Chatty log | Tanga

Tanga

23 January

Caroline: It's a bit of an anti-climax. It was not easy to say goodbye to my mum and dad and now we're confronted again with the mess on board and all the things that need fixing. Alex is in tears saying he cannot cope anymore and misses his friends .... We go ashore for lunch and the plan is to find an internet cafe in town in the afternoon. During lunch we start talking to a Dutch family at the table next to us and before we know it the afternoon is gone and we've been invited to dinner at their place. Birgit and Luuk, and their kids Nina (10) and Ben (6) have lived in Tanga for 12 years and their house is only a few minutes walk from the yacht club. The kids have a great time together and it's arranged that Alex will spend the night and go to school with Nina tomorrow.

John: Luuk and Birgit invite us to use their internet connection, so we can clear all the mails that have accumulated. They have an amazing life here, both are vets, and quite at home with Swahili and locals, with whom they work. What a stroke of luck to have come across them! They are very laid-back and friendly, immediatyely trusting and supportive. Quite a boon, at a point when we are feeling alone and lonely, far from home and familiar sources of support.

24 January

Caroline: Back to doing jobs on the boat. At 1 pm we go ashore to have lunch and find that Oliver has arrived safely. He works for the same institute as John, the Tropical Marine Science Institute, and is coming on board for a few days to take water samples. He's also here to collect the air samples we took. Amazingly, it is cheaper for him to fly here and take them back himself than to send the samples with DHL back to Singapore. Go figure! He's brought some goodies from Singapore, including VCDs, batteries, wasabi, books and line. The line is to replace the main halyard which John and Casper do in the afternoon. Oliver and I head into town to get some diesel, find an ATM and buy some food. We had hoped diesel would be cheap in Tanzania, but we're horrified at the price of US$0.90 (S$1.50) per liter. The taxi driver and his mate do some negotiations for us and get the price down to 82 cents. People here are friendly and quite a number speak English quite well. On the market we had no problem at all talking to the vendors. Food on the market is cheap, we paid 10 US cents per mango. The supermarket is not cheap, but at least has a reasonable selection. During dinner at the club we meet another cruiser, Harry, and visit his boat afterwards where we watch an Odyssey film. Odyssey is the name of a sailboat that is going around the world doing research on marine mammals.

John: I finally worked out what must have happened with the generator; the crankshaft-driven pulley for the seawater cooling pump belt migrated down the shaft and put everything out of alignment. Still don't know why. After much swearing and grunting, I get everything lined up again and a new belt on. Ashore for dinner, Harry comes over and introduces himself. Harry is German, apparently alone at the moment on his 70' steel yacht ('Old Salt') that he bought in Oz. What a boat! More of a ship, really. Quite a character; very friendly and easy-going. He has a killer recipe for a Cointreau-like liqueur (1 litre of 90% proof white Madagascar rum, 1 litre of water, 1 kg of sugar, 1 orange peel, 2 sticks of vanilla, 1 stick of cinammon and 2 cloves. Mix and leave for a coupe of weeks, then have a seriously good afternoon). Odyssey is the sailing boat that Roger Payne has got together under the (charity?) Ocean Alliance to work on marine mammals. Harry met up with them in the Seychelles, I think. We straggle back to Jocara and collapse into bed; tomorrow we're off to take water samples around the reefs.

25 January

Caroline: Alex is still staying with Nina and going to school with her. It feels strange leaving without him even if it's not very far and only for one night. We motor across the bay and anchor off a reef where Oliver takes a bunch of water samples with Casper as his assistant. We then move on to another reef where he takes some more samples and where we stay the night also. I have a go at scraping the reef off the hull again. We have thousands of gooseneck barnacles growing on her and I see new types of fish hanging around and quite beautiful red little carpets, a type of encrusting algae? It's absolutely amazing how fast things grow. I suppose that's good news for areas with a lot of reef destruction.

John: Oh boy, here we go again... More stuff breaking down. Now the Mercury outboard's quit, halfway through the water sampling. Lazarette shower head broken, air sampling pump looks sponned...

26 January

Caroline: Oliver also wants water samples away from the reef in deeper water. We motor into the Pemba channel for 4 miles where the water is more than 400 meters. Then we have a nice sail back to Tanga Bay. We stop for a snorkel, but the current is so fierce I can barely swim to the anchor chain. When we're back at anchor in front of the yacht club we go ashore to find Alex. He's playing at Nina's and is clearly feeling at home, but this time we take him back to the boat.

John: I'm so depressed at all the stuff still falling apart that I stay on the boat and mellow out with a beer and my book while the others take a dip. Seems I didn't miss a lot not snorkeling, a blue-spotted ray and a few other critters. Outboard really seems stuffed up today. Can't even get it started anymore.

