Last Post?

This may be my last post. Tomorrow morning we sail for Capo Verde and we will only be there for three days. Who knows what the internet will be like there. Then we sail for Triniday, an 18 day sail across the Atlantic and there the journey ends for me and Pia.

Senegalese Ecovillage.

I was with a group who visited an Ecovillage. An ecovillage is a concept where a group "applies" for their town or village be designated an ecovillage. As such they have to work towards ecological sustainability. This means using renewable resources, cleaning up garbage, producing their own food and a number of other things. Here in Senegal these ecovillages can apply for microloans to help them achieve their goals.

We went to visit such a village. What a bus ride to get there. The last few kilometres was along a path where, had it not been for this being the dry season, we could not have made it.
What struck me first was how apparently "primitive" it was.

There were a few cement houses but here were far more straw huts. But it was very clean - unlike the rest of the country we have seen where there has been garbage absolutely everywhere. There were solar panels for electricity, each family had a solar cooker.

They also had high efficiency wood ovens for cooking. They were growing lots of vegetables using irrigation systems developed in France which were highly efficient. These consisted of either drip irrigation or containers placed flush in the ground which delivered water to the roots. Two litres of water would last for two days as opposed to two hours with traditional systems.

The people were so friendly and we had some great discussions with them in terms of what they needed. They were investigation obtaining a microloan so the discussion centered around what to apply for and how.

It was fscinating.

This is a papaya plant.

Story telling.

We have had an amazing time in Senegal. We went to hear a talk about "Story Telling" from a well know Senegalese, Daour Wade. This was especially interesting to me and one of my classes where I have talked about oral cultures. Story telling goes way back to antiquity before we had any form of writing. Story telling was how culture was passed on relating to traditions, hunting, morals, geography etc.
First, Daour told us about Senegalese values and he did this by explaining he meaning of key words. "Kollare" referred to doing good deeds. If someone did you a good deed you should never forget and you should reciprocate. When someone has helped you out you and that person become bonded and this is called "Wollare".  He covered many more words and then told us a story.

There was a village and the harvest failed due to drought. On old women went in to the forest and there she met a lion. She told the lion about their predicament and the lion led the woman to a small lake. The woman drank from the lake and then returned to her village and it started to rain. One day the woman was sitting with her friends and she talked about her meeting with the lion and she complained about the horrible smell of the lion. The woman did not know that the lion had snug into the village and overheard her.
The next year there was a drought again and the woman went into he forest to see if she could find the lion and ask for help again. She met the lion but this time the lion asked the woman to hit it on the head with an axe. After much insistence by the lion the woman finally hit the lion on the head with her axe. The woman went back to her village but it did not rain.
The next year again there was a drought and the woman went into the forest and met the lion. The lion asked if the woman could see the scar from the axe but she could not. Then the lion explained. The scar from the axe has healed but the scar in my brain from the words you spoke about my bad smell has not healed. And then the lion ate the woman.

The moral of the story of course is that you should think before you speak because words have power, they stick.

This was one of the stories he told us. I could have listened for hours.

Dakar, Senegal

What can I say? I had no expectations, was it a modern city or would I be stepping into the past? Senegal is both but what's most important to state is that the people are so friendly.

We sailed in past Goree Island which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is being maintained as it was and it is beautiful with its original Portugese architecture and then French and after the early 60's independent. There is a restored Slave House on the island and over a million slaves were shipped out from here - horrifying.

How do you like this cell tower disguised as a palm tree?

Senegal is both modern with high rises but also very poor. It is chaotic, dirty but full of vibrant life. There are lots of vehicles, new vehicles and beat up vehicles. We took one taxi and every time the driver had to slow down he pulled the emergency break - I am assuming the foot break did not work. The busses are very colourful and it seems here are always someone standing on the bumper hanging on.

There are horse drawn carts, people on scooters, someone cooking on the sidewalk which is not asphalt or cement but dirt. Sheep  are tied to trees, horses stand waiting, people are praying to allah, there are vendors everywhere and they come running and have "very best price, just for you", "very cheap", "what you like? I show you in my shop". I must admit it gets a bit tiring saying "no" so frequently.

It is dry and it is hot - 41 degrees C the other day and the Senegalese insist it is cold. Winter is coming on of course. I can just imagine what June will be like.

A hopeful cat at a restaurant.

Agadir, Morocco

We waited off Agadir for a few hours before the pilot came on board. The problem was which peer to dock at. "They" wanted us in the "marina" but at low tide there was only one and a half metre of water and Sørlander draws just over 5. Even at high tide it would be impossible. We ended up in the container port with a 20 minute walk to the gate where police were reluctant and sometimes prevented taxies from entering.
The day after we arrived all the students and teachers went off on their four day excursion to the Sahara. Pia, I and Stephanie stayed behind with the professional crew. We ended up having an absolutely fantastic time.

We, Pia and I, Stephanie and Kathryn called for a taxi. We waited and waited and then started walking. Half way out the taxi came and the driver was absolutely apologetic - he had been held up by the police at the gate. Monty (Montheseh), the taxi driver, turned out to be amazing. During the next three days he took groups of us on 9 to 10 hour tours of this area (100 km radius of Agadir). But, on the first day he showed us Agadir. He dropped us off at a large Souk (market). We asked if we should pay him for his driving to that point but he said no no, we could pay him at the end of the day. The Souk was amazing - so much food and everything else you can imagine. We had tea with a spice merchant and we bought some clothes. It was lots of fun to barter not hat I am any good at it.
The next day Pia and I went on our anniversary (24 years) trip with Monty. We had an absolutely amazingly filling day. We saw he local ship yard where there were 25 to 30 fishing boats being built -they were in various stages from just being started to nearly complete.

