by Tania Aebi
On the afternoon of March 8, after twenty-six days at sea, we followed the lighthouse beacon, then the buoys, past the fringing reef of Djibouti Harbor and I called goodbye to the group of dolphins that had followed us in. In the distance, I could see that Akka hadn’t yet arrived, but Henry’s Debonaire from Sri Lanka and the German Christina were there. Steering Varuna toward them and a clear spot, I dropped the sails and let loose the anchor.
Olivier made landfall the next afternoon, and together we walked the hot and dusty desert streets of our first African city, which was brimful of starving refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia, who came to pick through the garbage of the affluent French army stationed there. The jetty near our anchorage stretched three miles out of the harbor and into a town of contrasts, both Muslim and Christian. A haunting chant to Allah was belted out from every mosque four times a day when almost every man pulled out a straw mat and knelt in the direction of Mecca to the northwest, while little nuns in blue habits went about their shopping.
On one side of a street, there were expensive restaurants and boutiques, and on the other side, entire families lay sleeping on the sidewalk, testament to the almost mind-boggling poverty. Wherever we went, hordes of urchins, lame or blind adults and pitiful pregnant mothers with numerous children hanging onto their skirts followed us imploring, “Baksheesh, madame. Baksheesh, monsieur.” I felt helpless in the face of such need, wanting to give every last one of them a little of what I had. In the beginning, I started by giving one-franc pieces or fifty centimes at a time. But we quickly learned that as soon as one person received a coin, the entire street found out and we’d end up being surrounded by a crowd of others who wanted the same. By the time we left, I could only hand out pieces of bread. It was all I could do without emptying my wallet of meager funds onto the streets.
Some people told us that those who were starving to death were isolated to the northern desert province of Eritrea, where freedom fighters had been fighting for independence from Ethiopia since World War II. Word was that the Eritrean frontage for ports on the Red Sea was too valuable to the Ethiopians, and they were dealing with the insurgency by starving the people to death. We did our business in Djibouti sadly, unable to reconcile ourselves to a disaster due purely to politics and greed.
March was the last month of the dependable northeasterly monsoon, which funneled up through Bab el Mandab as southerly winds, and we hoped to use them in getting to Port Sudan, halfway up the Red Sea. If we missed them, the entire 1,200 miles would have to be done beating and tacking into the teeth of ferocious weather. As it stood, we still had a good chance of making 600 easy miles.
I met a Kenyan mechanic named Shabani from a tug in the harbor whose crew was hanging around waiting to be paid by an insurance company for Nixon’s old presidential yacht, which they had salvaged off the coast of Somalia. With plenty of time to kill, Shabani was working on Christina’s engine. Telling me to bring Varuna behind his tug, he agreed to come and fix the stern tube problem. He refit a new greasing nipple and put on a stronger hose clamp. We made several tours of the harbor and it seemed to work, so I cleaned up and we went for lunch aboard his boat while the captain regaled us with wild stories from his salvaging days up and down the sometimes hostile North African coast.
Stomachs filled, we went back to Varuna, and I put the two wires together to hotwire the engine—this had become standard procedure since the ignition had failed long ago—and there was a click, spark, and then, nothing. . . .
“Oh no!” Olivier wailed. “That is exactly what happened when my starter broke.”
“Oh no!” I moaned in return. In order to remove the starter for repairs, we had to remove the entire engine. Cursing, the three of us launched ourselves into the odious task. By sunset, all the connecting pipes, gears, shafts and electrical wire relays were undone. We lifted up the engine with a block-and-tackle system attached to the boom and removed the starter. Another of the tug’s mechanics fixed it, and the next morning, we reinstalled and reattached all the parts to find that from all the jarring and wedging of the previous day, the fuel filter was no longer airtight and had even bigger holes than before.
We tried everything from silicone, tapes, new gaskets and epoxy, all to no avail. Deciding to buy a new one, we stomped around in 115-degree heat and hitchhiked to a number of stores, each one on the opposite side of the city. Handing over my last hundred dollars for the new mount and filter, I almost cried. As we leaned over the engine, our backs cooked under the Middle Eastern sun and the tools became branding irons that had to be handled with rags.
Varuna grew greasier and greasier. Once the new filter was installed, the contact to the starter had no reaction again. Next, we checked all the connecting electrical wires, replaced all the old battery cables with new ones, tested, scraped, loosened and tightened all the contacts. Still there was nothing.
“I think that it’s the starter again,” I groaned. Olivier exhaustedly nodded in agreement as we felt the month of March slowly slipping through our fingers. It was already the twentieth and only two choices remained: leave without a working engine, or stay for as long as it might take to fix it and run the risk of horrible weather on the nose. The lesser of two evils definitely was to have a working engine for the Red Sea, which was narrow and crawling with shipping and reefs. Again we re-created the block-and-tackle system and manhandled the engine out of the boat. Now all that was left was to find the real problem.