27 January

John: I'm up at 07:20 to get Alex sorted and to row him ashore (the outboard's sponned, remember?) by 07:50 so he can be picked up by Nina for school. What a treat for Alex to fall into a friendly bunch of kids and an international school right at this moment! Then I set to work getting the outboard onto Jocara ready to work on it, work with Oliver on the stup!d air sampling pump and then it's time to go ashore again for Oliver to catch his bus to Arusha (a short Safari with our friends at Crown Eagle beckons him) and for Caroline, Casper and I to visit the Tanga International School. The school has three teachers, and around 35 pupils in all. Alex has found a temporary home in the eldest class group. We agree to have Caroline take the LCD projector and website to show them on Monday, then to have them visit Jocara on Tuesday at 09:00. Back on the boat, I strip down the outboard and clean out the cooling system and carburettor, then it seems to work. For how long? Emboldened by my success, I attack the main engine to finally get at the thermostat, the problem that has been dogging us (overheating) since Indonesia. Not for the faint-hearted. With judicious application of brute force and ignorance I finally get the heat exchanger off and access to the thermostat. I can't find anything obviously wrong. Maybe the thermostat looks a little tardy in opening, that's all. But now I have a lot of split hoses and broken gaskets to find replacments for in town before we can run the engine again.

28 January

John: Casper is in a very dull and depressed mood today. After continuously coaxing him to get his act together and clean the hull this morning, he's still muddling about and not in the water yet. I lose it. He cries. He really is stuck in this funk and can't get out. I relent and take him along with me into town to get the engine parts and maybe see if we can find an optician to do something about his glasses (the frames have broken and his old pair have an outdated prescription). It takes three hours, but we manage to get most of the parts and even find an optician who is going to cut his lenses to fit new frames for 10,000 Shillings (about US$10). Still I can't shoft Casper into gear. I spend the afternoon reassembling the engine. It seems to work, barring a little leak or two! Maybe, at last, we might have solved the overheating problem and be able to use the enigne normally if we want, without fear of it boiling over. In the evening we go over to Luuk and Birgit's place, where we have a beer and relax a while, solving the world's geo-political problems (or at least enumerating them). Nina is sleeping over with us tonight, so we trek off to the club for dinner (which takes forever to get served - I'm dozing by the time it arrives). The kids have fun playing pool - Casper seems finally to be cheering up a little. Back on board, it's after ten and the kids are mortified that Caroline and I have declared it too late to watch a video. Kids sleep on deck.

29 January

John: Casper wakes up back in a funk. I don't think I'm going to be able to cope with this again, so Caro takes him off to town to get some seafood at the market and collect his glasses. Our planned dive trip with Luuk and Birgit (also Simon from the school) is postponed to tomorrow. Alex and Nina go ashore to play. I'm left for some much-needed space and peace on my own to fiddle with engine and clean some of the hull. I spend a happy hour scraping great wadding carpets of biofouling off the hull, clearing about 1/4 of it before my tank runs out. then its time for some seriously loud U2 with a beer and blasting away with the jigsaw to make a new wooden support for the engine compartment. I realise I need to let loose alone from time to time to regain my equilibrium. Caro and Casper arrive back from town with cheeses and our share of the smoked Sailfish that Gephard has processed for us. It is truly delicious! Sliced very thin, a delicacy and perfect. So, add Sailfish to the list of food never to bother cooking. the 'Fundi' (mechanic) has taken our 8 hp outboard apart and declared the coil, head gasket and HT leads need replacing, and the head skimmed. It will cost 150,000 in parts, but is probaby worth it. He seems to know what he's doing.

30 January

John: So, a mad few hours tidying up (each time we do this the boat seems dirtier and more stained than the last) ready for our guests to come on board and go diving. We have Luuk, Birgit plus their kids (Ben and Nina) and Simon (McCloskey, the principal at the Tanga International School) on board. We set off just before 11:00 and motor out to the edge of a reef, finding it hard to anchor. Eventually we find a spot and five of us go diving, Caro staying on board to work on lunch and keep an eye on the boat. I partner Luuk and Birgit (who have only a few dives and none in the last year or so) while Simon (with a couple of hundred dives) partners Casper. The dive turns out to be good fun, with a fair variety of species both of coral and fish. Simon discovers that Casper, though only 12, is quite an accomplished diver and needs perhaps less looking-after than he'd expected. Back on board we wolf down the smoked sailfish and avocado toasties that Caro has prepared. Delicious! We sail back into Tanga, failing to catch any fish, and drop anchor just before dark. When the guests are gone, the anticlimax falls like a lead sinker and we crawl into bed, exhausted.

