Senegal, In Too Much Detail

Who would have thunk it, here I am with ADSL access in the yacht club, sitting with my laptop doing an update. This is long, so get comfy.

La Gomera To Dakar

The sail to Dakar from La Gomera was our furthest yet, about 850 miles. It was also the most eventful. The weather was a mixed bag throughout: rarely did day last where were didn't make significant sail changes. We motored the first 12 hours, looking for the wind. Once we found it, we were close hauled in 15 knots. This shifted round to the north-east and we had a play with the cruising chute for the first time. This shifted further round to the north, and we hoisted up both headsails (using one of the new spinnaker poles John had salvaged in the Canaries). This gave us an excellent downwind performance, keeping at 5 knots with 7-8 knots of wind apparent.

The storm jib got some air-play too. The wind picked up, yo-yo-ing between 15 and 30 knots, and we had the storm jib up for nearly 48 hours, with 2 or 3 reefs in the main. The waves were pretty choppy, but the self-steering performed admirably throughout.

Once things calmed down we switched back to the twin headsails. Unfortunately this didn't last as long – 6 hours later and we were hit by our first squall. Through a piece of exceptional weather prediction from John, we were pretty much through with switched back to storm ib and main when it hit. It started with a very light rain, and within 15 minutes we had 30 knots of wind and horizontal sleet greeting us. It lasted a good few hours.

There were other things to keep our attention. Along with a few smatterings of porpoise, we also had our first taste of flying fish. Quite a shock for both of us – we didn't expect them to actually fly. Jump really far, sure, but not actually flap their gill-wing-things to propel themselves along. They can travel a good 40 feet: Naturally checking the decks in the morning for these fish is now part of the routine. No whales yet, though (in the water, not on the decks).

Also our first and hopefully only run in with hmm-perhaps-these-are-pirates. 100 miles of Mauritania, a large, odd-looking, fishing vessel, acted rather peculiar. The fact that it was there at all was the first peculiar thing it did. That it came very close, changing course a good few times, was peculiar. That they didn't respond to VHF, not too odd on it's own, added to the peculiarity. Still, after it had a nose around it seemed satisfied, or perhaps dissatisfied, with us, and promptly headed off. Not 100% piratical behaviour, admittedly; not a definate skull-n-cross-bones affair; but worthy of mention.

African oddities continued that evening. As the sun went down we were presented with 3 (which later turned in to half a dozen) very, very bright lights, all below the horizon. Initial theories including must be land, must be a search party, and looks like the moon were soon quoshed (we were 100 miles off land; the lights were too bright; the earth has only one visible moon). So we pootled through them throughout the night. On reflection in the morning, John's best theory is an unmarked oil-field. So for those planning on the same passage, keep an eye out.

During all this we had made excellent progress; we were looking at getting in on Saturday early evening, under 7 days to do 850 miles. Unfortunately the last 100 miles we had to try and fight through 10-20 knots of wind coming from exactly where we wanted to go. We had real trouble making any decent progress, and after doing 12 hours or so, doing less than 10 miles to the course in a 4-hour watch, we succumbed to the engine for the final part.

Sunday morning and we motored in towards Dakar. The wind had now dropped entirely, the hot sun was beating down, and we weaved a passage towards the harbour between the Pirogues: long, thin, colourfully painted fishing vessels holding anywhere from 2 to 20 fishermen, hauling in their nets, regularly bailing out water, and generally trying to keep balance.

We finally dropped anchor at about 5pm in a busy anchorage. As it was Sunday, customs etc would be closed, so we could spend the evening keeping an eye on the anchor, and cracking open rest of the beers and rum and cokes.

First impressions

That Sunday evening we were greeted by the water taxi, which runs a service taking those an anchor to the shore. Just a toot on the foghorn and you'll be picked up from 8 in the morning and will be brought back up till 10 at night. We also met Alpha, our boat-boy. Who is actually a boat-man, which through us to begin with, but he is extremely helpful, very friendly, and is happy to help us with information about the place, fetch us gas, diesel, or anything we need at a good price.

Monday, John was up early to deal with the officials. Accompanied by Alpha, he set off at 9am, leaving me on the boat to twiddle my thumbs and hope everything was going a-ok. He returned at midday with a general thumbs-up, but many stories to tell.

First stop was to get some West-African francs. The books have told us that it can be a hassle bringing in the currency, but we had lots of USD which we thought would be recognised tender. On the contrary, these weren't recognised at all (rather they expected us to have euros), but a Western Union did a swap.

They don't get many English through here. The policeman didn't recognise our English passports. Once he worked out we were English, me beemed;

“Ahh English – the last people we had murdered by pirates were English!”
“Really..? When was that?”
“Oh, last week. They were on a French boat though.”. So that's OK then.

[side note: turns out the chief wasn't pulling out leg. Thanks to UK sources, turns out this made uk news. here's the beeb link if you didn't see Charlie's comment below. I think this is quite unprecedented – Senegal has few pirate occurences compared with, say, Mauritania and above]

Photo-copies had to be done of documents (the police station didn't have a photocopier, so that was another trip), forms were filled in, passports were stamped, and then 5000 dollars was handed over to “speed up the process”. John claims he haggled him down from 10,000. John also admits at this point he had absolutely no idea what the currency exchange rate was. Back in the taxi, off to customs, more forms, another 5000 dollars changed hands. Turns out 5000 is worth roughly £6.