On the day we had spent hitchhiking in search of a new filter, we had been picked up by a charming Mr. Hassein Mohammed Ali, who wanted to do anything he could for us and started by insisting on inviting us to lunch at his house. Fate, deciding not to be exceedingly cruel, also turned Mr. Ali into a mechanic and he offered to help fix the degenerate part.
The problem, he said after another day of sweat, was a worn-out bushing that was making a false contact. We fixed it and reassembled the engine for the second time and, thanks to Mr. Ali, congratulated each other on a dirty job finally well done. The engine purred like a kitten.
Mr. Ali’s kindness was not the exception to the rule. Throughout the engine ordeal we discovered how friendly and helpful the Djiboutians could be. While hitchhiking, we never had to wait for more than two cars to pass to catch a ride, and I had received several free parts and pieces, despite my efforts to pay for whatever was needed.
During the engine tribulations, we heard that a singlehander friend, Len, whom we knew from Sri Lanka, was laid up in a hospital with a bacterial infection and we spent some time with him, visiting and bringing chocolates. Len was British, about fifty years old and reminded Olivier of one of his favorite professors from college. He had stopped in Aden, stubbed his foot, and once he was at sea again, the scratch had become infected and a red stripe began shooting up his leg. He had come to Djibouti in a hurry to get some help. Gangrene had set in, and it was touch and go for several days while he was pumped full of penicillin, which saved his leg.
When Len got out of the hospital, we shared meals together and often took strolls into town. One day we stopped at our favorite bistro for a drink and a quick bite to eat, but then changed our minds and headed back out to the boats. After dinner on Akka, Olivier and I were sitting out on deck, when we heard a large explosion. Startled, we turned in the direction of the blast and saw billows of gray smoke ascending like a cloud. The next day, the local yacht club where we landed in the dinghies was abuzz with the horrific story. Rumor had it that Palestinians, angry at the French for arresting one of their leaders, had dynamited the bistro, killing eleven people. We rushed to the scene to find the spot where we had enjoyed a drink shortly before the bombing and found it blown to smithereens. We checked Mr. Ali’s house, which was just next door, and were relieved to see that the family had been left unscathed.
As soon as Len had recovered enough to depart, we all decided to sail together the 600 miles up to Port Sudan. Supposedly, with the war in Ethiopia, the entire coast was patrolled by unfriendly gunboa
ts and we had started thinking about safety in numbers.
With Olivier’s remaining funds, we provisioned sparingly in the exorbitantly expensive French shops, limiting our fare to lots of pasta and rice. Len took on a French crew member. The dinghies were stowed on deck and all spirits were high. For the final formalities, Olivier and I took Varuna under power to the other side of the port to check out. As we tied up along the quay, once again water began rushing in through the stern tube. This was too much.
“Forget it,” I said to Olivier. “It’ll work in an emergency as long as I keep pumping the bilge. In Port Sudan I’m throwing the whole bloody thing overboard and buying an outboard.” We jammed the stuffing box back in, this time with some underwater epoxy and called out to Len, who was waiting. I dropped Olivier back off on Akka and on the evening of March 24 sailed out of the harbor with Olivier following and Len behind.
At the port entrance, Len lagged back a little, changing a sail, while Akka and Varuna picked up speed. Through the night, we tacked toward the notorious straits of Bab el Mandab—translation: “Gates of Hell,” “Gates of Tears” or “Gates of Lamentations.” We were in for a doozie. My cruising guide warned that the northeast monsoon marched into this narrow neck, funneling its way through the straits and building up quite a momentum. There was no trace of Len behind us, but with his beautiful boat, we figured he’d catch up soon.
Sure enough, like clockwork, as we made our way in, the wind increased and began to howl from astern, eliminating any chance for conversation between the boats. By late afternoon, it was blowing 55 knots and spray was flying over the lumpy water. All of a sudden, I heard, “Pop, rrrip, pop,” and so began my anticipated trauma with the mainsail.
Catching up with Olivier, who was sitting on Akka’s deck, protected by a foul-weather jacket, I found him also sewing up his mainsail. Taking down the jib and tying the main to the boom as we drifted closer, I hollered over the wind as it pushed Varuna quickly out of hearing distance, “Look at this mess. What are you going to do?”
“I have to fix my sail,” he screamed back, his voice nearly drowned out by the racket of a thousand wailing souls.
“So do I. Let’s leave the sails down for the night.”
“OK . . . bonne nuit,” he answered.
