At Sea, Week 2 - Forty-Two Day Sea Journey to West Africa
This is your passenger speaking from the bridge with your morning report. Since passing the southern tip of Fuertes Ventura, Canary Islands at approximately 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon, we have proceeded 205 miles south by south west. We are presently 85 miles west of the coast of the Western Sahara proceeding at the rate of 14 knots per hour. Seas are calm. The sky is slightly overcast. You sunbathers, be sure to slop on plenty of sunscreen. This has been your morning report from the bridge. This is your passenger speaking.
For those of you who have ever been aboard a Holland America cruise, the above patter is delivered in the thick Germanic-English of a Dutch captain. The accents vary according to cruise line -on Princess it’s Italian, if memory serves- but the patter is essentially the same, usually delivered at noon. Often they’ll throw in the latitude and longitude of the ship’s current position for good measure, though that information is totally undecipherable to most passengers.
The Repubblica di Genova has some interesting signs posted about. The one that draws me up short when I am about to enter the ship elevator is the nose high posting to the right of the door: It is prohibited for the captain and first mate to take the elevator together, or for the chief engineer and 1st engineer. That should be self explanatory. There are posted rules about when you can pitch garbage and debris overboard: within 3 miles of shore, nothing; 3-12 miles offshore, nothing that floats and garbage and crockery only if it is ground into tiny bits; 12-25 miles you can dump anything except floating material and plastic; more than 25 miles out to sea anything goes except plastic.
A large sign on the outside of the dining room wall lists each crew member by name. It gives him his assignment in the event of the following emergencies: man overboard; fire on board; first aid; general emergency; and finally the biggie, ABANDON SHIP! Yesterday during the lifeboat drill, the crewmen actually entered the motorized life boats, took seats and the engines started for a moment. Each man carried a small booklet listing his responsibilities.
“At sea, every day is the same,” Adrian Frangulea, the first mate said to me at lunch. It is Sunday, other than the deck hands getting a half day off, nothing changes: no church, no NFL football, and no champagne brunch.
Nothing changes.
Actually our dining facilities have changed. The officers and I have abandoned the large passenger lounge -dining room with the long, endlessly expandable captain’s table. It was needed while we provided for the daily troop of landlubber luncheon guests, while the ship was parked in port. Now we dine in a small three-table dining room, fronting the never-used buffet line attached to the galley. At our table, IC sits with his back to the wall. To his right, the chief engineer; to his right, the 1st engineer; I sit to his right. To my right and next to IC’s left is Adrian, the Romanian first mate.
Adrian is quiet, while others at the table are not. Adrian is refined, while few others aboard could meet that standard. He is tall, not stout and very, very soft-spoken.
He would be taken for a gentleman world ‘round.
Yesterday, during the lifeboat drill Adrian was in charge; yet he never raised his vocal volume above a low murmur.
Adrian is the ship’s anomaly.
After lunch, he showed me some photos of his wife (a physician who makes $400 a month) and two sons.
Speaking of sons:
Chris Frink, please phone L Zidaru and tell him of the circumstance wherein your father is on a slow boat to Africa with his dear friend and relative, Adrian Frangulea.
We await the closed loop by email from Jeanne.
Ah, Jeanne: Yesterday while passing the Canary Islands I conjured up the concept that my European cell phone might pick up a signal from whatever island we were gliding by. Bingo! It worked! A chat with Jeanne in Jewell Hollow while afloat in the vast south Atlantic; what won’t they think of next.
We’re 100 miles off the coast of Mauritania, traveling dead south at 16 knots (I was in error yesterday; we were also plunging ahead at 16 knots.) Since my last report from the bridge the Repubblica di Genova has traveled 390 miles.
Giuseppe, the young 3rd mate currently on a four hour bridge watch, told me that we’ll arrive in-what appears to me from the chart to be a sheltered harbor- Dakar at 1a.m. tonight. IC told me last evening that we’ll be at the dock for 12 hours. What adventures await?
