The second thing that delayed us was a bout of the worst illness ever to visit us on Northern Magic. I was the first to be hit. Chills, fever, violent shaking, bloody diarrhea that became virtually continuous, vomiting, dizziness, and tremendous jolts of electric pain in my head, creating an uncontrollable spasm in my body every ten minutes, all left me sicker than I have ever been. Twice, while waiting in the bathroom to vomit, freezing cold even in the extreme heat, I passed out and woke up on the floor.
At some point in my fog of absolute misery, I slowly came to the realization that I might not be able to fight this off on my own. I had gotten much worse overnight, so nobody else was really aware of the seriousness of my situation. In the back of my mind the frightening word “dysentery” began floating around. For a few hours in the darkness, in between electric spasms, my muddled brain blearily tried to figure out what to do.
Then, the name Cipro popped into my head. Ciprofloxacin is a very powerful and expensive antibiotic, the same one for which people were clamouring during the anthrax scare. We carried a supply on board. As soon as it was light, I managed to stagger over to our medicine drawer and find a bottle. Within a few hours, I began to feel its blessed effects. Within forty-eight hours, I was at least shakily back on my feet and able to keep down some thin chicken broth. It felt to me as if the Cipro had saved my life.
Unbeknownst to me, that first night Michael had also succumbed to the same violent bug. Feverish and hot, he had crawled into the cockpit, where he vomited overboard and suffered alone and unnoticed. Because his ordeal began twelve hours later than mine did, however, we intercepted it more quickly with antibiotics, and he and I recovered at the same time. When, half a day later, Herbert got walloped with the same ton of bricks, he got the benefit of the Cipro almost immediately and recovered most quickly of all.
After eating nothing for three days, both Michael and I were noticeably thinner. In my case this was a decided bonus, but it wasn’t good for Michael. Our fourteen-year-old was very slim to start out with, and now was positively skeletal. Seeing him from behind, the outline of his pelvis and every bone in his back sticking out starkly, made me gasp. For the next few days, it became my mission to fatten him back up.
We finally left Suakin with three of us feeling weak, but eager to get on our way. As we glided past the ruined city, which was glowing golden in the early morning light, Herbert and I both paused to admire it one last time.
Complacency is a sailor’s worst enemy. On our way in, our attention fully engaged, we had observed a reef sticking into the narrow channel and avoided it. But now, in the slanted light, not only was that reef invisible, in our last-minute contemplation of that enchanted ruined city, we had forgotten all about it. Before we knew it, we were hard aground – embarrassingly, unnecessarily, stupidly aground.
Our captain, still feeling woozy and weak, his nerves already taut from the affair with the transmission, our failed bottom paint, his sickness, and the general frustrations of fly-ridden Sudan, lost it. In a flash, genial Captain Herbert was transformed into wrathful Captain Bligh. We, his mutinous crew, were forced to scurry around resentfully under the lash of his tongue. After sailing three-quarters around the world without so much as touching a reef, to get ourselves stuck here was mortifying. And after much useless roaring of our motor, it was clear we were not going to get off without a lot of effort.
But at least our fuming Captain Bligh had not lost his resourcefulness. He curtly ordered a couple of young midshipmen to launch a longboat. Setting off, cursing, to the shore of the ruined city, he attached a sturdy anchor rope to some huge half-submerged rocks that had once been pillars. We all held our breaths as he attempted, using the electric anchor winch, to pull us sideways off the coral into deeper water.
Luckily, we were right on the edge of the reef, so by pulling against those ancient toppled blocks of stone we were able to slide ourselves off sideways. The whole rescue operation took only about twenty minutes, but Herbert was still stressed and angry, his cup overflowing from the week’s overly generous share of frustration. He had not enjoyed Sudan, and this was the final straw.
“Why don’t you just shoot me and put me out of my misery?” he asked.
“That’s one of the options I’ve been considering,” I muttered back.
