The Captain has decided that we will not be going to Gambia as the strong Northerly winds will make it a
tough slog to get up to Cape Verde. This means that we will be in Senegal for another 4 days. It also means
I get another two days ashore. A bunch of us are planning to head out of Dakar into the countryside,
maybe up North to the city of Saint Louis which is near the National Park and sounds interesting.
I spent the day today sanding and painting the 18′ Dory that we have had stowed on the top of the galley
since Lunenberg. It originally was buff coloured with green trim but now it is considerably more brightly
coloured.
The outside is hot pink, red and sky blue and the interior is yellow a kind of light olive green, blue and red.
They say this is to get her ready for the Caribbean…yah man!
We will also we setting up her rig so she can be sailed, which will be interesting to play with.
There are several of the crew with various ailments at the moment. Some are flu like others seem to be
food poisoning. So far I’ve managed to avoid both so fingers crossed I will continue to do so.
I’m reading a very interesting scholarly treatise on the merchant seaman’s world in the seventeenth to
eighteenth centuries. It mostly talks about the seaman as a “free wage” agent but by putting his labours
into the overall economic context and the unique environment in which the seaman lived and worked, he
shows how the culture, superstitions and customs of the sea came to be formalized as much as they were.
The book is “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” Merchant Seamen ,Pirates and the Anglo-
American Maritime World, 1700-1750 by Marcus Rediker. If anyone is interested
More later…
It’s now evening of Friday the 9th of January 2009. Still odd to write that year out.
We will be off for the next two days so the big debate is what to do. I think the consensus is to try and get
out of Dakar and see the countryside. The issue is how. Apparently the trains no longer runt to the second
largest city, St Louis, which was one possibility. so who knows.
I’ll let you all know how we make out.
Please keep reading for more.
KJ
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