Close to Give Up
8: Sick, Stuck and Stinking

"Jinja-Entebbe is three or four days sailing. May be five if you have very bad luck." That is what we are used to say, even after that one time we did the first 60 of the 110 km trip in 4 days. We thought that the 15 km a day average of those 4 days was an appalling aberration of nature, not worth further considering let alone remembering. This time, preparing for the trip to the new near Entebbe house of my sister and brother in law, we had not the faintest idea we were heading for an almost classical story of sailors'  hardships: an 8 day period of wrong wind and rain storms, 6 km per day, sick, stuck, and stinking.

Above: Our trip. With days numbered at their end-of-day points of arrival and all places where we had to anchor for headwind, heavy downpour, storm, or head-storms with heavy downpour. The reader finding enjoyment in closely following the suffering of fellow humans might wish to open the map in a separate window and  savour our predicament switching between the text and map windows with Alt-Tab.

To understand us, you have to know that dhows can sail up to beam reach, that is with wind on 90^o[more]. It can not sail with wind forward in any way. This does not mean that half of the wind directions is un-sailable. If your headwind does not come totally straight from your target, you can choose the one of your two 90^o-to-the-wind options that makes you approach your target a bit. This is what you see us doing on the map on days 3, 5, 6 and 7 (the numbers give the arrivals at the end of the days ^{[open map in separate window]} , mind you, the not listed days 4 and 8 we could make no move at all!). In such cases it is a serious nuisance not to be on the open lake but in channels bordered by mainland on one side and islands on the other, the natural end-and-anchor point of any such attempt is, as you see on the map, where you reach a bloody shore.
Departure. A sunset East takes us 3 km, then a very heavy rainstorm from North. We anchor. At night we continue, soaked, between hundreds of paraffin gas lights the dagaa fishermen have floating near their nets. Christmas in November. An endless field of fishnets. If we pass too near the floaters we catch them and have to jump to the keel to remove them either from bow or rudder blade or both. This is traditionally my task since Africans hate jumping in the lake at dark. I do not bother - after all what is more nostalgic than dying in some rare Victoria Lake croc's jaws? - and enjoy the gratitude. Wind turns East, we do not make it to the deeply desired corner where we could head for Entebbe in the morning wind. In the morning I wake up. The wind is good to make the corner. I look again. We are already there! Philemon and Mashabala had noticed the recurrence of West at night, had just released the anchor and drifted without sail to our desired morning start in two hours (1. ^{[open map in separate window]}).

 2^{[open map in separate window]}. Philemon preparing the dhow for another rainstorm sending water and heavy wind gusts from our heading side

The exact meaning of a rain storm on a dhow on Lake Victoria is as follows: your bone-dry wooden deck in the tropics reaches over 60^oC in the perpendicular midday sun. In rain the wood reabsorbs humidity and cools to 18^oC . Therefore how ever you try to caulk, your deck joints will crack open. To stay dry despite constantly appearing leaks we have heavy PVC tarpaulin on top of the deck. But at gale 12 the wind will blow some rain under the tarp and ten drops on your pillow suffice to make you feel all wet. Some risk prone beds have their own tarps over them inside, but mine does not (pride!!). The wind and the waves shake your deck and thus move the deck water (just a little compared to the 4000 litre that your dhow deck can catch in one storm) to deck joints cracked open. One rainstorm is not a big deal, because the rest of the day will be sunny, you will dry your clothes and bedding quickly, the solar panels will charge your board batteries and everyone lives happy after. But two rainstorms a day on six days in a row is a different story: clothes and bedding will not dry, your batteries will get depleted, and you cannot use your generator when it rains. You will be waiting for your sailable winds with un-chilled beer in the dark, no reading, no writing, no computer, and especially your beds and pillows will, after some days, gradually assume the smell of an outright dead horse ^{[more about storms]}.
After anchoring for a rain storm at day 2, having made only 16 km in two days, we started to feel in the circumstances where you sleep only when you have to wait for sailable wind, and you sail whenever the wind is right, no matter whether you are tired, hungry, it is dark or light. It was the time of shrinking moon. Every evening after dark we would have to wait longer for the moon to rise and give us some light.

5 ^{[open map in separate window]}. Feeble gusts (from the wrong side, of course). Full moon had just passed, so every day more of the first hours of dark would be moonless.

On day six, two days after we thought surely to have arrived at Entebbe, we decided to see what food the shore villages could supply us for the now unknown number of days to come. After having to anchor, hitting another bloody shore, going by canoe, Philemon and Mashabala score perch and cassava. We eat listening to the shore sounds: crying children, bleating goats, mooing cows, hammering nails in rotten canoes, engines of chain saws cutting the last trees, at night frog recitals and the heavy boom boom of a far fishermen's village disco powered by generator. In between shrieks of fish eagle, owls and other birds, the seldom burp of a hippo.

We expect to run out of food, Philemon and Mashabala score perch and cassava by canoe in a shore village ( on day 6)

Morning at 6. East wind! We hoisted our sail and tried to heave our anchor, but it had gotten hopelessly stuck 20 m deep between rocks. Luckily our precious East wind totally stopped right after and we could pull ourselves straight above the anchor using pulleys and a swimming captain (picture left). We have two big and two small anchors. Losing a big one is not an immediate disaster but a new one would have to be brought from Mwanza, Tanzania, Ugandans do not know how to forge a proper anchor.

No wind at all for hours. We did not even have to strike sail. It hung over the dhow like a stage's curtain.

The next wind was useless West, but it pulled our anchor from the ground. Relief! We brought it to the surface. It had caught a big piece of rock with one point in a hard piece of mud glued under it. The entire 40 or so kilo stone-mud lump had joined the anchor to the surface. We had to enter the canoe to kick it off. Nothing to do but to drop the anchor again, hoping for better luck next heaving.

