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At Sea, Week 1 - Forty-Two Day Sea Journey to West Africa
We are underway at last. I heard a knock on il Comandante's door at 6:10 am.
When I got going at 8, we were in a lock with our tug, a tanker and an empty self-propelled barge
Travel necessitates movement. After three nights aboard this old bucket, shackled to a dock, it is past time to begin traveling.
Today I was scheduled to attend the homecoming at Michigan State University with a group of Lambda Chi fraternity brothers. Difficult to imagine a greater disconnect from a Big Ten football stadium than the Repubblic di Genova and il Comandante.
Yesterday afternoon during nap time, there was a knock on my cabin door; it was the diminutive purser, now on her way by taxi to Brussels airport and her home.
"A doctor is here. It is time for your cholera inoculation." OK. I followed her.
In fact, a thin, middle-aged man with a warm bedside manner asked me to drink an espresso cup half-filled with a clear liquid.
I did and assume am not to fear cholera.
My porthole looks out over the bow (or more correctly the containers stacked behind the bow,) so I can track where we are going. Just watched the pilot boat provide us with an exchange of pilots. On the shipping channel out to the My porthole looks out over the bow (or more correctly the containers stacked behind the bow,) so I can track where we are going. Just watched the pilot boat provide us with an exchange of pilots.
On the shipping channel out to the North Sea, the shore is lined with windmill farms, plus one large two-stack nuclear plant. Europeans are far ahead of us in beating the fossil fuel addiction. Windmill farm? Not in my backyard. Not in the waters off Cape Cod; Don't spoil my view.
The first mate is going to be a Godsend to me. He keeps me informed. For example, we are expected to be 12 hours in Le Havre, taking on more cargo. This ship is loaded with used -read JUNK- cars bound for Africa. I watched yesterday as they were driven into the stern of the ship. My new best friend has dear friends living in Baton Rouge, home of son Chris and family. "Small world", he exclaimed.
This is a no-smoking ship. Il Comandante, however, is a chain smoker, and that changes everything.
Last evening I was relegated to my personal first (and solo) seating at the Il Comondante's table; tonight I'll know if I'm permanently so honored.
Last evening I also installed Encyclopedia Britannica on my laptop; a stroke of genius, that. I can now trace our progress on the provided maps. Once we are out in the North Sea, we'll steam west to Le Havre; from there west around Brittany and on down the western most point in Europe into Lisbon.
It is a beautiful, sunny day for sailing and many white sail specs have joined usl, enjoying the day as they dip their bows into the rippled water.
In port in Le Havre. Slept late, haven't left the ship yet. So far our voyage Il Comandante is different when at sea. He motioned me into his office yesterday. Almost his first words were "All the changes I see today are bad." I agreed and went into a refrain about how out-of-wedlock births are destroying the family in the U.S. We then did a chorus together about how the family is the bedrock of society.
He impressed upon me that a "maritime man" is happiest at sea, when "navigating" (sailing). He repeated the priceless phrase, that when he is in port he "is busy like Hell." I also learned that he is 54, not in his 60s as I suspected.
After dinner, we chatted briefly. He told me that he expected to pick up a pilot at 7am and be at the dock by 9. We were docked before 6:45, when I first glanced out of my forward-looking porthole. I wouldn't think tailwinds count for much with diesel-powered roll-on/roll-off cargo ships, but there you have it.
I have established the beginnings of an onboard routine: I awake whenever (no duty station for me); do stretching exercises (will have to begin anew at Valley Total Fitness when I return, as mentioned no gym on board); shower; dress; and head for the kitchen, one deck below, for the coffee thermos; then to the Purser's office to receive and send e-mails. After lunch, read, write and nap. So different from the cabin in the forest in Jewell Hollow, with wonderful wife and faithful, wild dog.
As of the moment (in Le Havre harbor) Congo and Togo have been dropped as destinations: no cargo, no stop. So, down to two new countries in the quest for 100 (I don't have a visa for Angola). What to do? Stay aboard? Disembark in Lisbon? If I should get off in Lisbon, it would cause all hell-and-gone-complications. Jeanne couldn't get there in time. Where would I go in Europe to pick up eight countries? Jeanne and I will have to think this through. The goal, after all, is 100 countries not a sea voyage.
The food aboard ship is so good that the Grimaldi ship agents in the ports make it a point to come aboard for lunch. All meals are three courses, plus fruit for dessert. Today, for lunch, it was garlic toast with an oil-soaked veggie mixture and slices of cold meat and cheese for anti-pasto. Then, a delicious lasagna, followed by a pork that fell off the bone. Yesterday at lunch, the second course was octupus in olive oil.