Sunday afternoon I ambled up a grimy, outdoor metal staircase to an open end of the bridge. To my surprise IC was on duty with an able-bodied seaman (there must be at least two persons on the bridge at all times.) “Come in. I have something to show you,” were his first words. He took me to the chart: Pointing, “Here! We are passing across the Tropic of Cancer at this moment. Now! We are officially in the tropics.” He was wearing shorts and was sock-less in comfortable slip-ons.
The chart in use lies over a large glass covered square. A small light beam directed by the GPS system pinpoints exactly where the ship is on the chart. “On newer ships they have a huge television screen where you can follow everything. They don’t use charts,” IC explained, during one of my visits to the bridge.
Jeanne gifted me with a copy of Edith Grossman’s new translation of Don Quixote before I took leave of Jewell Hollow; a long book for a long voyage. Obviously, there is meaning and irony in her choice. Well, let me tell you: If I am in fact analogous to the mad man from La Mancha and his knight-errant-adventure-seeking and this old ship my Rocinante, fortuitously Luigi is my Sancho Panza.
Without his cheerful service, my life aboard the Repubblica di Genova would be far from pleasant. Perhaps I am reminded of all this because yesterday he cleaned my cabin, changed sheets and pillow cases and left me clean towels.
It is mid-afternoon. I walked out on deck for a moment. The tropical sun is beating down on the metal deck and it is red hot out there; the tropics indeed.
Before lunch I walked on the horseshoe shaped deck, back and forth, to limber up my legs for the upcoming land-walking. I didn’t attempt to walk briskly, because I am wearing boat shoes and the deck is small. When I realized how slowly I was walking, my friend Alvin Tong came to mind.
It was because of Alvin that I journeyed to China the first time. He was going to Shanghai to consult with the new high tech park that was being constructed in acres of farm land across the Huangpu River from old Shanghai, and I was invited along. New? When we arrived, the paint wasn’t dry in the guest house where we stayed.
The area is known as Pudong, which if I remember correctly, means literally “across the river.” There was one restaurant near our guesthouse. Each evening Alvin and I would dine; after we would go for a “walk.” On our walk, we would move almost imperceptibly. It was a time to reflect and chat. I wanted to move, exercise, but it was not the Chinese way. Alvin and I still refer to “the slow walk.”
Alvin is alive and well, a retired technology entrepreneur and college professor. Some of the people in the nearly 20-year-old phone directory I carry in my wallet have died ahead of me.
Leafing through it, memories came back.
My younger brother, Jim, would have shaken his head at this adventure, and maybe uttered: “My, my.”
Jeanne’s brother, Jack, the life-enveloping red head, would have thought the big float great fun.
Tom O’Malley, my guardian angel for the last 30 years, would have smiled his knowing smile and said little; his son, Martin, will inevitably be elected governor of Maryland while I am away.
Al Hurt, the retired diplomat who discovered for two Americans our favorite Spanish village and who lived near us for a wonderful year upon his return from Spain, would have said: “You be careful, Sonny.”
Nat Adderley would have enthusiastically urged me on.
Reg Barney, my friend from the two years I lived in Puerto Rico, would have chuckled warmly and asked: “You’re doing what?”
Jack Hardesty would have said: “Go for it.”
Randy Schrecengost, my fraternity house roommate, would have chuckled his guttural laugh and said: “Somebody’s got to do it.”
Don Holland, my high school and college friend, would have correctly thought of this slow boat to Africa caper as another in a long line of less than conventional Frink endeavors.
Tomorrow: Dakar, Senegal.
Now, I have a tale to tell.
My morning was spent wandering to the port gate; I peered out unto a sea of people, men wearing long gowns, no women in sight; stalls lining the street; I was alone in Africa.
The mother ship was behind me at dock.
Ahead, lay the unknown: a strange city, a strange, at least for me, religion and languages I do not speak. I retreated behind the safety of the port gate.
