money off the unsuspecting
European visitor. The ADS who, back in London, has been reading the blogs of
other fellow rallyists has reported back to me that several have found “guardian
angels” – local Senegalese – who have acted as guides and protectors; who have
neither demanded nor even expected any payment for their services. Sadly this
was not our experience. They are highly skilled in their technique. At first
they appear genuinely friendly and wishing to show you around for which we were
ready and willing to give them “un cadeau” for their help but, at the end of the
day, there has always been the sting. Naively we have trusted them to arrange
things in what to us is an alien city and they, without exception in our
experience, have abused that trust. You end up being ripped off and with a
bitter taste in one’s mouth. The country people of
Senegal that we
met – those in the Sine-Saloum delta - are charming, genuinely friendly
dignified and honest people. I would love to come back to the country but I
would avoid Dakar like the
plague.
Talking of plagues, Amina on
“Naomi 2” became ill more than a week ago. Confined to her bed with severe flu
like symptoms she has been diagnosed as having contracted Denghi fever, a
disease spread by mosquitoes but for which there is no prevention – unlike
malaria. Worse still there is an epidemic of Denghi fever in the
Cape Verde
islands, our next port of call where we will be staying for two weeks before we
make the big hop across the Atlantic. So we will all be
going around in long trousers, long-sleeved shirts and covered in Deet to avoid
the same debilitating infection.
There are more risks in ocean
cruising than one suspects.