I won't get off the ship in Le Havre. The young ship's agent I dined with a few moments ago said that it would cost me 100 euros for a round-trip taxi ride to Sunday-closed-down town.
No thank you.
We are in the North Sea heading west, before swinging south into the Atlantic and heading for Lisbon. We are in medium seas, pitching a bit, no rolling. Good sleeping seas. My bed in my spacious owner's cabin is no wider than a camping cot, which is all the space I need.
Luigi, the steward, changed my sheets yesterday; once a week, if they need it or not. A Grimaldi cargo ship doesn't pretend to be Holland America Line.
Last evening, we pulled away from our Le Havre dock at approximately 6:10 pm, with the aid of two tugs. They pulled us into the small dockage channel, then across another channel. We immediately came to a halt in a narrow passageway I would analogize to a residential driveway. We faced a bridge connecting two sides of a very lightly traveled avenue. The minutes went by, as I stood peering out my porthole. The top of the hour came and went. The bridge was not raised. The Repubblica di Genova continued to wait. How could the bridge master hold up a loaded cargo ship and two tugs for such a long time for a dozen cars that passed over the bridge, one pulling a tiny European travel trailer?
Exasperated, I walked out the outer door to my deck in the stern. I looked over the side to the rear. There was a closed vehicle bridge behind us as well. Then the light finally came on: We were in a lock, being raised to the exit level.
Dinner was late because il Comandante stayed on the bridge until we were safely in the North Sea. As he arrived in the dining room/lounge, I was speaking with Jeanne in Jewell Hollow; she offered her greetings to the Captain, which I passed on; he reciprocated.
After dinner he brought up my home state of Michigan (he has my passport.) He related that he had traveled the Great Lakes, picking up wheat in Duluth for delivery in the Soviet Union. He, therefore, steamed by our former home on the St. Clair River going up to Lake Superior and on the return.
That arcane fact is a wisp of a tie between us.
No hot water this morning; a shower will wait. The sea is a tad rougher today, as well. Tomorrow in port I'll get all spiffed up.
Luigi, the steward, told me that central Lisbon is only a six Euro ride from the dock. He said that we might be in Lisbon for two days. I haven't been in Lisbon in over twenty years; Jeanne and I were on two month Eurail passes and roamed over much of Western Europe. Portugal had not yet joined the European Union. I remember Lisbon as being genteelly shabby. The train tracks in the country were in bad disrepair; we moved across them very, very slowly. At each road crossing an old woman would walk out of a tiny shanty and hand-lower the gate. It was a job. I assume that industrialization has changed all that.
When I told my friend Dick Reber about my plans for a forty day cargo ship odyssey the first words out of his mouth were: "Who's going to wash your clothes?" His response came from a knowledge of my lack of domestic skills.
One of the ground personnel for Grimaldi on board for lunch in Antwerp told me: "On a cargo ship you need to be on good terms with only two people: The captain and the steward (I’m doing my best.) Luigi serves me meals and chats with me in our three-language combination of Italian, Spanish and English. Now he does my laundry, as well. Yesterday, when he returned with the first load, I asked him how much I owed him. I was holding out a stack of Euros, with a fiver on top. Luigi looked at the five, said: "Chinco;" took it, and was out the door to his official duties.
He claims he only works 12 hours a day, but I suspect his day is longer. He serves all the meals and cleans as well. He is a fast-moving, cheerful, balding, round-headed, fifty year old Italian, who has been with Grimaldi for four years--six months aboard ship, a month at home with his wife and two children.
As I left my cabin this morning Il Comandante's office door was open; he was at his desk. "May I take a photo of you at your desk?" "Not This morning," came the reply. "OK, sometime later then, and I need to interview you." "This is not about me. I don't want you writing about my personal life." "I'll write about your professional life, nothing of your personal life."
"Maybe."
I headed to the lower deck, the kitchen and coffee. Later, while I was waiting in the lounge for the computer in the ship office to come free, he passed and asked: "Do you have your whiskey yet?"
"No."
"Come with me." and he marched me through the kitchen, added the cook to our tour (perhaps making it a cook's tour) and into the large ship pantry. He had told the cook what we were about, so he had the keys to open the locked liquor and wine cage.
We looked around.
There were bottles of after dinner sip-upons, Cointreau, Grand Marnier and such, and a single boxed bottle of Johnny Walker black. "I'll take that," I said. "No", he replied. "That is for an official." I settled for a liter bottle of Italian Campari. I shall drink it with the French bubbly water we are served at meals, and I liberate to my cabin.