I returned to the long entry steel driveway, as wrecks of old European mini-vans, headlights smashed, bumpers dangling, were being liberated from the hold of our ship. They will be transshipped by another Grimaldi ship to Lagos, Nigeria, which must be widely known as the cemetery of used and abused Euro mini-vans.
After the mini-vans were removed, new, diesel powered, four door, four wheel drive Chevy S-10 pickups began their long parade aboard our vessel; these vehicles have a Portuguese colonial tie: made in Brazil, they are bound for Angola.
Next came shiny, taped-up Mercedes Benz mini-SUVs and BMWs.
Then came the giant tanker tractor trailers. The white Volvo semi-tractors, that looked to me as if they were manufactured in Virginia, had to be resorted after all of this roll-on, roll-off activity.
I tired of the heat and humidity of dockside Dakar and retreated to the air-conditioning in my cabin. I called Jeanne on my use-with-caution, $2.00 a minute, call from anywhere in the world, European cell phone. Below the ship ramp, local entrepreneurs were offering their cell phones to ship mates for $1.00 minute; one 3rd mate took up this bargain, to beat the two euros a minute to call Italy. I kept wondering why men on shore kept holding up their cell phones to me. I had no desire to buy a cell phone in Senegal.
I wandered out to the deck to take a photo of vehicles entering the stern ramp. Below, a man in a red shirt waved at me, motioned me to come down and do business. He had his wares spread out against a shipping container in front of the ship ramp. Other merchants were also open for business. They had arrived since I was wandering and watching on the ramp. Luigi found me on deck and motioned me down for lunch. IC was there, the others were at work.
After lunch, I was curious: Would there be time to do a little business in Dakar before we lifted the ramp and made out way out of the harbor. I found the elevator, descended to the 4th deck and made my way to the sun light. The deck officer assured me there would be time only to deal with the businessmen dockside.
After delightful haggling -“These were made in Korea,” I protested to the merchants - I am the proud owner of small, well carved, mahogany see-speak-hear-no-evil monkeys and a couple of odd turtles.
The deck hands were impressed with my bargaining success.
“I just bought some memories of Senegal,” I told them.
Isn’t this special? I just learned that we are on a six day mini-cruise to Luanda. The Afriqueophiles among us know that Angola sits above Namibia, which in turn sits above South Africa, and they are all mucho far from Senegal (or you should know). Regardless, the good ship Repubblica di Genova is heading south, southeast at the usual 16 knots.
We are cutting around the Sahara bulb of the continent and following the line that will narrow Africa down to a relative sliver at Cape Town and the Cape of Good Hope (been there, done that).
I don’t have an Angola visa. The visa service I used to trek around my passport, so that various African embassies could relieve me of a hundred bucks, feared Angola; feared, that if they deposited my passport with those good folks it might not pop out again, or at least not in time.
“Let’s skip Angola,” said I.
Unfortunately, skip Angola is what I might have to do. Il Comandante and I have discussed the problem: “I will do everything within my power to get you ashore.” “I’ll pay,” I said.
In his finest Al Haig-ish I’m-in-charge-here-at-the-White-House voice, and looking me straight in the eye, IC came back with: “I will do everything within my power to get you ashore, and-you-won’t-have-to-pay.”
Case and subject closed.
A few moments ago the ship’s alarm bells went off: staccato, quick blasts.
Whoa!
Double Whoa!
A long string of quick, staccato blasts means: Time To Turn To Prayer, ‘Cause We Have Done Everything We Can. I believe it got to four blasts before Joey, the 3rd mate on the Bridge, could rush down the steps and knock on my door. Oh, how quickly I opened!
“Just a test,” said Joey, smiling (his name is Giuseppe-Joey to me).
A few days ago, during dinner, Il Comandante said to me: “Mr. Frink, do you like apple pie?” “Of course” I said “All Americans have to like apple pie.” He then related a story about how when he would be in U.S. ports he often ate in coffee shops.
