At Sea, Week 6 - Forty-Two Day Sea Journey to West Africa
Il Comandante was pacing the bridge this morning.
He had rung the alarm bells for life boat stations, but exempted me. We were alone on the bridge. He began telling me a story:
He was aboard a cargo ship that was less than 400 feet in length. It was trapped by the winds and waves of Biscay Bay and unable to move ahead for three days.
"You want to hear more?" "Yes." "It was so bad, the entire crew, 15, 16 men stayed on the bridge, braced against each other, like this." He grabbed the railing under the long set of bridge windows and spread his feet as wide as they would go and he remain standing. "They all braced together.
No one could stay in a bed. No matter how you were secured, you were thrown out.
"The cook couldn't cook. We ate bread-how you say-sandwiches, cheese. The only power was enough to steer into the swells.
I was a young officer, like Damiano and Joey, I started to say something. They wouldn't let me speak.
Silence.
When the bow would begin to go down deep into a swell, the men held their breath until it would begin to rise again.
The water washed up over the bridge," and he made an arm motion over his head.
"It was terrible. For three days we were like that."
Gordon Lightfoot's Lake Superior saga "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" aside, I am not certain I would have believed such a story two months ago; now, hearing it from Il Comandante while navigating off the coast of the Western Sahara, I know it is true.
The Bay of Biscay: the chunk of sea that fills the void in the right angle where the western most extension of France meets the northern most land of Spain.
Our course through the Bay of Biscay is 360 miles long.
In normal weather and sea conditions it takes 24 hours to traverse. In bad weather, the violent waves and nautical delays are caused by strong winds, either out of the southwest or northwest.
"Never predict weather, never predict arrival," he told me after finishing his story, as if uttering a dictum of seafaring men.
One of my readers said that he thought my changing relationship with IC to be one of the central themes in the journal of the voyage aboard the Repubblica di Genova. I agree, but I would not want anyone to believe Il Comandante has changed the tiniest, tiny bit from The-Tiger-In-Command I was subjected to when I first walked into his office.
When IC received word of the order of the return European ports we were at dinner. He began to discuss his orders from Grimaldi with Adrian and during a pause I piped up:
"I know one person who is going to be glad to know where we will first land in Europe, my wife."
He snapped back in response: "This is not about you. It is about placing the cargo we take on" (in Douala.)
While I was on the bridge with him this morning during the lifeboat drill, one of the officers had his walkie-talkie turned to a high volume.
In a very, very loud voice, IC made it clear the volume of the radio reception bothered him immensely; it was lowered immediately.
My relationship with Il Comandante has changed a great deal over these 40 days I have been his prisoner... obviously, for the better from my point of view.
But I still stay on my toes.
Another reader wanted to locate any other of my travel pieces available on the internet.
I published a piece on a Holland-America Maasdam cruise May 17th or 18th, 2005 on the back page of the Ashland Daily Tidings; it is archived.
Another, is my first published travel piece, about how I ended up in a Chinese military compound during my first visit to China. Click here for the story as it appeared in The Shoestring Traveler.
You can Google "Gary R. Frink" for others.
Today is our scheduled return date to Hamburg. Travel on a cargo ship: You don't know where you are going and you don't know when you'll get there.
Weather: overcast, but still warm.
Coordinates 31° 33´ N, 13° 4´ W.
These are the days of drills. We must be ready for anything and everything, Il Comandante told me after I had climbed to the bridge to get our location.
The drill of the moment: Fire in one of the garages below.
Times, they are achangin'.
I am beginning to pack.
Luigi has made up Jeanne's bed (though not yet brought out her very own bath towel).
IC has talked me out of using the luggage I bought in the department store in Brugge to ship books and things not to be needed in Europe; he gave me a cardboard box.
If I were to place the Boatswain anywhere in the animal kingdom, it would be as a walrus. He wears a long mustache that we homo sapiens often associate with the seal-kin. He is of more than medium height and has an ample Santa Claus belly, which helps when imaging him as the Artic walrus. His streaked grey-black hair is full and shoulder length. Around his neck hangs a large, elaborate Cameroonian bone necklace.