Immediate payment was refused.
Is it too windy to safely walk on the stern deck? That is the issue of the moment.
"Mr. Frink," the caller on the phone said at 9 AM, "This is the third mate. We are approaching Lisbon. You might want to look out the port side."
With the sun shining on the bank of the Tagus River, finishing its 626 mile meander through Spain and Portugal before cascading its fresh water into the Atlantic, the legendary city of Lisbon and its creamy stone buildings were radiant.
The Repubblica di Genova proceeded slowly upstream among small wooden fishing boats to the extremities of the city, before doing a tug-assisted 180 degree pivot into its dockage.
Even the ever-working chef and Luigi were on the dining-level aft deck to absorb the scene.
This would be provisioning day; the last stop before steaming south to West Africa. The purser handed me my "shore leave pass for crewmembers of vessels lying at Portuguese ports," and I was down the ship's tiny elevator from the 13th deck to the fourth. From there, in the cavernous vehicle hold of this roll-on, roll-off monster, I followed sunlight to the steel ramp attached to land, the first I had touched since boarding the ship eight days ago.
My unexpected lift (pun intended) to the port gate was a heavy-duty fork lift, pressed into passenger service because of the need of an engine repairman to get to the airport for a homeward flight to Trieste. His taxi failed to arrive.
The burly fork lift driver stopped and motioned me aboard, as I was walking to the gate.
The highway in front of the docks is a limited-access speedway. I waited casually for a bus or an empty taxi; none came my way. Time is, of course, on my side. Impatience, however, demanded action. I decided to walk (a dock official told me it was three kilometers) to the Vasco Da Gama mall. Across to the median I marched. Once in the middle, an empty taxi came bearing down on me in the speed lane. It screeched to a halt. I quickly entered on the driver's side, for we had caused some fast-land panic stops. Oh, the horns blown and the left middle fingers extended high out of driver-side windows, as cars pulled around us! My driver laughed heartily. It would have been quite a walk: I figured the taxi ride was well over three miles.
No longer cry for Portugal, if you were ever in the mood. The Vasco Da Gama Center is as opulent a mall as you will find this side of Arabia, and nearby sand traps propped up by large petrol-pools. The place is stuffed with high-end clothing, shoe and boot boutiques. In the basement I found the Continente supermarket. I stocked up on canned Virginia peanuts (or so it promised on the label) and strong drink.
The cyber-cafe I finally found couldn't read my Fujifilm photo card; cruisin-thru-100.com will have to wait a dash of time longer for current images. Want to make book on my finding a cyber cafe in Africa?
Now that my Lisbon chores have been described, time out for Stop-The-Presses-Read-All-About-it-News!
At dinner evening before last, Il Comandante was in an expansive mood. He told me that he would take me with him ashore in the African ports. That means that I will see (and buy in) local markets, drive along the broad avenues of Luanda and generally absorb the sights and sounds of our three port cities. He also invited me to visit the bridge each day to follow the ship's progress to and through Africa and return to Europe.
"I never get used to this life. They said I would, but no. Leaving home gets more difficult each time. Some live to work. I work to live. I stay with my family as long as possible. When the money runs out, I leave again," a reflective Il Comandante revealed during the same meal, after two of his officer had left the table, upon uttering the seemingly mandatory "Con Permiso"
It is Friday. The Repubblica di Genova, her deck piled high with rust-colored metal boxes and her vast belly crammed with an assortment of badly used and abused tractors, trailers, tankers, trucks and what appeared to me to be a zillion retired European delivery vans, its commandant, crew and one passenger are enroute to Dakar and West Africa.
We got underway at approximately 2 a.m. This morning the sun gleams through a light cloud cover. The Atlantic Ocean is as calm as allowed in such a vast body of water. The wind is light and the temperature warming to the skin. We proceed at a pace my landlubber sense tells me is slow, as if the ship wishes to remain in these idyllic conditions as long as possible. For the first time since leaving Antwerp, we are alone in our path; no other vessels in sight.
Two weeks ago today my flight lifted from the Dulles runway. Two weeks, and we are only now on our way to Africa.
We are well behind the published schedule, as we are almost bound to be on a cargo ship.
Behind, ahead--who cares? Each day has been an adventure. I can still taste the draft beer from the taps of Brugge. From my open window in the Hotel Adornes, I can still see the swans in the canal.
The last day at the Adornes, I lucked out. David Ela and Daryl Huynh, a couple of young Bostonian on a short European lark, were also guests. On their way to Amsterdam, we shared a taxi to the train station and the train to Antwerp. Smartly traveling with little luggage, they cheerfully helped heft my overload onto the train.