“That lemon pie, how do you say it” “Meringue, I answered.” “Yes, lemon meringue. I would always ask the waitress ‘which is best, apple or lemon meringue?’, and take her choice.” Then, he called the Salvatore, the cook, to our table and ordered him to make apple pies.
The next evening at dinner we had an absolutely delicious apple cake for desert. IC turned up his nose. “It is a very good apple cake,” I said. “It is not apple pie,” he correctly observed.
In jest I said: “I’ll call my mother.”
“No” he replied, “but could you have your wife send us the recipe?”
Another dinner-at-sea story and a task for Jeanne.
I skipped dinner last evening; I almost missed lunch today.
The food served aboard the Repubblica di Genova is heavy: pastas, meat, never a salad, sometimes fish as a second course. To refresh memories: two meals are served a day; they are formal. Luigi changes into his white shirt. Three forks are in place at the left of the plate and the requisite number of knives and spoons to the right, with a sharp, serrated-edge, wooden-handled knife at the top of the plate to carve up fruit, the usual dessert. Three courses are served: anti-pasta or pasta (I have tasted memorable pastas out of this kitchen); fish or a concoction created by the cook for the second course; then meat, usually chewy meat, which I avoid.
Before dinner I enjoy the cocktail hour. I now have a system: From Luigi, I have acquired a glass pitcher (I keep it out of harms way by attaching it to the carry strap of my large suitcase; no level of rough sea will loosen it.) When the time of the cocktail hour strikes, I unleash the pitcher, take it with me down a flight of steps to an icemaker, near the galley, fill it and return to my cabin. Then out come the libations and canned peanuts. I then sit back in the swivel chair at my desk and enjoy a proper pre-meal ritual. Last evening,the peanuts were enough. I didn’t have the courage to face another three course meal.
This morning at 11 a.m. I went to the ship office to send my first dispatch. I had no success with the Italian instructions within the computer, so I decided to go to the lounge-dining room to read and wait for lunch. No need to wait. It was a few minutes after noon and the room was full of diners. No one had told me to flip my watch ahead. I dined.
One of my dining companions at Il Comidante’s table is the chief engineer. He is short. He is Italian. He has a round face-a Mussolini likeness without the jutting jaw that is constantly projecting emotion: strong frowns, wide, bright smiles. It is sometimes in contrast to what he is saying, sometimes in conformity. He is bald, but with a hairy chest, clearly visible because, for reasons of his own, he wears his one-size-too-small-officer’s beige shirt open to the fourth button, sometimes with a gold necklace.
The chief engineer is always in motion; he fidgets, particularly with the wooden handled knife.
There is never enough action and conversation at our table, so he happily cross-talks and jokes with the junior officers at the next table. He is a very agreeable fellow. I wish in the worst way that I understood Italian, so that I could enjoy his banter as he works the room into laughter (this only occurs when IC does not join us). He is going to celebrate his 47th birthday this month. It should be a combined hoot and a riot of an evening.
The Repubblica di Genova is 60 miles off the Liberian coast, on a course south by southeast. We are on a direct line into Luanda, the capitol of Angola and have progressed about 400 miles since yesterday morning.
The sea today is medium, with swells one to two meters high, propelled by winds out of the southwest. “Definitely not calm” Il Comandante assured me when I questioned him about ocean conditions. “These winds will continue until Luanda, so will the swells.”
Liberia was settled by freed American slaves in 1821. Monrovia, the capital, was named after President Monroe; the Liberian flag is themed on our U.S. flag.
Looking at the map of the country, I noticed a town named Greenville. My dear friends, the Cooks, from Michigan State (50 plus years ago) live in Greenville, Michigan.
Now listen to this, Toto: you’re not in Kansas anymore and I’m many worlds away from Greenville, or anywhere else in Michigan.
Hear me, dog: This adventurin’ is about gettin’ out of your comfort zone.