After three days of sailing north, violent winds forced us to seek shelter within a lagoon in the middle of the sea, formed by a U-shaped submerged reef. But now, several days’ difficult sailing later, we were finally nearing the Egyptian port of Safaga. By ten o’clock that night, we were four and a half miles, or about an hour away, from a reef at which we had to make a course adjustment for our final run in. But once again, the wind was increasing.
At ten thirty, we were about three miles away, but now we were only making three knots, so it was still an hour to go.
Half an hour later, our speed had dropped further, to just over two knots. We had 2.2 miles to go – still an hour.
By eleven thirty, we had a mile and a half to go to reach our waypoint, but our speed had now dropped under two knots. It seemed as if we were on a treadmill; the closer we came to the reef, the more slowly we sailed, so that it remained ever beyond our grasp, like a carrot dangling in front of the nose of a patiently plodding donkey.
By now the wind was really howling, and Northern Magic was hobby-horsing into a marching row of almost vertical waves. We would ride high over the first wave, our bow rearing up into the night sky, and come crashing down with a thump that sent two fluorescent white waves of foam streaming out from our bows. Spray blanketed the boat.
Coming down, we would slam our nose, wham! right into the next wave. This time, instead of leaping over, we would dive right into it. The force of that impact would drive us to a shuddering stop, often slewing us sideways. Our faithful autopilot, TMQ, had to work mightily to keep us on course as wave after wave battered us. But both it and Northern Magic soldiered on.
Inside, although I hadn’t noticed it, seawater was being forced into various waterproof vents. The water was finding its way underneath our fibreglass dinghy and around the lip of an overhead hatch that wasn’t screwed down tightly enough. Large amounts had also been forced into the chain locker near the head of Christopher’s bed. Luckily, Christopher had tucked himself into our bunk with Herbert and so was unaware that most of his books, toys, sheets, and even his pillow were soaked.
The motor was roaring, and its sound reminded me of the stresses we were placing on Frankenstein, the patched-up transmission damper we had cobbled together in Port Sudan. Would it hold together with all this jarring? What would we do if it failed?
Finally, our GPS showed us to be at our waypoint, but to be safe I waited another achingly long ten minutes (three hundred more metres!) before setting us on a course closer to shore, where, I hoped, we would get some respite from this pounding.
Herbert appeared to take his watch, and we traded places. I snuggled in beside Christopher, who opened his eyes and bestowed upon me an angelic smile that he wouldn’t remember in the morning. I can’t imagine how he slept with the boat rearing up beneath him like an angry bull. It was now wet at the foot of our bed.
Sleep certainly evaded me. The sound of water trying to infiltrate itself into the boat infiltrated my brain as well. From time to time, a deluge forced its way in through the galley vents, and I could hear it cascading in and sloshing around on the floor before it made its way into the bilge. Dishes rattled around inside the cupboards. We were beating into a full gale now, and the wind was screaming against the rigging, halyards hammering loudly against the aluminum masts.
I caught snatches of sleep, but three hours later I was again wide awake. By five thirty, I decided it was stupid to stay in bed and went to relieve Herbert, whose hair was pasted to his head with salt water. The reef we passed at the end of my shift, four and a half hours earlier, was only seven miles astern. We still had thirteen miles to go.
The sun rose, and one by one the kids awok
e. The night before, we had promised to be there by morning, so they were surprised we weren’t in calm water.
The Egyptian coast, as the sun rose, was magnificent. Tall mountains revealed themselves, breathtakingly near. I knew they would look dusty brown in the middle of the day, but now they were part of a Martian landscape, dazzling in hues of mauve, rose, and orange. I kept snatching hungry looks at this scene, although I had to squint against the blasting wind and the dollops of spray slapping my face.
The sea was wild, sparkling, and beautiful in its ferocity. Marching ranks of waves – not extraordinarily high, perhaps two metres from crest to trough, but standing straight and proud like row upon row of soldiers – stretched ahead as far as the eye can see. Their breaking crests shone a brilliant white. As a wavelet reared up, the wind snatched its top right away and threw it like a handful of twinkling diamonds across the water. Every square inch of Northern Magic was shedding water in a continuous glittering cascade as we continued to see-saw slowly forward. Now that it was light and I could see what the motor and autopilot had been struggling against, I marvelled that we were making progress at all.