My first sight outside the Antwerp train station was a diamond shop, as fitting as first spying a pile of coal in Newcastle. Then it was a 35 Euro cab ride with a Pakistani driver to the vast low land dock complex.
Thinking back to Friday two weeks ago: I was in front of my United gate, speaking with Jeanne when Tom Shadyac walked by. I yelled his name. I worked for him for 10 days in August as a SAG background actor on the sequel to Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty; Tom directed both. He stopped and we chatted about the movie and my sea voyage and quest for 100 countries. “Tom: I want you to do the movie of my book, now conditionally titled IL COMANDANTE AND ME (I changed it from THE PASSENGER.)
I dreamt last night that Bill Cosby would play my part.
"I don't understand the fun in it. You pitch, you roll." He demonstrated dipping his body side to side. "Where's the fun in that? You can't eat, you can't sleep. I don't understand it."
I eagerly assured him that I agree.
I was on the bridge of the di Genova with Il Comandante. He had ordered our course changed to port to avoid a sail boat that the 3rd Mate estimated to be 10 meters long, around 30 feet. Based on its course, Il Comandante estimated that the spec of plastic and wood was on its way to South America.
We are in the Atlantic, on the same line as Gibraltar, proceeding south-southwest aiming to pass on the inside of the Canary Islands. We are cutting through the azure, placid water at 16 knots, a good speed. Il Comandante explained that as high as we were from the water level it appeared we were moving slowly, He took me to the outdoor portion of the bridge and had me peer down to water level.
"See? There you get the sensation of the speed."
He also assured me that the utter calmness of the Atlantic was a stroke of good luck. "It is very unusual to have the sea this calm. The last time we were on our way back it was very rough."
"Sometimes you can see dolphins, even whales, but you don't know when." The 3rd Mate told me that he would call my cabin if he spotted any whales or dolphins while on his watches.
"We buy fresh fruit and vegetables, tomatoes in Africa," Il Comandante said in answer to my question. "Do you know the mango? It is the most perfect fruit that nature has given us, but the growing season is only two months."
Yesterday was malaria pill day; it is a formal undertaking aboard ship. At 5:30 sharp in the conference room, each member of the crew (and the passenger) must receive and sign for the pill. The pills issued by the ship staff need be taken only once a week. The tablets I brought with me, once a day. I opted for the Grimaldi pill. When it comes to malaria, they must know what they are doing. At least I strongly hope they do.
Yellow Fever, Malaria, Cholera, Hepatitis A, my body has been reinforced against them all. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Yesterday in Lisbon, I took a long walk along the docks. It will be the last fast-paced land-walk I'll take for a few days. Along the dock in front of us, bow to bow, was a much smaller merchant ship that proclaimed its name in very large block letters, against its navy blue bow: JOHN MITCHELL. Perhaps the steamship line is owned by the Nixon girls.
It is a slightly overcast morning. We are bobbing about the Atlantic, 150 miles off the west coast of Morocco. We will pass near the Canary Island beginning at 4 p.m.; the same time we will begin our first lifeboat drill. After lunch I shall practice getting into my life jacket.
"Mr. Gary," Il Comandante said, speaking my given name for the first time. "Have you ever been on the Equator?" He smiled and the three officers at the dinner table with us smiled with him. I first thought he said Ecuador, but the smiles made me reconsider. Fun and games await me when the di Genova passes into the southern hemisphere. It is maritime tradition to initiate neophytes on their first voyage over the Equator. Il Comandante told me that I am to receive a certificate in Latin and a new nickname.
The isolation I'm experiencing is remarkable. I haven't read a newspaper in over two weeks and haven't been able to access the internet since leaving the Hotel Adornes. My shortwave radio has been useless, probably because of the steel surrounding me. I haven't encountered a mother-tongue English speaker since the Boston Boys left the Antwerp train. Jeanne's emails are my only contact with the world beyond this ship; they are personal, as they should be, not providing a digest of the front and metro sections of the Washington Post, or closer to home, The Northern Virginia Daily and Harrisonburg Daily News Record.
I am a news junkie gone cold turkey.
Last evening, as I stood on deck, a Sparrow-like bird with a not-quite-all-black head and a steel grey chest landed on a railing near me. “Whoa! Where did you come from little friend and, if I might ask, where are you going?”
Later, sitting at my desk gazing out the porthole, I spotted the long vapor plumes of a passenger jet at great altitude. I thought to myself: I don't know where you are going, but you'll surely get there before I see land again.