At sea, dinners begin at 8. They last longer and are more interesting. Last evening, Il Comindante, Adrian, the first mate and the Chief Engineer and I spent an hour gabbing. I steered the conversation to the Grimaldi Company.
Grimaldi is a family-owned Italian maritime enterprise that is growing rapidly. “In the four years I have been with the company, we have gone from 20 to 40 vessels,” IC proclaimed. Headed by a patriarch in his 90s, two sons run the business from Napoli (operations) and London (cargo acquisition and management).
According to Il Comindante, the di Genova is an 18-year-old antique, to which the family is emotionally tied. They keep it around and running because it was their first success in the roll-on, roll-off cargo biz.
The Grimaldis are going to send the di Genova to the U.S., after an extensive dry dock stay, where the interior of the ship will be completely replaced, among other improvements. In the New Year, they are going to put their revitalized relic into service to West Africa, out of New York, Baltimore and Jacksonville.
IC won’t be coming with her; he’ll be on home leave rocking on his front porch, somewhere in Italy.
So sports fans, if your dream is to spend 40 days before the mast on a roll-on and roll-offer and accompany junk vehicles to West Africa, prepare thy self. Grimaldi and the Repubblica di Genova are coming to an East Coast port near you.
After dinner last evening, we also discussed the relative merits of the Italian, Romanian and U.S. medical, public pension and social security systems. I glimpsed a facet of Il Comindant before unseen: “It is a very good thing that in Italy from the time you are born until you die, and you need an operation, medical help, you receive it and you do not pay one single Euro. That is a very good thing,” IC exclaimed more than once.
I certainly couldn’t argue with that proclamation.
At 12:10 p.m. today, Luigi came up to fetch me for lunch; I was writing. I will have to be more careful. He has to serve two tables of hungry ship’s officers at each meal. He really has no time to chase after me
The anti-pasta was prosciutto ham (I had to go out in the hall just now and stop a perfectly innocent Italian to get him to spell it out for me), an absolutely delicious treat. I passed up the ravioli and meat dishes and went directly to a perfectly ripened pear.
In the my-how-time-flies-department: After lunch, 3rd officer Damian gave me, and had me sign for, my second malaria tablet.
I saw a whale today. Indeed, I saw two whales.
They are a mated pair, according to Il Comandant. He called them finback whales (“with two ns,” he said but I doubted that.) He said that they usually measure between 6 and 10 meters in length.
First one, then the other broke the water surface with their slender, triangularly shaped dorsal fins. They were approximately 300 yards off our starboard stern. I believed what I was witnessing were whales, despite not seeing any spouting; perhaps they were dolphins, I thought. Not until I climbed up to the bridge deck and asked IC did I know for certain.
My Encyclopaedia Britannica has informed me that finbacks are in all oceans, are on the endangered species list because of too many whaling ship kills and are, in fact, 17 to 28 meters in length. They commute from the polar waters of summer to warmer climes in the winter to breed.
How does one successfully spot whales in an ocean the size of the Atlantic?
With odds-shattering good luck or divine providence, take your choice.
The last two days have been rainy. This morning the sun was shining intensely. I interrupted my morning routine: instead of going immediately from my cabin down to the galley for coffee and the office for Jeanne’s email, I detoured out to the open deck. I leaned against the stern railing, taking in the rays. From that position, I was able to see 3rd mate Joey exit the enclosed bridge with binoculars in hand. What was he looking for? I did a look-about and there was one -no-two- fins breaking the surface of the deeply azure Atlantic.
At the time of the whale sighting, the ship was 120 miles off the Ivory Coast, moving right along at the usual 16 knots. While I was on the bridge, Il Comandante recommended to me a book about blue whales, Leviathan. It took us time to get the spelling correct; then he wanted to know what the word meant.
We were now in his office, which adjoins my cabin. I had handed him Jeanne’s recipe for apple pie. We had to translate “nutmeg” and “cinnamon” into Italian.