Eventually, we did arrive, although it was in early afternoon, not at dawn as we had thought. It had taken us fifteen gruelling hours to cover these final twenty-four miles. As we set anchor in Safaga harbour, our faces were gritty with salt, our stomachs screaming for nourishment, our eyes heavy with fatigue, and the inside of the boat sticky and damp. The entire outside was covered with a coating of salt so thick that you couldn’t touch anything without having lumps of it rub off on you, feeling slightly caustic and slimy. In the upper parts of the rigging, salt granules had formed tiny stalactites. It felt as if we had been at sea for twenty-two days, not twenty-two hours.
But all this didn’t matter any more. We were safe, most of the Red Sea was now behind us, and we had arrived at last in Egypt.
23
The Trouble with Egypt
When you enter a country by boat, you have to jump through a series of hoops. Sometimes it’s easy, a boatload of officials coming out to stamp your passports, gone again within ten minutes. Usually you have to visit the officials in their offices. But nowhere did we ever experience anything as tortuous, inefficient, or frustrating as clearing into Egypt.
We had visas for Egypt already, which ought to have eased things somewhat. We had conscientiously obtained them in advance from a very unfriendly Egyptian embassy in Asmara, Eritrea. It was our first experience with Egyptian officials on this trip, and it was not a good one. Jonathan, who was in the midst of a severe attack of vomiting, had not come in with us, but the official had insisted on all three children being present. We returned with a stumbling, green-looking Jonathan in tow, and as soon as we entered the waiting area – a sumptuous room with marble floor and a lovely Persian carpet – poor Jon turned to me and said, biliously, “Mom, I’m going to throw up!”
I jumped up and found the sour-looking official, who was back in another room, shuffling his papers. “My boy is sick,” I said urgently. “Is there a toilet we can use?”
He looked up at me for a moment before saying, “No.” Then he looked back down at his work. I was dismissed.
I returned to Jon, told him to do his best to hold it in, and sat there stewing. In the back of my mind was a wish that my son would empty his stomach all over the carpet. Somehow, Jon managed to contain himself until we got back outside, but I was a little sorry that he did.
That was just the beginning of our adventures with Egyptian officialdom.
I’m now going to condense our first day in Safaga. You might call it our Safaga Saga. All we were trying to do was get our passports stamped and clear through Customs. It took four and a half hours.
Here we go: tie up to official dock, speak to officials who say to go to immigration, in yellow building. Stop at yellow building: wrong one. Stop at another yellow building: wrong one. Stop at another yellow building: right one, but the guards there don’t know it and send us on, outside the port gate. Go through security checks one and two. Walk three more kilometres. Stop at many yellow buildings. None of them is the right one. No one knows where it is. Walk into bank to change money: they don’t know where yellow building is. Ask policemen: they don’t know. Ask taxi drivers: they know. It’s in Hurghada, forty kilometres away. They will take us there. Ask more people. One man seems to know. He walks us back three kilometres, through security checks two and one. Stop for second time at yellow building number three. Man talks to same guards who told us before to go away, convinces them this is the right building. We thank helpful man and walk up three floors. Wait in office, receive multiple forms. Go to second office, fill out forms. Go to third office, speak to Grand Poobah with gold epaulettes, show him forms. Forms are no good. Back to office one, amend forms, then again to office three again (Grand Poobah). Passports are stamped.