31 January

John: Monday, again, and both Caro and I are feeling short on energy. Caro spends most of the day filming Nina to make a 'day in the life of' film. The 'Fundi' tells me that new head gasket and induction coil are unobtainable, so he's going to use a second-hand coil and patch up the head gasket with epoxy... Never heard of that trick before! Still, no time to lose faith, the engine is in a million parts in a cardboard box at his feet, so what to do lah! In the evening Caro and I put in an appearance at the local Rotary International meeting and give a presentation on JIOQ that seems well-received.

01 February

John: The Tanga International School visits in the morning; lots of lively, fun students poking around the boat. In the afternoon I go into town to organise restocking the boat with booze and to find wholesale stocks of rice, pasta, etc., buying 180 packets of spaghetti, 30 kg of rice and 30 kg of flour. I also order 20 cases of beer and other drinking goodies to be deliverd on Thursday. This is costing a packet! The 'Fundi' has completed repairs on our outboard. he hasn't done anything about greasing the tilt mechanism (a real challenge to raise the engine when coming into the beach) or repairing the cover (stupid cheap plastic latch busted in Rodrigues) but I didn't seriously expect him to. I also notice the slow-running is too slow and it doesn't run quite right, but at least it runs. It costs me 120,000 in parts and 40,000 in labour (about US$120 and $40).

02 February

John: Caro and I set off for town to see the Port Harbormaster about getting fuel. We need a ton, literally. We explore the (purely theoretical) possibility of getting duty-free (or at least duty-refunded) fuel for a hour or so before giving up graciously and accepting the price of 820 Tanzanian Shillings/litre for 1000 litres, to be delivered to the dock where we agree to tie up on Friday at 11:00 (high tide). Then we get a whole basket-full of vegetables and fruit from the market, complete with basket, for 3000 shillings (less than US$3) and some bread before heading back on the local minivan 'bus' (costing 150/person/trip) to the club. We receive a group of 9 secondary students from a local school in the afternoon to tour the boat. They all belong to an 'interact' club that helps with local charity projects, often together with Rotary International. After, I attempt to adjust the slow running speed on the outboard, then realise why the 'Fundi' didn't do it. The adjusting screw is seized. I can see the bright scratches where his screwdriver has slipped off the screw and burred it up in the attempt. Funnny how he didn't mention this... The crew from 'Lamu' (a quaint old Norwegian whaling boat, now converted to a private 'yacht' owned by a German doctor who is into painting) call by to invite us over for dinner tomorrow. They have a Thai cook, so we can hardly refuse. We invite Luuk, Birgit, Pam (a friend of Birgit that Caro met the other day and who gave her a lift) and Christopher (a guitar-playing Greek who works in the Octopus industry) over for dinner on Friday. We are, in turn, invited to go into the rainforest on Sunday. Such a busy social life and no end in sight!

03 February

Caroline: The students who visited Jocara yesterday had invited Casper to visit their school, called Popatlal, today. So, he's off at 7:15 for a very local experience that he should write about himself. Alex is, of course, still going to Tanga International. John and I have a meeting in town, arranged by Birgit, with the Tanga Coastal Zone Conservation and Development Programme (TCZCDP) to find out about the Coelacanths that have been caught by local fishermen since last August. Coelacanths are called 'the living fossil' and are very different from other fish. Thought to have been extinct for millions of years, they have now been showing up in more and more places, including Tanzania. Apparently, here in the Tanga area when trawlers started bottom trawling just offshore, the fishermen started catching coelacanths, 19 since last August. This could be seriously bad news for the coelacanth population and TCZCDP and the local villages would like to have the area protected. We suggest we may be able to help spread the information by creating a Coelacanth page on our website, since they don't have one. We agree we will return Monday with a draft page. Before we leave their office, they show us a huge coelacanth in their freezer, it barely fits. It's immediately obvious that this is a very strange fish with its limb-like fins. After having read a book about coelacanths and being rather interested in them it's really exciting to see one (even if it's frozen). In the afternoon I work on Nina's movie. When the kids come home we grab a couple of bottles of wine and head over to 'Lamu'. We meet the whole crew and get shown around the boat by captain James. Harry, from 'Old Salt' is there too. We have a great evening drinking, eating, chatting, laughing. The kids enjoy themselves too, and Alex gets a drumming lesson from crew member Robin. It's already the next day by the time we finally fall into bed.

04 February

Caro: Oh boy, my poor head. I had too much to drink and now I'm paying the price. We oversleep and the kids are an hour late going to school. After yesterday's experience Casper has decided to check out the International school too.

