At Sea, Week 3 - Forty-Two Day Sea Journey to West Africa
Yesterday, the thrill of the day came my way as dusk was falling over our area of the South Atlantic. Luigi had given me a piece of pizza and some black olives to add a little substance to the cocktail hour. My mouth was full when the banging on my door forced me to my feet.
There was one of the cadets.
"Whales," he said in Italian (don't ask me what the Italian word for whales is, I have no idea) but I knew immediately what he meant. Whoever was in charge of the bridge had sent him to my door.
The stairwell to the bridge is a few paces from my door on the right. I dashed up the stairs. There was Il Comandant on the outdoor portion of the bridge, starboard side. I joined him. The 3rd mate explained that two finbacks had propelled themselves out of the water 200 meters ahead of the ship. IC and the others were waiting for them to resurface.
"Sometimes they stay down for 20 or 30 minutes," Il Comandant said.
The four of us on the bridge searched the waters around us and waited. Dusk darkened into unfathomable obscurity. Alas, the whales hadn't reappeared.
The Repubblica di Genova is 300 miles off the coast of Gabon. I have heard a good deal about Gabon: My Jewell Hollow neighbor Kathy and her friend David were Peace Corp volunteers in the former French colony.
Many years later, my young friend Jonathan was also at work with the Peace Corp in that country. This summer past, Jonathan returned to the village where he worked. He took the arduous solo journey to check on his local colleagues and the fish-farming projects he had been instrumental in birthing.
Alex is the cadet who works with 3rd mate Joey. This morning I awoke remembering that yesterday when I was questioning Joey about his life and ambitions, Alex offered his hope that he would work on cruise ships. Why wouldn't all of the young, unmarried junior officers want to work on cruise ships? Aboard, they would pair off with the choice, young Canadian cruise department girls or the Brit spa attendants and nature would take its course.
This morning on the bridge while getting my daily progress report, I asked Joey that question. "For me, two answers: One, my girlfriend. The other is that the pay is 500 Euros a month less." He explained that his 22 year old girl friend will muster out of the Italian Navy in two days.
She was so despondent when they broke up she joined the navy. Back together with Joey and out of the navy, she is going to study political science at a university in Palermo, their home.
The 24-year-old Joey scoffed at the idea of marriage plans.
"She must want to go to law school," I offered "because she won't be able to earn a living with a political science degree."
Joey didn't know I was a lawyer until I showed him my University of Michigan ring with the scales of justice imprinted over the black stone.
He also didn't know that I always touted law school to young persons involving themselves in such foolishness as political science.
The Lull: Continuing
We are on our straight line course 220 miles, or about 12 hours, from Luanda; we will likely throw out our lines in port shortly after 11p.m.
This morning, one of the crew members let me in on an interesting fact: During the last African voyage of the Repubblica di Genova, the 2nd mate was bitten by a mosquito in Douala, Cameroon ("It's a river port, many mosquitoes") and came down with a fever during the ship's time back in Tilburg, England. He was taken off the ship in Hamburg with malaria.
"The pills," the crew member said "They're not 100%." Now you tell me! I won't be wearing a scrap of black in Luanda or Douala.
Count on it!
"I can't tell you where ceremony will take place," Il Comandante said yesterday afternoon when I asked him where I was to be at 6 p.m. At 6:10, there was a knock on my door. Luigi and his assistant were there and motioned me to follow them.
Out doors and up the metal stairs. Up and up to the highest point on the ship, where I had never been. At the top was a very small swimming pool.
"Do you swim, Mr. Frink," IC asked. Six young men stood around in swimming shorts, flip-flops on their feet. Various fully clad crewmembers were present.
"These other guys were clued in," I said to myself. I was wearing shoes, jeans, a polo shirt and a sweat shirt (air conditioning aboard ship functions well.)
Adrian, the 1st mate was there with his camera.
"Why didn't you tell me," I asked. "I didn't know," was his answer. Sure, it is his first voyage on this ship, but I would assume the Cross-The-Equator-Ritual is the same in all merchant fleets.
Next, rising majestically out of the steps, with his two handmaiden nymphs (3rd mate Damian and his cadet assistant), appeared the Roman God of the Sea, Neptune himself.
