Closing The Deck
Just A Drip
Dessert Of  The GOOD LORD: One Of His More Potent VAC's.

Monday 06/05/15
Last Saturday I had to go to Kampala only to change the 800 W band sander I bought, only because on buying it, I forgot to consider the capacity of my power generator (650 W).  Today I had to go to Kampala only to change my band sanding paper, only because while changing the band sander, I forgot to check whether it uses the same size of paper. That amounted to 6 unnecessary hours in full busses, not the safest places health wise. I come home with headache that turned out to announce a Very Aggressive Cold (VAC), taking hold of my throat, nose and brains.

Photo: inside, you hardly hear the generator (yes it has a backup line)

Jinja Week 8

Tuesday 06/05/16
VAC, day 1. No improvement, just lying down, avoiding light in my eyes, heavy headache. Philemon bandsands the hatches.

Wednesday 06/05/17
VAC, day 2. No improvement, just lying down. Though less serious than malaria and a-fib, the suffering is much more. Philemon epoxy-varnishes the hatches, starts sanding main deck

Thursday 06/05/18
Night: heavy rain, new leaks due to sanding, will close after varnishing, VAC, day 3, slight improvement. We are running out of our heavy stocks, so we need me and my car for shopping. I decide simply to defy nature, go and drag myself sweating through town. I seem not to get punished for it, but neither do I get any better. Philemon sands the main deck.

Photo: Philemon (Goggles, Dust Filter, Ear Plugs) Sanding. Down Below, Not Shown, The Captain (Paracaetamol, Ear Plugs) Coughing

Friday 06/05/19
Finally: I wake up with only a light headache. I am still stumbling around like an old man, but I make my first coffee in four days. With all this malaria, a-fib, VAC (day 5), I almost forgot I have problems. The last state of the BPP was [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234], but the storage system  (BPP plobrem 7h) is completed. BPP plobrem 7f is actually surpassed by fact: the leakage through the bottom is very little and can be removed by manually scooping three minutes a week. It requires no special system. The "money lost in cyberspace" problem (BPP plobrem 6) finally comes to an end: the money is back on the my ING bank sender account. We're down to [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]. 

Photo: Hold, Starboard With Captain's VAC Sick Bed, Desk With Laptop And Wireless Internet, And, Above, Wide Storage Shelves

Of course, there is much more to do on the dhow than those remaining BPP issues 7 a (closing deck), c (toilet shower) d (deck cooling system) and g (mattresses), but those are not in the original BPP. We are approaching the stages where boat jobs can be considered as agreeable non-urgent pastime. That is fortunate because it feels like high time for some relaxation. Its seems I still need to recover from all actions to cope with the harassment by those incredible Tanzanian government thugs. While you're in action to cope with it, especially now there was miraculous success and the dhow and most important properties are retrieved and safely in Uganda, you can seek pride in feeling yourself a sturdy type heroically overcoming their depressing hooliganism. But once that war is over, you start realizing that the type of harassment as they organize is not the healthiest, mentally, to experience. It does yield scars that require recovery, and that will take me some time. Too often still my brain runs in directions to consider spending time and money and teach them a lesson. Technically feasible, but this is the wrong outlet: first of all, revenge would teach them exactly the wrong thing. Second, their ruthless inhuman predator instinct prevails among African negro adult males generally. It it perfectly arbitrary to start targeting only the guys that accidentally happened to target you. Most of the others are no different. They do it everywhere, against whites, against people of other tribes, of their own tribe (Mr. Malima maltreated Philemon physically, both are of the Jita tribe, Musoma), and last but not least, their own wives. Sensible blacks I am talking to agree with this. So the best thing is to gear back the breathing and accept Nature As It Has Pleased The Good LORD To Create It. Just stay clear of threats as well as you can, as everybody does here, and do not waste your energy being angry or indignant. Shit happens. Just try not to be the fool who stands where it falls. It will surely take me a few months to get back to that local secret paradise were Good LORD is used to roam incognito in his leisure clothes, but I've been there before (in Dutch) and I trust I'll find it again.
No doubt the place is outside Tanzania. Simply relaxing and cooling down might well grey out the entire T-side of the BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234], the solution being: Leave It And Forget It.