He is, quite simply, the most colorful character aboard the Repubblica di Genova.
The boatswain is a good natured man, often leading the antics when the seamen gather. He is loud, boisterous and forceful. He takes a back seat to no man aboard in flinging his arms and rotating his hands to assist getting his meaning across in Italian, not even the Sicilian chief engineer.
Damian again was my translator when I interviewed the boatswain.
"What do you like about being at sea?" "Nothing," he shot back immediately.
After a pause, he amended his answer: "The travel, the new places." He is 57-years-old, been at sea 30 years, and plans to endure this life for only another three years.
Born and raised in Napoli, he went to sea like his father and brother because there were no jobs.
As I understood the answer, he has worked exclusively for Grimaldi since 1975.
He and his wife own a small home in Napoli. They are the parents of three sons and four grandchildren. His sons did not follow him to sea.
When I asked him how he motivated the able-bodied and ordinary seaman under his command, he didn't understand Damian's translation or didn't answer. Instead, he stated that he thinks about his responsibilities aboard ship all the time, what man best matches up with which job I must get done under the command of 1st mate and master.
As I do interviews, I wrap up with: "What is the question I haven't asked, what is it that you would want people to know about you?"
Damian had a bit of difficulty in getting the boatswain's answer to English, but after stumbling about it came out crystal clear and poignant: "If I had my life to live over, I would never go to sea."
Some shipboard housekeeping notes: Each crewman aboard has his own cabin, increasing in size with rank.
The four principal officers, master, 1st mate, chief engineer and first engineer (dining companions of the passenger) each have an office in the front of their cabins, with the living quarters in back or to the side. Those cabins have the only double beds on the ship.
The only crew cabins on the 13th deck are the side by side master's suite and the owner's cabin (mine). The other passenger cabins take up the remaining space on the 13th, except for the master's conference room; it was there that I drank my cholera immunization liquid under the direction of a visiting Belgium physician.
Many crew cabins are on the deck 12, where the ship office, kitchen and dining areas and large pantries and walk-in refrigerators and freezers are located.
It is now raining. It is the first rain I have seen in eight days… none since we took our Sunday leave from Douala and that strangely lifeless dock.
Yesterday, because it was Sunday in Napoli like everywhere else, emails were extremely slow to pass to the ship.
I did not receive my normal morning e-mail. I was not concerned until Adrian told me he had received one from his wife; then fathomless concern set in.
Jeanne was ill, wasn't she?
She had written every day that I have been away, hadn't she?
Then my fertile imagination shifted into high gear.
Something terrible had happened to Jeanne. If she were in the hospital she would have instructed someone to email me.
It was worse.
How could I get off this ship and back to Virginia?
What will I do?
How do I go on?
I harkened back in memory to when I was a 12 year old, babysitting my infant sister and two younger brothers and my parents didn't return at the promised time. Tragedy had struck. I knew I was an orphan with three younger siblings to protect and raise.
What would I do?
Then my parents arrived home.
I sat at my desk and told myself to suck it up, be a man; be someone Jeanne would be proud of.
Think what Admiral Byrd went through.
And of the explorers of long ago, seeking new worlds in sailing ships; they had no communication with home for months, sometimes years at a time.
They lost loved ones, but they had to go on; and they did.
I made a plan. We were scheduled to pass the Canary Islands last night at 2100 hours.
On our way south to Africa, I had phoned Jewell Hollow as we passed the Canaries.
I would do it again. If there was no answer at home, I would call our neighbor, Kathy.
If she didn't answer, I would jump off the stern of the ship (well, not exactly).
Eight p.m., dinner time. I would make yet another pass (at least the 10th) to the ship office to seek an email.
It was there.
I walked to my place at Il Comandante’s table.
I laid the email down beside me and said to Adrian, who knew of my stress: "I haven't read it. I don't care what it says. It's here."
An hour later Jewel Hollow. She answered. The reception was very bad and we were cut off twice.
It didn't matter.
