Elsewhere, I found sails made of 50 kg bags from the cane sugar factories. Those are made of chemical yarns, far stronger but the wind is blowing right through it.
Once raised, the sail turned out to be torn thoroughly.

The trimming of the ship, however was done very well, and it sailed lightly and unexpectedly fast

Needless to add, the boat is open, apart from a steering deck (on which the owner of the feet on the picture sits) under which the firewood for the stove (a car wheel mounted on a tire) is kept dry, and where one can sleep (since the wind never comes from the front).

Having learned from our previous mistake to select not only on hardware and technique, but also on people, we went into another week of negotiations and technical conversations with the two shipyards that we considered the serious alternatives to the one we abandoned. Taking time makes it easier to see who is more accurate with agreements to meet and prepare data, and who is willing to show trust and longer term commitment by taking a share in the burden of financing and to work before pay.

Daniel, a young guy who formerly was down on our list, turned out to be the Best Yard In Town. He understood our ideas and came with good suggestions of his own. He turned out to have a production on his yard bigger by far than that of the others (mostly much smaller dhows, though). Jeremia, formerly skeptical about his technical abilities, now got very pleased with him. Jeremia did not always understand Daniels calculations, and neither did I. Dhows are not built following a drawing. The size of every part follows from the keel length chosen and is determined by the eye or by proportional comparison. I worked with a computer drawing derived from some photographs and counting lengths and little squares of a grid as input for a spreadsheet. We seemed not to be far apart.
I could not wait until the settlement of the final agreement, had to return to Jinja (see Illegal).
At home, I was called about a technical subject: I had chosen for a length of 15 m, that of the largest dhow I had seen, but yet this one was not big enough to yield standing headroom for me (1.86 m) in the cabin under the deck. So my basic design size was relatively slightly high dhow. I did not tell Daniel, and thought he would not notice or at least not bother much. But he found it and since he knew the standing headroom requirement he suggested to keep the dhow in traditional proportion, hence 30% longer. The Largest Dhow On The Lake. Now he was the one to come with the idea, which I had considered and not dared to propose, I concluded he had the courage, and if he had, I should have it too.
His price went up proportionally to US$ 13 000,- . That is ridiculously low for a hard wood boat of 20 meters, but an undreamt fortune in East Africa.
The next step would be to buy the wood, which would, it was claimed at first, imply sending one of the shipyards employees Ahmed, who was also a mninga trader, to the forest with the equivalent of US$ 10 000.
I protested. I had never seen this Ahmed. He could be robbed from his money or say so. He could be robbed from his wood or say so. Money OK, but for wood that had arrived on the yard. Even if it would cost me 10% more, I claimed, it would be a fair insurance cost.
We ended up with advancing 30%. End of February.
Daniel had logs for a keel, I heard, and had started making it.
Then the waiting for the wood set in. March. First message: bad weather in the forest, no way to get logs out. Second message: unfortunately no mninga available at present.
My email how long is Ahmed now in that forest with my US$ 3000??
I was calmed down: this is normal, such things happen.
April: some wood found in another forest, but we need more money.
More money? If there is no wood, where is the bloody US$ 3000 advance money?
The increase of the advance was refused but I was still advised to wait.
But the combination of a trader unknown to me with a lot of money "in the forest" for more than two months without getting a single piece of wood out, and a request for more money made clear to me that the time of waiting was over.