Saturday 06/05/20
VAC, day 6  Still weak, still some headache, Philemon sands and even paints (!) parts of the main deck. To fight boredom on my bed I draw the scheme of our Local Electro Ironical Panel (LEIP) in Adobe Photoshop (connoisseurs: click here). I edited the design for some planned changes. Then the headache and weakness returned. But I could not bear further lying down on my bed waiting for the bloody virus to recede. So I decided to sit in front of the LEIP with my pliers and screw drivers to reintroduce a relay allowing the generator to power my 230 AC circuit directly (my HP printer adapter does not even work on the converter's block wave). After 2 hours of screwing and stripping, the relay worked and the headache was gone.

Sunday 06/05/21
VAC, day 7, weakness seriously receding, still coughing and sometimes slight headache. Philemon leaves his fishnet on board and goes back to angling.  

Photo: Sato (Tilapia). Philemon catches 22

He catches 22 small tilapia in no time. That amount allows him to have them cleaned and fried by a mama in the harbour village, who can keep part of them. We can continue our boat jobs waiting for our fish to be ready (the next day Philemon will even sell part of his catch, buying soap and saving another USh 1000 (�0.45), so now S.V. Saa Moja is starting to earn money).

Photo: layer 1 Sadolin epoxy transparent varnish, meant for painting cars in the tropics. The black in the joints has now become an unattractive combination of SIKAFLEX and Sadolin epoxy varnish, the latter sometimes mixed with saw dust to improvise a paste. But, on test: Not A Drip! 

I was not in time to take a picture without those white bird droppings. They are too fast and to many. The dhow is the local king fisher's meeting place. Mast, folmali and anchor lines are fully occupied most of the time, their being used as watch points for surfacing dagaa (match-sized fish). The small king fishers do not swim but pick with their relatively long beaks, falling in the water, but they know how to get back in the air. The big kites and the fish eagles need more courage: they pick the fish with their claws but if they fall in the water there is no easy way out. Otters and cormorants have the best adaptation: they just dive and swim faster than their fish, surfacing and quietly swimming after a catch. The pelican, who, I now see to my surprise, is actually bigger than the marabu, does not dive, but swims and floats around, probing deep with their meter long beak. Most human fishers use canoes and nets, Philemon uses hooks. He heard from boat tourist guides in the village that they saw a big croc 500 m around the corner at the source of the Nile. One wonders how so many fish can escape from all this and still swim around that tomorrow everybody can eat again..

Monday 06/05/22
Philemon sands and varnishes the bow edge of front deck and the rear deck. The steering deck will be the finale, tomorrow. VAC, day 8, cough and no full forces yet, but my main job is the renewal of all my vehicle papers (pickup, motorcycle, road license, insurance). That is a physically light but mentally tough journey along a host of buildings and officials, with quite some sitting and waiting.
Back home it is hot enough to think of launching with immediate effect the deck sprinkling, with a little solar panel driven 12 W  immersable pump (BPP plobrem 7 d OUT!!). I did it.

Photo: Deck Sprinkling Launched
(reduces working of the wood and cools the cabin ceiling with a little 12 W pump)

State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]

Jinja Week 9

Tuesday 06/05/23
Today Philemon turns to the last deck, the steering deck. I have VAC, day 9.

Wednesday 06/05/24
Philemon's epoxy varnishing of the steering deck marks the end of the 1.5 year period of dhow building that started in the second half of 2004. The relevant web pages from this period have now been subsumed under:

The Dhow Building Logbook Index Page

As for me, I am on VAC, day 10. It's not over yet, but even though I have not yet been able to kick it off my body, I am going to kick it off the dhow logbook from today. I go to a next page, leaving that bloody VAC behind HERE!!.