Adrian told me a story about a Ukrainian captain who rotated onto a ship (another company, in case anyone at Grimaldi is reading) on which he was serving as 1st mate.
The man was a despot.
The tension between them grew to be so great that, for two weeks, Adrian couldn't eat anything of substance… only scraps of bread.
He jumped ship in Singapore.
"My health is too important."
He literally gathered up his belonging and left the ship, proving the obvious: It is not always peaches and cream when new officers and seamen join a merchant vessel.
The company settled Adrian's contract fairly.
Tomorrow is mid-presidential term election day in the U.S. It is the first election in which I have not voted for many, many years.
When I left Virginia it was September and too early to apply for an absentee ballot. [Interesting question: where would I have mailed it?]
Il Comandante told me that Italian mariners aren't allowed to vote. We pay taxes. Why can't we vote?
Beats me, IC, but I'm not the one to ask.
We are back in Europe. Coordinates: 37° 57´ N, 11° 22.7´ W. If the weather holds – but it probably won’t – we should be docking in Amsterdam by 1800 hours Friday.
The Repubblica di Genova will (hopefully) avoid a submarine exercise area marked on the chart and shortly be on a straight east-west line with Lisbon.
Not stopping this time boys. We have no use for junk cars going north.
I was awake at 3:30 for well over an hour. Planning and plotting.
I must be packed and prepared to say my goodbyes and split the ship in Amsterdam.
If we get along side as planned and the cargo operation takes less than 24 hours, that would have us heading to Hamburg in the afternoon of Saturday, the 11th.
What if Jeanne's flight is late or delayed? I can't have her arrive in Amsterdam and me be in, or on my way to, Hamburg.
I was finally back into deep sleep. At 8:03 the phone rang. It was Joey, who has the 8 a.m. to Noon watch on the bridge.
"Joey?"
"Yes, is Joe in the cabin?"
Then he realized his mistake. Without him telling me, I realized what was afoot.
Joe, his deck cadet for November, hadn't yet reported to the bridge. Joey meant to call Joe's cabin but had misdialed mine instead.
When I climbed to the bridge - later to learn where in the Atlantic 24 hours of 16 knots an hour wave plowing had placed us - I told Joey: "The next time Joe is late for work and you call me and wake me, I am going to call the Captain and wake him."
Joey rolled his head and eyes and, as one might expect, said: "Oh, no!"
An idle threat, because Il Comandante is well at work by 8 o'clock.
Good news.
I encountered Adrian in the ship office, when I went down for my daily email. He told me that the cargo operation in Amsterdam was now scheduled to take 36 hours.
SO!
Even if we should arrive alongside in Amsterdam by 1800 hours Friday, we won't begin the short (12 hour) journey to Hamburg until early Sunday morning. That enlarges the window of time Jeanne will have to board.
It also increases the odds that it will be light when we traverse the canals of Hamburg, an experience IC describes as "wonderful."
Adrian also warned of strong currents and winds in the English Channel.
Then of course, there is the soon to be entered and deeply dreaded Bay of Biscay.
Perhaps I won't have to fling all my stuff into luggage and scramble ashore in Amsterdam after all.
We are making progress toward Northern Europe in most moderate seas. So, in homage to the upcoming Bay of Biscay, I added a hair shampoo to my shower this morning. If the Biscay Bay gods of winds and waves decide to unleash their furies and tempests upon us as we pass, at least that hygienic matter is behind.
Over these last 41 days I have written, Tom Sand has edited and Allen Comer has sent up in the sky and published, one at least 500 word essay a day, often two.
Early this morning I reflected on the quantity of the output of words the Grimaldi Group and I have caused to be uttered on the internet (it is for others to judge the quality, if they care to).
For this writer, as least, the output has been prodigious; however immodest it might be to stand up and state it,
Dear reader, I wish you to know that I take pride in that fact.
I went to sleep to Portuguese and awoke to Spanish. Spanish rap, in fact.
We have passed beyond the western most point in continental Europe.
Our course now takes the Rupubblica di Genova in a straight line to get us around Brittany, the western most point in France… then into the English Channel and on to Amsterdam.