He was resplendent in a white mop wig and bed sheet, carrying a three-pronged, white devil's staff. Neptune, when on his day job, is the Boatswain (pronounced Bo-sun), chief of the deckhands and other seamen. Even without his Neptune costume, he is the most colorful of the Grimaldi employees aboard: He is tall, with an ample belly, long grey-black hair flowing over his shoulders and what appears to be an American Indian necklace around his neck.
One by one the names of the first time Equator-crossers were called.
They climbed to the edge of the pool and Neptune and his nymphs pushed them in.
I was last and getting ready. My name was called.
As Neptune reached for me, IC said in Italian: "No, not the passenger."
Neptune then dipped his devilish staff into the pool and slapped it on my head.
I had been baptized, though to a much lesser extent than my fellow communicants.
Then IC presented each of us with a certificate of "Transitus Equatores", properly signed by himself and stamped with the official Grimaldi and di Genova seal.
My alias is Cephalum Australis, a bright blue fish with glittering silver scales and a silver head.
At dinner, IC asked me: "Why do you do this, as a tourist, why?"
I answered: "There are many travel writers, but how many have written about a 45 day cargo ship voyage to Africa?"
He shook his head knowingly.
FLASH! THIS JUST IN!
During luncheon the phone rang in the dining room. Luigi said: "Primo" (1st mate.) When he returned to our table, Adrian said: "19."
I was confused. I knew it was impossible for us to arrive in Luanda at 1900 hours today.
"The 19th, we can't dock until the 19th." We are going to sit at anchor for two and a half days, waiting for the Luanda dock congestion to clear.
This is an excellent example of the vagaries of the merchant marine shipping biz.
We are marooned on our metal island in Luanda bay facing the Angola capital, founded by a Portuguese guy - Paulo Dias Novais - in 1576, 31 years before the English settlement at Jamestown.
The Repubblica di Genova dropped anchor near the bay entrance at precisely 11 p.m., October 16, 2006.
This morning I heard Il Comandante (if not paper thin, our walls seem no thicker than cardboard) on the phone with someone conversing in English: "You want me to enter the harbor, is that correct?" He then repeated a number, which could have been a confirmation of the order.
We moved, but not far. Later, I counted over 40 merchant ships of various sizes surrounding us in this anchorage; all of them, presumably, waiting to load or unload at a dock.
I am suspended. The ship is not making progress, either at sea or at a dock.
Adrian told me that once we are docked, no one knows how long it will take to unload the vehicles and boxes destined for Luanda, "because everyone moves very slowly."
When I was on deck counting ships, a tug was along side. I waved at the crewmen aboard. They smiled and returned the wave. The tug gave me hope that we might be about to move toward our dock, but no. Joey, on his bridge watch, told me that the tug had brought the Angolan customs and immigration officials to the ship.
Perhaps after the Angolan officialdom takes its leave from us, IC will know if I'm to be allowed legally to step upon the dockside of Luanda.
I am determined to put a foot on Angolan turf, come what may.
Angola will be number 94, in this quixotic quest for 100 nations and detached jurisdictions.
While I am in this suspended state, some housekeeping details. They probably won't be of much interest, but I am going relate them regardless.
Our drinking water is of two types, brands and countries. The non-carbonated water is Italian, and comes in clear plastic, liter and a half bottles. The gasified water is French, and in the same size, blue plastic bottles. At meal time, Luigi places two bottles of each on the dining tables. Sometimes, I return to my cabin from a meal with a full blue bottle.
For three weeks I have lived aboard this vessel. For three weeks I have had two, three course meals (plus fruit) a day.
Most of the food I decline.
Today was extraordinary. After a garlicky, seashell pasta, with small chunks of meat resting on the bottom of the shallow bowl, Luigi served a perfectly prepared small sole in a light butter and lemon sauce; it was exquisite. For the first time in these three weeks, I requested a second portion.
Luigi delivered.
"Mr. Frink," Il Comandante declaimed during lunch. "Your passport is in the hands of the Angolan immigration officials. They will do what they can."
After that, IC asked me if I knew of the mink animal, and the conversation drifted to spousal gifts of mink coats and diamonds. His wife has the coat and awaits the diamond; mine has the diamond and no aspirations nor hopes for a coat of mink skins.
I offered the story of how Jeanne acquired her diamond ring. After the story, IC nodded his head vigorously, indicating that he believed justice was done in the matter.