Then IC began to look up “tossed.” We never got to a definition of the word as in “tossed salad”, but I got the point across, distinguishing it from “stir” or “mix.”
Yesterday, I found the BBC African Service in the 19 meter band on my short wave radio. It comforts me.
This morning I learned that the North Koreans have exploded a nuclear device; Sir somebody, the chief Brit army general, is perplexed about what happened after the invasion of Iraq and how we are to get out (aren’t we all); and that the Dow Jones Industrial Average set an all time high record yesterday.
Attached.
Such news makes me feel much more attached to the world at large.
I have received gifts. Yesterday, Il Comandante gave 1000 vacuum-packed grams of small peanuts, roasted and processed in Italy. For those of you who have never possessed 1000 grams of peanuts, I assure you: It is one big bunch. Adrian, the first mate, the day before gave me 100 grams (18 pieces) of German Hazelnut cream-filled milk chocolate squares.
Ah, the kindness of strangers.
A few days ago, in the dark depths of the afternoon, after all writing chores were completed and prior to the cocktail hour, I got caught up in a nightmare. In my dream I considered getting off the ship in Douala, Cameroon, a place where we are actually going to stop and a nation for which I have a valid visa. I would fly somewhere. I could see myself, trudging along, over-baggaged and stopping the first person I see outside the port gate, and asking: “Hey, buddy: Which way to the airport?”
At that point, the fantasy passed.
The source of the nightmare, I believe, is that I know how many days I have been aboard the Repubblica di Genova, but don’t know how much time remains; certainly more than has passed. After all, we’re still steaming south.
If anyone is reading any of these words I’m pushing over the ship’s satellite email, I would wish a short word from you at gary@cruisin-thru-100.com. Jeanne will condense and forward it.
The lull: The Repubblica di Genova and I are two and a half days out of Luanda, Angola, the most southerly point of the voyage. We expect to arrive late Monday evening, the 16th. The course we are following to Luanda is the western boundary of a series of bays. Along these inlets are the shorelines of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the two Congos, much of West Africa.
Get your hands on a map of Africa. Draw a straight line from a few miles west of Monrovia to Luanda and you would have our exact six day course. We are, of course, moving down the globe at our usual speed of 16 knots; a speed. Il Comandante claims that is fast enough to keep a water skier upright and skimming the ocean surface.
This morning we crossed the Equator. I feel no different, but have apparently passed a major milestone in my life. IC has announced the “Cross The Equator Party” for Sunday evening, 7 p.m. “My party,” I said. “You are not the only one,” he replied.
He promised large shrimps for the entrée.
Five of us dine at IC’s table: himself, the First Mate, Chief Engineer, First Engineer and the passenger.
I haven’t informed the readers of cruisin-thru-100.com anything of the First Engineer. To begin: If he were an NFL football player, he would be a middle linebacker, a Romanian Mike Singletary. The 1st engineer is a squat, boulder of a man, a ferocious looking fellow when his scowl is in place. He is a standout eater: He can consume more food quicker than any human being I have ever encountered. He begins each meal with a huge portion of pasta, followed by double servings of second and meat courses; each augmented by at least one of the daily-baked hard rolls. Of course, he enjoys fruit for desert, or whatever Luigi serves. With his head bent low over the plate of the moment, fork in a rotating, shoveling movement, it is as if the vast food quantities are inhaled with in astonishing speed.
The first engineer is also bright, a contributor to the broad-ranging dinner conversation and one of the more curious of those who dine at Il Comandanti’s table. It was he who asked the question early on in the voyage: “By in large, has George W. Bush been good or bad for the United States?”
Last evening, after dinner, he stopped me in the hall and asked me for the origin of the word Yankee. “I have heard the word in many American movies and I am curious, where does it come from?” He knew the various usages of the word; he wanted to know from whence it came. After consulting Webster and Oxford dictionaries, I found the origin of Yankee is unknown.
On to Luanda, to experience what adventures are waiting there. Then our course reversal to the north.