I was getting pretty fed up with the weather system and considered towing options. Were Loek still around, we would surely have called him. Dom, on Sese Island Banda, now owns Loek's boat, but Banda is a bit far. Peter is on his boat with tourists in Entebbe and might have time after having dropped them. I call Peter. No answer. Then Philemon points at what to me looks like a piece of ant shit at the horizon: "Peter", he says. Peter has business in Jinja but tows us from our bloody lee shore windward for an hour (to between 6 and 7^{[open map in separate window]})

Peter, on his way back to Jinja, tows us windward for an hour (his 25 Hp outboard managed a 5.6 km/hr speed), which probably saved us 2 days (day 7 ^{[open map in separate window]}).

At sunset a south wind allowed some west movement. We hoisted, broke our halyard winch steel cable, replaced it, hoisted again and a wind turning to West took us to 7^{[open map in separate window]} the climax of our trip, where we had to anchor for what seemed just another rainstorm. But it was not. This was a rare super-regional pressure difference system giving South Beaufort 6, close to storm, straight from the deep big big lake. Waves grew to a meter. One meter may seem little. Until you get tossed one meter up and down ever 2 seconds and every time with a different lateral movement. Until it lasts a full night, while your mess gear flies though the cabin, and you wake up, on day 8, in the same wind and waves with no perspective of change whatsoever. How long will this last? Milk: finished. Bread: finished. Finally our last fish and maize flower on day 7 (Mashabala did not hold it and fed it to the few fish still managing to stay alive swimming in the Lake Victoria fish net labyrinth). Our electric pumps ceased functioning because the leak water under the floor had washed too much dirt clogging their filters two seconds after cleaning them. So we just let the leak water wash on the waves from one side to the other in the boat, which sounds like you are living next to a serious water fall. Day 8. We wake up anchored on waves half the size of our dhow. In the night, storm had dragged us down 600 m. No clouds! But wind, wind, wind. Philemon and I make a chapatti breakfast with our wheat flower (2 kg left). Before the last chapatti is in the pan, sea sickness drives me out. Philemon finishes the cooking, he even eats, but that was the last we saw of him for the next few hours. Wind goes down a bit, our course might be just sailable. No Philemon. This man really wants to arrive and go back to his captain's course in Dar es Salaam, so there is no need to tell him we'd better go. Finally, when Philemon came up, wind had turned head. Storm, no birds around, be it for wind, the falling dark, or the smell of dead horse spread by our bodies, clothes and bedding. I removed the battery from my camera. On a particularly big wave it had fallen from a table in a bucket where it sunk in the water that had leaked in there.
At 02:00 night I decide that if at sunrise we still have this storm we go downwind back to Jinja. Under these conditions we could be back there in five or six hours.
At 04:00 in pitch dark we see the flashes of a rain storm Eastish. Our desperate dream comes true: South east wind, not even too hard! We heave, hoist, gybe in pitch dark and head West. Day 9, Friday 13! North of Dwaji Island ^{[open map in separate window]} we get coverage for the big waves still moving with the previous wind which went Northward. Then a rainstorm comes from South. Philemon, normally slightly more careful than me, claims the biggest of the shit will pass in front of us. We ease our sheet and with our 142 m² sail flying slightly free we continue our course with big speed. Philemon leads the sail management, ordering Mashabala who is bow at the josi, himself next to me at the main sheet. I do not even check what they are doing, as I steer in the pitch dark, while the dhow, reacting on heavy wind gusts, wants to turn starboard and port from moment to moment. The GPS arrow is to slow to follow the movements, I have to check lights around, but they come and go. Suddenly, under the black clouds of the rain storm I see, through my wet spectacles a thick turbulent white fog approaching behind us with great speed. "Philemon! Look! What is this?".
"Day is coming" Philemon says calmly. A few seconds later I find that clouds below and hills beneath gave mere grey morning light a cloud-like appearance.
In no time day conquers dark, the rain storm follows Philemon's prediction and moves away in front of us. We reach Damba, the next island, covering us totally for waves. I make chapattis.
We passed the Damba beacon. The English left 40-odd good concrete beacons on Lake Victoria before returning the lake to its rightful dwellers. Of course nowadays nobody cares to maintain their lights and they surely would have been taken were they of any useful material. Yet, independence is celebrated every year! Nothing could cool our  hearts anymore, not even the very rare continuous rain with Southwest wind that forced us to anchor for almost the entire afternoon. Then we went on, crossed Murchison Bay, leading to Port Bell, Kampala, and reached the peninsula supporting the impressive house of my sister and husband. Night fell, wind and waves went down, and on the mirror-flat pitch black lake surface we were back the dense Christmas illumination of floating dagaa fishing lights. Gliding calmly I had to put down my cigar and whiskey three times to jump in the lake to free us from fishnets we caught ending at 9 ^{[open map in separate window]} . Day 9, that memorable Friday the 13th we did almost the same distance as all 8 days before together. The next morning, after our last chapatti breakfast, we arrived at 08:30 hrs.

Arrival, day 10

My family still was out, but we were welcomed by Piet de Jong, the JP Cuttings farm manager, and house staff, supplying us with MILK!!! for my coffee. With my sister's car - she left the key -  I did our shopping and had my first stand-off with police about something they hoped might be a traffic offence of mine but was not, aaaaah!, what a joy to be back on land! Meanwhile Philemon and Mashabala washed and dried our clothes, cleaned the cabin and cleared the muddy water from under our foot waling, thus putting our electric pumps back into action. Curiously enough, when finally we sat, clean, dry and well fed, we first started to feel tired.

The contrast between sailing and arriving was marked. From left to right Mashabala, my father, Philemon, my mother, myself and the dhow.