We are traversing the base of the Bay of Biscay and Joey said, "We are very lucky."
"We are under a high pressure system," he explained. "Three days ago a heavy low was in here."
The sun is shining and the wind and wave gods of Biscay Bay are smiling. I doubt that the seas could be calmer.
It is settled without a shadow of a doubt: Jeanne and I must take the commuter airline out of Venice, change airports in Vienna and hopefully catch the Austrian Airlines flight home November 17.
I had an idea that we could cut the middleman – Venice - and go directly to Vienna.
NO! The cost for the changes would be prohibitive.
Time has become extremely compressed if I am to set at least one foot on the soil of the five nations remaining in my quest for 100.
If we fly to Zagreb, I should be able to pick up Serbia, Bosnia and Slovenia, in addition to Croatia; or… maybe not.
The key next step in this quixotic travel endurance test is to successfully hook up with Jeanne in Amsterdam.
Once we are together, reasonable, doable plans can be made.
Jeanne will be the first mother-tongue English speaker I will chat with in fully 45-to-West-Africa-and-back-days… aboard ship and ashore.
"Do you want me to take over the arrangements in Amsterdam to get your wife aboard?" Il Comandante asked.
"Of course," I answered.
"Okay," he said. "There will be a man to meet her, holding up a card with her name on it; then, into a Mercedes Benz; through (port) customs and immigration; and onto the ship all I'll need is her flight information."
"Done!"
Chef Salvatore entered my cabin a few moments ago. He presented me an invoice requesting 44 Euros for 2 bottles of champagne (one for the dinner in honor of Granny's 97th birthday, and one still chilling in my cabin refrigerator awaiting Jeanne's dinner of honor aboard) and a liter each of Compari and Cointreau.
Printed into the bill, is a great picture of the two of us (my arms spread widely, smiling broadly), and his contact information in Palermo. Salvatore and I have been able communicate (if not chat) in Spanish.
He promised to insert the photo in my computer.
As I predicted in my short discussion about his late father and my protector of 30 years, the inevitable has happened: Martin O'Malley was yesterday elected governor of Maryland.
Long ago, Jeanne and I spent a Saturday going door-to-door in his first (and only losing) campaign.
We were in attendance when he and his wife Katie were married.
We sat huddled in the cold in the square in front of Baltimore City Hall during his first inauguration as mayor.
Perhaps we'll attend his first inauguration as governor of Maryland.
Last evening, after Luigi had cleared away the straggler plates and glasses, I sat with Il Comandante and the Chief Engineer as they reminisced about their longest sea voyages without touching land.
IC won the imaginary trophy: 52 days from Japan to South America.
"There was no email or television. On Saturday night and Sunday we had a movie. We read a lot - a real lot."
The Chief Engineer was a slow second, only one month continuously at sea.
I did not enter in the contest. My puny about-to-be-13 days, when come alongside in Amsterdam.
Coordinates: 49° 27.6´ N, 3° 50.4´ W.
I went to sleep cranky and in ill humor.
I awoke in the night in the same nasty state of mind.
This morning cranky and ill humor is developing into angry rage.
It is time to regain control of my life, yet I can’t.
I am still a castaway on this floating island.
Emotionally, my voyage is over; yet, in reality, it is not.
The estimated time of arrival tomorrow in Amsterdam has moved up; that fact, obviously, means our time to pull lines and head to Hamburg has been moved up.
Il Comandante assures me that this will not affect Jeanne getting aboard, but is there any certainty?
No!
What if her plane is late?
For 44 days I have sublimated and suppressed the aggression of my A type personality. Obviously, a survival ploy.
For 44 days I have been a prisoner, totally under the control of others. Now, today, the moment has arrived to regain control of my life, but I cannot.
I am finding this extremely difficult to deal with.
I have tasks to accomplish, places to go; yet I wait impassive and immobile on this mobile ship… a captive.
I hope Jeanne has envisioned her actions clear through to boarding the aircraft.
I don't know how she will get to the airport, and how we will return.