John: I'm feeling rather mellow today, and very slow to get into gear. Well and truly poisoned. I vaguely remember downing shots of straight vodka with lime slices dosed with coffee powder and sugar last night on Lamu. I take an ibuprofin at 08:00, but it barely takes the edge off. We are due to refuel at 11:00, but by the time Caro gets me out of bed it's already 10:00 and it takes me forever to get the Spinelli coffee going (Oh thank you Spinelli, a lifesaver once again!) and inside where it starts to do some good. We finally motor over, only to find a dirty great rusting steel barge tied up at the only place we can tie up to without the gnarled old sheet-piling ironwork punching holes into our hull. The barge refuses to allow us to raft up alongside, as they are leaving soon. When they do go, it's 11:30 and there's no fuel truck. The approach to the high, daunting dockside with only 15m of rubber where I have to land the boat is a little tense. It would be a nervous business at the best of times, now made worse by my being barely able to focus on the dock, let alone steer smoothly up to it! The fuel boys do eventually roll up but they've forgotten to bring a hose. They return with a long length of rigid PVC pipe. It'll do. They hand-pump from rusty 209 litre drums, diesel spurting everywhere because the hose and pump don't really fit and the drum tops are all dinged up. To get the remaining 10-20 litres out of each of the five drums they pour the remaining contents into a bucket, where I can see just how much sludge there is from the rusty drum insides. Pointing out that this might not be good for my filters, I'm told not to worry. "Akuhna Matata!" "Will not-worrying help me when I'm stuck in the open ocean with blocked filters?", I ask. The man regards me with a level gaze of considerable seriousness and obvious concern that I've lost the plot. "May God Bless You" he replies. Maybe he was just checking out my bloodshot eyes.

05 February

John: Caro and I do a lot of running around town sorting out provisions for as far into the future as we can; prices in the Seychelles can only be higher than here, followed by Chagos (no supplies at all) and Maldives (gotta be expensive!). I work for much of the day on the Coelacanth webpage. This is really fascinating stuff, and scary that a whole population might just be being wiped out. Birgit has kindly allowed us to use some of her excellent pictures, from when she was called in to work on the fish that were brought in.

06 February

John: Out for a Sunday drive into the hills of Amani and a picnic. We get to see some of the small-holding dairy farms that Luuk and Birgit have been working with in their community project. Walking through the cool mountain air in the Usambara foothills, we stop in the middle of the track (blocked by a fallen tree) to set up our picnic. The green of the forest is a welcome change from the blues that normally saturate our eyes. There are also vast tea plantations, the tight little tea bushes lying neatly in rows over hill and dale. The kids collect hundreds of tea 'nuts' - ideal for slingshot projectiles, I'm told.

07 February

John: Monday, again, and time to check out and do the final provisioning. First of all, we have an appointment with the TCZCDP to show them our draft Coelacanth webpage. They seem to like it, and welcome our efforts to bring their exciting discoveries to a greater public audience. Birgit arranges for us to 'borrow' a pickup and driver from her project to get the provisions (lots of local cheeses and meats!), clear out and get petrol for the outboard. Then I get the last-minute job of fixing the da!*ed generator again - the kids ran it while we were ashore and it shut-down for some reason. Probably overheated, again. I'm getting sick of fixing this generator. Turns out there's no seawater cooling flow - surprise! Belt looks fine. No pump output, though. Check hoses. Finally tracing the blockage to the seacock itself, I pull it apart and find... a fish! Quite dead but still wearing a surprised expression, it has been sucked head-first into the through-hole and is wedged into the outlet spigot, blocking the flow. Our generator has caught a fish! Once cleared, the gennie runs fine again. By the time we are finished it is already 19:00. There's not even time for a proper dinner before going over to Luuk and Birgit's to say farewell to our new and wonderful friends. We are all very tired and rather quiet. Goodbyes are never easy.

08 February

John: Finally we tear ourselves away from Tanga, after meeting so many good people and getting into so many great opportunities here. Truly one of the best port calls we have made. On our way out we raft up to M/V Lamu (50m) to take on fresh water. They make something like 6 tons a day, so have offered to let us have a ton. We end up exchanging DVD's, books, magazines, newspapers, news, stories... so do not really cast off and raise sail until after 13:00. On with a fair breeze to a little island and encircling reef reputed in our Indian Ocean Pilot to be a great little dive spot. We get there at dusk, nervously feeling our way in among the reefs, looking for an anchorable spot and finding little (too steep-to) and even less protection. Fortunately, there is little wind and swell so we are able to plant the anchor in 6m of water and drop back on the chain 30m for an uneasy night.