Graph: The Mother of Doldrums (open in separate window)

At roughly day 300 (read on the horizontal axis) we signed the new contract. The time table for finishing the dhow at day 365 (roughly Christmas) is the orange line, the Lawyer Line. This table was not only signed by Daniel, he made it himself. After day 400 (February 1) Daniel will start to pay fines for every week of delay. The Fine Line represents that limit. I myself decided to put that Fine Line a month behind the Lawyer Line, and to keep the fine to a modest TSh 50 000 weekly in the first month of excess delay, making it TSh 100 000 weekly afterwards. I thought this would be menacing enough. I did not reckon with any serious delay down the Lawyer Line.

In the first days after the contract no work was done and Daniel assured me the hull would be ready 5 days before the deadline. However, some days later the view of the yard made clear that quite on the contrary: the hull be ready at least two weeks behind schedule. Without further delay, Daniel had trodden right in the middle of the orange zone !! I did arrange for the official hull inspection at the official time, when the hull should have been ready. The inspector Tumaini started on TSh 150 000 for his job, I started on TSh 20 000, we agreed on TSh 40 000, a fortune for a morning's job like this. A good list of defects came up. I insisted having two statements inserted in the report for which I would not have needed an inspector:

the hull is not ready, probably will not be even in two weeks, we will need another inspection later. the planks' thickness is 25% lower on average than agreed in the contract, saving the yard TSh 400 000 in wood logs, but my damage in terms of hull quality, of course, is greater than that figure

With the report I went to Feleshi, telling him it showed he had missed his TSh 100 000 premium I had promised in case the hull would have be ready and approved on inspection on time. Feleshi, highly upset, talked of lying, teaching Daniel a lesson and putting a soldier. But two days later he had done nothing. He hadn't even made Daniel understand the inspection report. I had to explain him everything. On every item he wanted to start a debate with me through the translation of Feleshi. I told him nine times (the exact number of defects listed in the report) that I was just explaining what was in, and that I was not interested in his opinion, that delays caused by not meeting the inspector's requirements would be his liability.
Daniel wanted me to accept his apologies for his delay. Feleshi did not even need my reaction to know what to say: finish that bloody hull first!
What can we now do? I asked Feleshi when we were alone walking on our way back to the saw mill.
Feleshi did not know.
Let us think about it, I asked Feleshi. Feleshi, I said with emphasis, he simply used my TSh 2 000 000 to pay his debts and now has no money to pay the workers on his yard to help him. Ask him tomorrow, Feleshi, ask him: you got TSh 2 000 000 from that gentleman, why are you working now delayed and alone? Why don't you hire your workers?

At the lawyer's I should have put Lawyer Line and Fine Line together and make the fine five times as high. But for that it is too late. I do foresee delivery end of January.
And  I do foresee a TSh 2 000 000 claim from my side due to contract breach on plank thickness, hence no more payment. But of course that should stay a surprise if I want to keep the yard going even at its present pace.

I can take my ship anytime. The contract states that all which is built and bought for building is my property.

What's Wrong With A Doldrum?

There is a curious side effect of these inertia events: I get bored.

Bored??

Yes, bored. Usually, my day consists of some writing if I like it, some reading (I threw away all my books except a top fifty of classics in philosophy, literature and history, hard to finish the rest of my life in the pace I'm reading lately), watching people and animals around me, learning Kiswahili, listening all my music and copying it into mp3, playing piano and saxophone, a visit to the dhow yard, some shopping in town, some evenings to the Mwanza Yacht Club where now I reached far up Mwanza Gulf in a club Laser, ignoring some technical defects that formed straightforward security threats, running, smoking a cigar, but every single of these ways of doing nothing now seems...boring!
If all that is boring I do not see why doing the same, later, as I promised myself I would do, sitting in that dhow is not, so what is this ??
It is clear enough: as long as I have a pressing desire to crush Daniel entirely and get away with that dhow, al the rest seems idle pastime. IT IS, of course all idle pastime. That is not my problem. What I mean is that it SEEMS idle pastime as long as I make no progress in getting this Daniel down, working and regretting, and that is highly undesirable. Making life SEEM to have purposes is, after all, the glorious and joyful game of living, ask Alexander the Great, Beethoven and Ben Laden..
How to get out of this? Obviously, I will stay alert for opportunities to hit Daniel hard, but chances are that I simply have to wait for two more months to capture my dhow and enjoy my refusal of paying him his last TSh 2 000 000/=. But being bored means that Daniel lured me out of African time, and I should of course not allow him. African time is what I am here for, not for a revenge, nor even for a dhow!