The conversation after lunch lingered much longer than usual. After all, what pressing business does a marooned merchant ship commander have?
Suddenly, men were appearing on deck wearing their white hardhats and orange life preservers. Seamen and officers alike.
They clustered around life boat #1; some entered, most didn't. Il Comandante watched from the bridge deck, radio in hand, wearing dark, wraparound sunglasses.
Orders were being shouted by the boatswain, Il Comandante and seemingly anyone above the rank of seaman. No one paid any attention to me, thank you very much. That meant there was no emergency. They take good care of their passengers.
The lifeboat was laboriously released from its attachments on our deck and lowered to the one below.
IC clamored down to the lower deck. The boatswain appeared with a very large iron clamp, which was attached to one of the two points holding the suspended lifeboat. Security ropes were slowly released. The boatswain operated the power winch. Slowly, floating down through the bay breeze to the Atlantic went life boat #1.
As it began a trial put-put around, it pulled a rope held on the bridge deck. Evidently that rope should have been detached from the lifeboat earlier since the still-attached rope set off much arm waving, high decibel shouts, laments in Italian (and perhaps Romanian, I couldn't be certain), and piercing two-finger whistles.
Even the chief engineer, who has no deck duties that I know of, began waving his arms and shouting insistently; he was standing next to me, but ran off in an excited state.
The two-man lifeboat crew chugged on.
Finally, the deck hand on the bridge let his end of the rope flutter into the ocean.
No harm, no foul.
After completing a small circle, under its put-put power, lifeboat #1 returned to the mother ship to be re-hoisted.
As the drama of the attached rope came to an end, I noticed a large launch coming along side. Painted in prominent letters on the upper part of its hull were the Portuguese words for “Captain of the Port of Luanda.” One man was on deck. Then another man emerged from the launch cabin carrying in his left hand a stack of what looked like passports to me. With Adrian's assistance, three men came aboard through the pilot's entrance, at sea level.
Now I will learn my fate, I thought. Will I be allowed to go ashore and tour Luanda or I will remain on the ship and its dock?
When I returned to my cabin, the three Angolans were waiting for Il Comandante. They were standing in front of my door. "Good afternoon, gentlemen," said I. "Good afternoon, Captain," one replied. “Oh,, no pal. You got the wrong guy,” I said.
After Angolan officialdom returned to the launch, I couldn't wait to hear my fate. At lunch, I said to Il Comandante: "I saw the Angolan officials. They had a stack of passports. How do I find out if I can go ashore?"
"Ask me," he replied.
"OK, I'm asking you. Can I go ashore in Luanda?"
"I don't know. Those Angolans, they weren't here for immigration. They were here for monkey business. They told me I needed permission to lower the lifeboat. I told them that they gave me permission yesterday to lower the lifeboat today.”
“Africa!”
“You won't know until we are along side... if then," Il Comandante said.
IC didn't inform me of the nature of the monkey business; I didn't ask.
Today is the 97th birthday of my beloved mother and Aunt Hazel. They are in Michigan and California, in that order. I continue to be marooned on a steel-hulled island in Luanda Bay, far, far away.
No one knows when the Repubblica di Genova will move ahead to a dock.
One thing is certain, however: At 8 p.m., in whatever time zone we presently inhabit, my mother and aunt shall be honored at IC's table with a champagne toast. And it will be sparkling wine from Reims or another site in the French champagne region.
The real goods. There will be no California fakery for Granny and Aunt Hazel.
I heard an American voice moments ago. I was on the bridge, listening a CB radio frequency as the captain of the Bonnette Tide spoke with his port agent about $200 cash travel advances for his crew. The Bonnette Tide is somewhere in Luanda Bay with us. It is described as a passenger ship.
Joey tried to track it on one of the Repubblica di Genova’s electronic gadgets. Yet, even a visual search of the area failed to locate a yacht, cruise ship or any vessel that could be labeled as "passenger.”
It was the first nearby, truly American voice I have heard since the Boston Boys exited the train one stop before Antwerp.
That was 23 days ago.
The Bonnette Tide captain was awaiting an Angolan Coast Guard inspection. He expects to be at dock this afternoon.
If we ever get to dock, it would be fun to tract down the mysterious Bonnette Tide and chat with its captain.
Chatting is very difficult with persons not native to my tongue. Communication, of course, can be accomplished.