Now to Customs – wherever that is. Grand Poobah’s helper points to window in building far away. No one can really describe which building. Walk down three floors, back one kilometre, study buildings. All signs are in Arabic. Take a chance on one. It’s Customs, but wrong office. Walk to another building. It’s also Customs, but still wrong office. Official walks us right back to yellow building number three, taking short cut through filthy back way. Find correct Customs Office on first floor (two floors below Grand Poobah’s helper who told us to find it in far away building). Fill out forms. Wait. Need photocopies of visas – they have photocopy machine, but won’t allow us to use it. Walk almost all the way back to Customs building number two, get photocopies at public machine, return. Hand over copies. Receive forms. Tell kids we’re almost done. Walk all the way back beyond Customs building number two, to cashier. Enter giant Customs Hall, fight through a swarm of pilgrims returning from Mecca, carrying half of Saudi Arabia all bundled up in Persian carpets. Stand in line, wait, pay money. Get forms stamped. Tell kids we’re almost done. Walk all the way back to yellow building number three. Get more stamps. Then retrace our steps back to Customs building number two for even more signatures. Tell kids we’re almost done. Try to take same short cut we took before, but this time guards with machine guns stop us. Take long way instead. Return to Customs building number two for fourth time. Get more signatures. Walk back to Customs building number one (sixth time) for more signatures and stamps. Tell kids we’re almost done. Return to Customs building number two (fifth time) with yet another form for more signatures and stamps. Tell kids we’re almost done (seventh time). Return to cashier (second time), dodge pilgrims to get another stamp (twelfth time). Tell kids we’re done. Whew!
We stayed in Safaga for two more days, replenishing our provisions, filling up with diesel, and stretching our legs after our long spell on the boat. Then it was a short hop of about fifty miles to get to a little marina where we could dock the boat safely while we made an overland trip to Luxor.
The trip to Luxor didn’t start out too well. Even though we had tickets, there were no seats for us on the bus from the town of Hurghada, near our marina, and we were left standing in the empty bus station, disappointed and forlorn, surrounded by our baggage.
We had, however, a great idea of what to do with this unexpected free time. There was, in Hurghada, a most special monument. It didn’t date back quite as far as the time of the Pharaohs, but it was a symbol of a mighty civilization, nonetheless. Its two elegant and massive gilded parabola were, in fact, famous the world over. We had spent the last eleven months dreaming of the day when we would stand under them at last.
And now we were here. Muslims may make their pilgrimages to Mecca, but we were required – indeed it was our destiny – to pay homage to the fabled Golden Arches. So, on the first day of our Egyptian overland trip, instead of marvelling at Pharaonic monuments, magnificent temples, or ancient tombs, we found ourselves delightedly oohing and aahing at Big Macs, French fries, and Chicken McNuggets.
After our feed, we jostled our way onto the next bus, which took us through mount
ainous desert, across the spine of the range of steep brown mountains that runs along the Red Sea. You could tell exactly when we entered the Nile Valley, because suddenly luxuriant fields of crops began springing out of the desert. The vast majority of Egypt’s population, now and in antiquity, has flourished within a few miles of the life-giving Nile.
A few more adventures by car, mini-bus, and horse-drawn carriage brought us to Luxor, site of the ancient and fabled city of Thebes. This is one of those elemental places you can return to again and again, and of which you will never see enough. Standing in awe at the bottom of a forest of gigantic stone pillars, gazing upon ancient tomb paintings whose colours still throb with life, touching with our very own fingers the inscribed name of a Pharaoh dead three thousand years, but whose ambition and power stand before you still, is to be made fully conscious of the extraordinary history of human kind. Everyone should go there, if they can.
Returning to Luxor was in many ways a pilgrimage for Herbert and me. At last we stood at the same ancient avenue of sphinxes where, in a very real way, our voyage had begun five years before. It was there that our hearts had thrilled and resonated with the spirit of the place and those who had built it. It was there that our passion for life had been reborn. Now we delighted in sharing it with our children: the tombs of famous kings, the temple-city of Karnak, where in darkness we once again heard the voices of long-dead Pharaohs speak to us from the ages, and the magnificent rock temple of Queen Hatshepsut, who was forced to depict herself as a man, since no woman had ever before been Pharaoh. After her death, her successor had removed her face from temple paintings and replaced them with his own. (“Now that’s what I call being defaced,” remarked Jonathan.)
The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey Page 34