If it is her truck, she best know how we will deal with the dead battery upon our return, for the one now installed is very old.
I will need the pin numbers for the credit cards I am carrying: one is her birthday; one is my mine, but I don’t know which is which. I couldn’t get them to work in the basement of the Brussels airport.
I will need to acquire Euros if she doesn't bring sufficient cash or doesn't make it to the ship in time.
The lack of communication is maddening: The European phone is not yet in range of a tower and there was no morning email.
On with my life?
Not quite yet.
The little, black, crow-like bird gave me momentary relief. I had been watching it for portions of three days. I first saw it on the kitchen level stern deck, pecking around for scraps.
Yesterday, it was on the outside bridge, and quite brazen. It didn't appear to be greatly in fear of humans because Emerson and I could approach within eight feet.
I was surprised it had not entered the interior bridge because both large end-doors were wide open.
This morning on the bridge the little black bird came calling. The able bodied seaman trapped it. He held it tight, and said "it's African," while petting its head. While we were waiting for the deck cadet to return to his cabin for his camera, the bird escaped.
We all chased it.
Finally, it perched briefly on the port lower door runner, and then flew out to the port bridge railing. There it stayed until the deck cadet, camera in hand, approached too closely.
It flew.
The English Channel winds presently buffeting the Repubblica di Genova are strong.
I left the bridge in search of the little black bird. I walked around the bridge deck, then down to my deck. I looked over the stern railing… searching.
No sighting.
Joey told me such birds sometimes enter the ship with the lumber in Douala.
I will keep looking.
If the strong winds blew it from the ship, I don't believe it could make it to England.
"You have set a record," Il Comandante said. "In the last 20 years no passenger has come on a ship for so long a time."
During his years as a ship master, no passenger has remained 45 days.
Last evening, I arrived early for dinner.
I walked to the kitchen door. Inside, the Boatswain was cooking.
Not dabbling but cooking.
Stirring.
Seasoning.
I’ve watched him placing items on - and removing others from - the heat.
I have seen him prepping food before.
But cooking?
No.
He drained a huge batch of spaghetti out of a boiling pot and prepared it.
When he finished with the pot, still hot, he took it to the sink and washed it.
Then Salvatore walked into the kitchen through the other door and rolled his eyes.
As the late Gilda Radner's character Roseanna Roseanne Dana might say: "It's always something."
My fit of pique has subsided.
We are making our way east in the English Channel, the Santa Monica Freeway of European maritime traffic.
Ships have been in sight starboard and port during this entire sunny, cool day.
Presently off to port is a Grimaldi sister ship of the Repubblica di Genova, the Grande Italia. She is longer and much newer than this old Africa round-tripper, with all her aches and pains.
With the aid of a Channel Islands cell tower, at noon I spoke with Jeanne in Jewell Hollow twice. Once on my cell phone and once complements of Il Comandante.
Jeanne, of course, has everything at home under control. Even to the point that she will be bringing a pie pan and the appropriate spices for a genuine American apple pie when she comes on board the Repubblica di Genova.
After lunch, Adrian knocked on my door; there was something he wanted to show me.
I went with him down in the tiny elevator to deck four, the stern garage entry deck.
It was amazing.
His work crews had painted the cavernous space, from where the ramp/stern unfolds, at least 50 yards back, to where the 8,000 tons of African lumber are stacked. The walls were painted as high as extended-pole paint rollers could reach. The steel deck, including a yellow strip for pedestrians and ship vehicles were also newly painted.
Even trash cans!
Every surface that could be painted was shining.
The painting and other work aboard is beyond routine maintenance: Grimaldi is sprucing up the old girl to send her to "America" to begin service from our Eastern ports to West Africa.
To digress: I have received an interesting and unexpected honor while away: I have been elected to the board of directors of Belle Grove, the foundation supporting the restored limestone mansion completed in 1797 for Major Isaac Hite and his wife Nelly, sister of future President James Madison. Located on the old Valley Turnpike near Middletown, between Winchester and Strasburg, Virginia, Belle Grove was fought over during the Civil War and served as a field hospital. It is one of my favorite Shenandoah Valley historic haunts, managed by my favorite historical haunt manager, Elizabeth McClung.