Luigi and I communicate, more than half of which is non-verbal. A movement of the eyes, hands, arms, anything to get the point across; but chat? No.
Adrian and I converse with each other in English, each understanding what the other is saying, but we have to work at it.
Chatting comes easy or it doesn’t come at all.
Like chatting, in the over three weeks I have lived aboard the Repubblica di Genova there have been a number of everyday items missing from my comfort zone: I have not been in an automobile since the taxi rides to and from the Lisbon Vasco da Gama mall; I haven’t driven a car since September 22, nor read a newspaper. I haven’t had access to television broadcasts nor the internet since leaving the Brugge Hotel Adornes, September 27.
The only woman I have seen since leaving Lisbon October 6 was an unfortunate Senegalese lady scooting about in a motorized wheelchair in front of the Dakar port gate; she was legless.
My use of the telephone has been limited to three short calls to Jeanne, one to Granny, and a couple of messages left for friends. The European phone, purchased for this adventure, hasn’t functioned thus far in Luanda Bay.
I have seen no snail mail, including the weekly editions of the New Yorker, Time and other magazines…probably stacked in a pile in Jewell Hollow.
The food I eat is what Luigi places in front of me. No pleasant wife to inquire what I would like for dinner.
One staple of my morning at home is grapefruit juice; I have seen no fruit juice of any kind aboard.
When I travel alone and leave my home comfort zone, I must create a new one wherever am. If not, sanity is tough to hang on to.
When I lived in Puerto Rico and traveled for Prentice-Hall in the Caribbean and north South America, I had rather simple requirements: I would stay in any room that had a functioning toilet and a door that securely locked. No matter how bad the bed or how much the air conditioning malfunctioned, I could make a comfort zone in such a place.
The comfort zone I have created aboard the Repubblica di Genova is luxurious compared to places I stayed long ago in Haiti and the mountains of Columbia.
“Your mother likes whales,” Il Comandante inquired, when I told him that Jeanne had E-mailed me that Granny liked the whale tale the best. “She likes all things natural,” I replied.
“A day or two out of Luanda, there were dolphins, literally thousands of them,” IC said. He made an arching motion with his right hand and arm. “Incredible! I called you, but you couldn’t be found.” I was heartsick. “Maybe we’ll find some on the way back,” I replied weakly.
“Let’s hope so,” Il Comandante said.
“It is the most difficult (cargo ship) maneuver in Africa,” Il Comandante said in answer to my “Wow!”
He had returned to his cabin last evening after spending two hours docking the Repubblica di Genova in the cramped, claustrophobic, clearly inadequate commercial dock in Luanda, Angola.
We slowly made our way from the bay directly into the two sided, salt water triangle that makes up the entrance to the Luanda cargo dock. We proceeded to a few yards from dockside. There was one space between two docked vessels.
As we continued toward that space, I told myself that it would be impossible to parallel park our ship between them.
I was correct.
As our bow proceeded to a point almost touching the forward ship alongside the dock, IC reversed engines. With the assistance of tugs on each side, he pirouetted his bow to the right. Slowly, ever so slowly, the di Genova moved its stern around to the point where its bow had nosed in.
After the 180 degree switch, he backed this 650 foot long, almost 100 foot wide, monster floating garage at a precise angle into the dock; that angle enabled the massive, steel hydraulically operated garage ramp to be correctly lowered onto the dock.
The clearances are so tight between the parallel parked vessels to our right and left, that our rope lines overlap theirs on the same onshore metal “bits”, or pointed slugs of steel over which looped ends of the lines are slung. IC accomplished a maritime parking tour de force. I watched raptly from stern deck 13.
Today has been a joy. With a Grimaldi car and driver, Il Comandante, the chief engineer and I made our way through the sinkhole-pocked dirt track out of the port.
The first stop was the immigration office; it was a success. I am probably the only Virginian to possess an active “Passé A Terra” issued by the Ministry of Foreign Immigration, Luanda, Angola, and it is valid through November 31.
IC initiated a brief discussion about leaving me in Luanda, to be picked up by the next Grimaldi ship on the West African run; I vetoed immediately.
We next visited the gleaming new Grimaldi offices and spoke briefly with the leadership of the company’s 25 Luanda employees; then to the Italian Embassy, where Il Comandante had to make reports.
“That is done. Now, we are free,” he said upon completion of the obligatory task.