Then we went to the fishing port where the boats are rowboat size where three people go out for up to 3 days at a time. They are longliners and come back with all kinds fish.

Can you see Pia in this picture? She is there!

We saw a recycling place where everything under the sun was bartered and sold - plastic bottles, plastic sheets, scrap metal, electronics, washing machines, car parts, etc. It looked like a garbage dump where everything had been sorted.

We left Agadir and entered an arid landscape - rocks, dirt, cacti and Argan trees scattered.

There were nomads living in tents, small villages with clusters of cement houses which all had satellite dishes on the roofes (apparently if a man wants to get married he will be out of luck if he does not have a satellite dish and a colour tv).

You can't see the satellite dishes but they were there.


We drove into the Atlas mountains where we saw a reservoir and had tea on top of a mountain top.

And tried on scarves.

We saw a pottery factory, a silver smith shop. We saw walled towns, and markets. We drove to a National Park where later there will be all kinds of migrant birds from Europe. We had meals in local restaurants.

At 1 pm Monty went to a Mosque and we sat at a cafe in a small village. As the sun was going down we visited a beach where the was a cluster of houses just above high water on the beach where only men live and they fish. It was well after dark when we made it back to Sørlandet. It had been an absolutely magical day.

More pictures

I have uploaded more photos on photobucket.
http://s1181.photobucket.com/albums/x428/bondrup/?start=20

Cagliari to Agadir.

This was a rough sail. The Mediterranean this time of year is wild. Again lots of sick people. On the second day Pia fell backwards in the galley and injured her back, she probably cracked some ribs. She was in sick bay for three days and now two weeks later her back is still terribly sore.
It is rough on absolutely everyone when it is so winds. No one can sleep well and you use a phenomenal amount of energy keeping your balance so everyone gets very tired.

I am on the Mizzen royal taking this picture.

We did have sails up, the ship pitches and rolls less. But our direction was for the Libyan coast. Eventually we had to furl the sails and sail under motor power. A day before the Strait of Gibraltar the wind died down and we stopped for a swim. It is so amazing to jump off the ship and swim in the clear blue deep water - close to 2 km depth. I had goggles on and it was surreal to see the hull of the ship suspended in the water.

That is me swimming in he Mediterranean

The Strait of Gibraltar was not that live with whales and dolphins this time. In fact I do not think we saw a single dolphin, just a few pilot whales.
The Atlantic was windy but now the wind was behind us. We had a specific date to get to Agadir and we were going too fast with just a few sails up. We furled all the sails but we were still moving at 5 to 6 knots - not a single sail up.

It was midterm time in he Atlantic but we had to cancel one day due to strong rolling but we did get them nearly all done before Agadir except for two which the students wrote in port.

Cagliari, Sardinia

We docked in the commercial port in Cagliari, not sure why but it meant we needed passes to leave and enter the port - just a minor inconvenience.

Look, date palms.

We could hear lots of shouting and horns blowing on the street running along the harbour (some distance across from where we were moored) as we were mooring. There were blue lights flashing from cop cars, clearly there were demonstrations going on. Suddenly we saw people running and blue smoke floating in the air and then heard loud bangs. The cops were shooting tear gas. This was quite the welcome. I never found out what the demonstrations were about, maybe changes to pension which people demonstrated against when we were in St. Malo.
When the Sardinians say Cagliari it sounds close to Calgary but not quite. The gl sound in Italian is apparently one we do not have.
Cagliari, the old part, has narrow streets and there are lots of restaurants, excellent food and good wine. On the first evening we somehow all ended up at he same restaurant, professional crew, teachers and Terry (the CEO of Class Afloat) was here and joined us as well. This was great for he payed the whole bill.
This was what is called a parent port and there were lots of parents who took their kids off and did things with them. This was actually somewhat disrupting but great for the kids with parents here I am sure.
We had two great port programs, a bicycle trip through town to a nature reserve with flamingos and to the base of a large hill by the sea where we went swimming and then hiked over this hill and saw and heard about earlier peoples and their constructions from the neolithic, to the romans and earlier.

The other port trip was an 18 km hike from a mountain where we drove, to an isolated beach. Some of the hike was through a cork forest where we could see where the cork had been harvested. The limestone mountains are fascinating with their interesting sculptured erosion including a hole right through one of them.

On he evening before we were to sail I took a taxi to the airport and picked up Pia. It was wonderful to see her and she will be sailing with us all the way to Trinidad and Tobago where my trip ends. Pia will be the cooks helper. I think I forgot to mention earlier that we have a new cook. Her name is Stephanie. She replaced David in Barcelona.

Barcelona to Cagliari, Italy

Time has flown and I am in Agadir, Morocco, but first the sail to Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy.
It was windy with a good wind and we sailed. BUT look at this - waves were huge and crashed in on the deck. Needless to say the lower deck was out of bounds. The tenders (boats that hang by the aft deck) were in the water at times and one had water come inside - insane.

We reached speeds of 12 knots with just the three lover topsails - not a lot of canvas.
Everyone is getting tougher though so visits to the funnels are fewer.
Two and a half days to get to Cagliari.

Guess who joined us here other than the new professional crew, Pia. Yes, Pia was hired (no pay) as the cooks helper. So we are sailing together to Trinidad and Tobago where we should arrive on Dec. 22.

Here is Pia in the galley.