My first meeting is scheduled for November 19, two days after returning from this odyssey.
Back to the ship: We are scheduled to take on the Amsterdam harbor pilot at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning and be tied up by noon.
At which time, I do believe I will stretch my legs on terra firma.
The Repubblica di Genova has experienced a successful European re-entry.
We are preparing to land (entering a lock).
It is 10 0'clock and we are on schedule.
I am landing in Amsterdam on Friday.
On a Friday seven weeks ago I flew away from Virginia.
Away from all things familiar to me.
That is what travelers are eager to do.
I awoke early this morning, ready for land and Amsterdam.
I took a few sunrise photos, two of which I kept.
Arriving in Europe is so totally different from Africa.
Signs of industry and development are everywhere along the Amsterdam port canals: silos, smoke stacks and energy producing wind mills.
In the West African ports we touched, we viewed the dock and the city beyond.
No signs of industry.
In the ship office this morning, Salvatore, the cook, hit me up for my liquor bill.
I complied.
We tried transacting in dollars, but his calculator came up with an exchange rate that was weirdly off balance. I depleted 44 + of my Euros instead.
Salvatore, like the Walrus, is a character. While he clearly has the power of speech, he whistles to accent his words, or simply to replace them. He whistles exactly like Harpo Marx, high pitched, through his front teeth.
Salvatore is also leaving the ship in Northern Europe. He is going to his home in Palermo; he will wait until summer to visit his other interests in Mexico.
While we sit in an Amsterdam lock, it is a good time to wave some goodbyes and give some thanks. I have decided not to reveal the names of the cast of characters in my life for the last 47 days (including the voyage to Hamburg, arriving Sunday morning). I have no right to invade the privacy of my shipboard companions, nor their families and I shall not.
I shall, however, list their month, year and city/town of birth:
Il Comandante, October, '52, Manfredonia;
Adrian, July, '65, Patirlagele, Romania;
2nd Mate, September, 67, Pachino;
Damian, January '80, Brindisi;
Joey, March '82, Palermo;
Alex, February 87, Ischia;
Emerson, February '83, Manaus, Brazil;
Chief Engineer, October 59, Trapani;
1st Engineer, November '68, Mihail Kogalniceanu;
Salvatore, December '56, Palermo;
Boatswain, June, '49, T. del Greco;
Luigi, February, '57, T. del Greco;
I thank all the main characters, and all of the other members of the crew who greeted me whenever we passed, in Italian, English or with a wave.
Thank you all for a landlubber's unique, unforgettable, once-in-a-life-time experience aboard the Repubblica di Genova.
Special thanks to Luigi, without whose good humor and constant assistance could not have survived this sea odyssey. I hope someday a person will pass through his life and translate some of the thousands of words resulting from this voyage to Africa, and back.
Finally, of those aboard:
Thank you Il Comandante. Thank you for taking me on a grand adventure and particularly for going out of your way to see that I had some dandy shore experiences and learned how to shop 'til I dropped.
To the Grimaldi company: Thank you Mr. Hans Isler, in Napoli, for putting this epic voyage together for me;
Mr. Santos and staff in Luanda, especially our very bright South African-educated driver, Pedro da Gama, thank you very much.
I wonder how our friends at the Miami Beach seaside restaurant, bar and expatriate hangout are getting along without us.
A Cameroonian barber in Douala changed my life. As he cut my hair, some appearance of age fell with the clippings; I shall remain closely clipped.
For that and all of the many courtesies extended to me - most especially the Saturday night out on the town - I thank Grimaldi's man in Douala, Francois Peris and Claire and Armelle Petetin, Grimaldi, London.
To members of the Grimaldi family, Napoli, London and wherever, thanks for paying all the bills while my ship chugged along through smooth and happy seas.
I herewith give the Repubblica di Genova back to you... but I plan to see her again, all gussied-up in Baltimore, Maryland.