Once John had recouped from his 3 hour ordeal, we went back ashore so he could show me around. On the water taxi we met some of the other sailors here; mostly local, a few French, all very friendly. On to the beech and I touch African soil for the first time. Well technically white sand. The beech is full of local children playing, men setting off on their Pirogues, women dozing under palm trees. Up through the path and in to the yacht club, which is a court-yard with hammocks and benches, a nice bar, and basic facilities. Lots of hand-shaking, Bonjours, smiles, and out in to Africa.

A dirt track runs along the coast, bustling with locals. It is lined with shacks, either small stores or tiny restaurants (usually with only one or two benches), rickety taxis and hourse-and-carts dodging the potholes, people sitting and talking in the shade, women deftly carrying baskets on their heads, basically exactly what you would imagine from a small poor African community that for some reason, although totally expected, we were both hit with major culture shock. And I think we both realised that we'd finally travelled for the first time in 3 months, we'd got somewhere important. We stumbled through the track, lots of ca-va's and hey rastaman's and inquisitive children and smiles. We came across a bustling fish market, set on the beach. We stumbled back to the club and needed to a few Flag beers for it all to settle in.

The next day we explored further, taking a taxi in to Dakar city centre. We were properly prepared: money split 3 ways, money-belts, passports, an address to show the taxi man get us back the club. What is quite surprising is that of all the places we've been so far, it is here things were most accessible – efficient water taxi, helping boat guy, a shop selling cigarettes and water across the path, an internet cafe 2 minutes away, and a taxi-rank just next door which will take us in the centre for de mil. A fifteen minute journey in a taxi with lots of character, and we step off in to the heart of Senegal.

And, like the day before, thing should have been entirely expected – a busy, built up, industrialised, somewhat Westernised, African poor capital city – which I was entirely unprepared for. Brand-named goods - Coca Cola and Nescafe; Shell and Eso – sit side-by-side with stalls selling hand-made arts and crafts, fresh fruit and vegtables, fish and nuts. Double the ca-jas, the hey rastaman!s, the hand-shakes. A couple of times people were a little too friendly, once we stopped and got chatting we soon find ourselves a little surrounded by sellers, friends wanting to take us to their shop just down the side, children begging, but the place was safe, friendly. We found a cash machine, failed to find a supermarket, found a place to get beer, and ducked in for a couple whilst a storm decided to pay the town a visit. Still bucketing down outside, we made a final half-hearted attempted to find a supermarket, gave up, and jumped in to a taxi.

The taxis seemed less charming and “full of character” now. It leaked, my door seemed to be quite content staying ajar, and the cracks in the windscreen and ineffective windscreen wipers rendered the visibility close to nil. We also had to contend with the taxi driver not being able to read our address (illiterate) and us not being about to pronounce the address (very pathetic), and the driver now wanted tres mil, claiming he needed “danger money” because it was dangerous to be driving in these conditions. Still we arrived safely, so based on that John haggled him down to 2000.

Goree

Our other major excursion worth a report was our trip to Goree Islands. Our course in to Dakar took us around the island, and it looked quite stunning: beaches, colourful huts, historical stuff which we should really tick off the list. And as we have a general rule that we should force ourselves to do at least a day of exploration in each location, it seemed an ideal place to go. So off in the taxi to the port, got our billets and jumped on to a ferry to take us across.

The islands was quiter, slower than what we'd seen so far. Originally the islands was one of the main slave collection points, and we dutifully took in a museum and went around nodding at placards that we had no idea what they said.

It doesn't take long to take in the whole island – we walked through all the streets and climbed to the top in an hour or two. Lots of arts and crafts for sale, still a lot of pro-active sellers (and rastaman still being their opening gambit), one time I had to talk away from a girl trying to sell me necklaces, leaving me with the parting “oh Nick, Nick, you are no good to me, I'm going to cry now”, but we had a very enjoyable morning ambling around.

We sat in a small restaurant, John determined to full his quota of steak and chips, and we had a marvellous meal which turned in to 4 demi-carafe of red wine, watching the street-sellers, fisherman, and the locals diving off the pier. The street sellers seemed also to notice the wine flowing, as we ended up buying two hand-maracas-on-string-drum type things, and 3 bracelets. Still, I haggled the bracelets down from 15000 for one, to 10000 for 3. Luckily we had just enough to cover the bill and taxi-ride home.

Funds replenished at a cash point on the way home, we stopped off at the club bar, where we managed to run up an impressive-sounding 35 grand bar tab. We spent a long time chatting with mau-mau, another boat-guy here. We grilled him with lots of imformation about the area, what we can and can't buy, about their customs and traditions, which he was only too happy to help with. He also taught me a little Wolof.

The rest of our days have been spent relaxing on the boat. Doing odd repair jobs, sitting under the cover of our canopy and reading and snoozing. The heat is restrictive during the afternoon– certainly it doesn't provoke much of a work ethic, so the jobs list hasn't shrunk significantly yet. Still, we're looking to leave in the next couple of days and get on to Cape Verde, a 4-5 day sail and a brief stop, and then we'll be looking at the1600 miles to Recife, Brazil.