When the ship was anchored in the bay, it lay off a slim point of land separating the bay and the Atlantic. I could see it was a beach resort. At night as I walked on deck 13, I saw the multi-colored lights on the spokes and circle of the Ferris wheel as it spun its turns. I wished I could have been there, if only for a moment.
Today I got my wish.
Our driver drove us to that sandy point and the motionless Ferris wheel. Though I am certain it looks better at night, I took a photo of it, a memento of my evenings anchored in Luanda Bay.
We stopped at a craft shop on the road back from the point; we didn’t find the prices agreeable. We stopped next at an attractive beach restaurant, The Miami Beach. There, the chief engineer and I had a beer, IC a fruit juice drink.
A middle-aged Frenchman was at the bar holding an infant girl, he said was his daughter. He claimed to be an oil field troubleshooter and fireman; he claimed that he worked for Red Baron, as distinguished from the American oil field fire fighter, Red Adair. He said he had been in Luanda for 15 years; that the national oil company kept him on retainer: “I go when they call; seven days a week, 365 days a year,” he said. “I live just across the road with my young Angolan wife. To the baby, I speak French; my wife speaks Portuguese to her.”
I have encountered first world expatriates in many third world countries. You listen, but you never know.
IC called the chief engineer and me out to the Atlantic beach front for photos. We motioned to two young Angolan girls in bathing suits to join us for the shoot.
Then I took a photo of IC with the owner’s wife standing behind the bar.
The point is this: If you ever find yourself in Luanda, out on the thin slice of land separating the Atlantic and Luanda Bay and desire a drink or meal, stop in at Miami Beach. Tell them that Il Comandante and I sent you.
Check it off: Angola is number 94, as we’re cruisin-thru-100. Tomorrow, the driver will pick us up at 9 a.m. for another day of adventure.
For those keeping track of my time: Four weeks ago today my United flight landed at Brussels international airport.
Il Comandante is a shopper. After leaving central Luanda, we drove an hour over packed highways, through densely populated, beige, dusty countryside.
The people we passed live in cramped, mud-built, squatter homes on unmarked dirt alleyways. I thought of the lack of sanitation.
Everywhere we drove, among hundreds of blue-white Toyota vans constantly picking up and dropping off passengers, then darting back into traffic, we saw vibrant human activity and energy.
"Everyone is selling something to everyone else," Il Comandant observed.
Vendor stands lined the highway, consisting of make-do tables, a chair or two, sometimes an umbrella. Young women carried great clumps bananas, vegetables, or packaged goods for sale on their heads, most often a baby wrapped in fabric and riding behind over mama's rump.
Very small shops with signs delineating the offerings within: "Farmacia." “ Materiales da Construction." "Baterias.".
Everywhere, people on the move; hawkers in the middle of the highway at choke points, holding out their wares; cars being repaired a few feet off the pavement, young men darting into traffic and leaping the middle barrier; uniformed street cleaning teams, hopelessly pushing their brooms against the overwhelming tide of dust and grime.
There was energy and the press of humanity everywhere we looked.
Damian, the 3rd mate of whom I have yet to write, said to me earlier in the voyage: "You can't understand poverty until you come to Africa. You can't see it on television. You have to come to Africa."
In my observation, it is a poverty without the listless, hapless, transparent despair I have encountered in other undeveloped countries. Incredibly, in two days of movement within Luanda and environs we encountered one beggar, a mother and child at our car window (the chief engineer responded with paper currency).
At the outdoor craft market, the goal of our motor trip, Il Comandante set about checking out every ivory merchant in the complex; prices were not to his liking. At the last moment, he bought two large pieces of daringly colored batik cloth, to be used as table clothes, he explained.
I bought various jewelry pieces for Jeanne and our granddaughters.
When we entered the market I told IC that I would be the only American there.
Wrong! During a last moment wander through the basket end of the craft market, I met a Texas family, young couple with two children. He is an exploratory driller for Total, the French petroleum company. We had a regular American chat.
I have just finished a three hour dinner party in honor of Il Comandante's 54th birthday.
There were many courses, three wines including a very good sparkling Italian after-dessert. The off-ship guests were very intelligent and sociable, top-ranking Luanda Grimaldi employees, their spouses and one 12 year old daughter.
More on that tomorrow. Time now to go to bed.