“Watch out for me. We can’t lose each other,” I shouted, but we were out of hearing range already and Olivier didn’t look up from his mending. The masthead light no longer worked and I had to do something so that all the shipping funneling with the wind in through the straits would be able to see Varuna. I unscrewed the fluorescent light from above the bunk, attached one of the old log’s trailing lines from it to the battery, and tied the light onto the backstay.
During the night, every other wave filled the cockpit, my ten-dollar bottle of Djiboutian grenadine syrup dyed the floor red and Olivier and I lost each other. But I didn’t worry too much; 80 miles north lay the Hannish Islands, the first stop that Len, Olivier and I had planned. We would see each other the next day and have a happy reunion listening to each other’s descriptions of the wrath of Bab el Mandab.
The next morning, I dragged out the storm jib that hadn’t seen light since Bermuda and we took off at hull speed. By midafternoon, we zipped past the sinister, dark Hannish Islands as the wind still blew at a good 40 knots. Poring over the charts of the anchorage, I made the decision to forgo the group and carry on to Port Sudan. My nerves couldn’t handle making a landfall without a working engine in this horrible wind. “If they stop in the Hannish group,” I thought, as we passed the northernmost rock and didn’t see Olivier or Len anchored there, “they’ll be able to figure out my absence soon enough.”
The following morning the wind evaporated and I used the respite to resew the mainsail. The north wind that would fight us all the way up the Red Sea began as a gentle breeze that afternoon. I heard some people from other sailboats talking to each other on the radio, and upon contacting them, found that they were 5 miles away. There was a small island that lay directly in our paths and we set a rendezvous.
They were three boats coming from Aden and sailing in company: Annatria with a Swedish and New Zealand couple; Penny, with an Austrian family of three; and Tres Marias with a Brazilian single-hander who had fallen out of radio contact with the other two boats until I chimed in and reunited them. Annatria and Penny were at the island first, waiting, when I saw a sail behind me. It was the missing third, Tres Marias. I loosened the jib sheet and as the sail flapped freely in the wind waited for Alexio, the first singlehanded Brazilian circumnavigator. He sailed up alongside, I winched back in the sail and we continued on toward the rock, making introductions over the distance. He really could put on a show.
“Sometimes, when I am on the ocean,” Alexio said animatedly, with a lot of hand waving, “I get all excited about seeing a floating plastic bag. Now look! Here I am, sailing along and minding my own business when all of a sudden, I see a girl, alone on her boat, waiting for me. What more could I ask?” With the gregariousness typical of many South Americans, he blabbed away about his good fortune in running into me. After more conversation along the same lines on Alexio’s part, we caught up to the others. He told them how I had flirted, while I furiously denied any such thing.
Thus I made the acquaintance of Runa and Eileen on Annatria, a 26-footer; and Franz, Anna Lisa and Bernard on the 32-foot Penny. With big welcoming smiles, they waved greetings to me. While they had drifted, waiting for Alexio and me, Penny caught a fish. Franz steered over in my direction wearing a leopard G-string, Anna Lisa smiled from under a hood of long gray hair and Bernard stood on the foredeck to throw me a fresh filet.
Like a group of kindred souls meeting up in an unknown land, the others invited me to join their flotilla and we took off in synchronization, beating into the idyllic wind. I thought about Olivier and Len, somewhere behind, and hoped that they had met up; otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair.
A lot of other sailors with whom I had talked often said that they carried firearms aboard in case of life-threatening emergencies. Even my father had a dreadfully lethal Winchester aboard Pathfinder. When I left New York, we had seriously discussed my bringing one along in case of a situation where I’d have to defend myself. It was decided that there was a very slight chance that once confronted with a life-threatening situation, I would be able to use a gun to my advantage. It is worse to have a firearm and be scared to use it then to have nothing, and I was pretty sure that I could never shoot another person. Instead, I had left New York with an empty hand grenade and some fake hair for a bearded disguise that I’d bought on 14th Street.
My father and I had assumed that if ever somebody wanted to board, maybe a bearded man would make the predators think twice. If that didn’t work, I could pull out the pin, hold up the grenade and say, “If you come on my boat, we all go.” If they still ignored the twerp with bold words and decided to come anyway, well, what the heck, I tried.
Thanks to our little nucleus, if there were any shady characters rolling around in the Red Sea, I never had to meet them, although I did wonder about the occasional sinister-looking native dhow that puttered across our horizon. But my cruising guide said that most of them were laden down with sheep being smuggled to other countries.
We formed our own little sailing community at sea, and the VHFs were permanently tuned in to Channel 78. I forgot my pariah engine, whose starter once again refused to work and got to know my new friends through a constant stream of funny chatter that emerged from the little black box over my bed. Annatria and Tres Marias had SatNavs, which made life easier for the rest of us, although Franz and I would double-check the computer’s veracity by taking sun and star sights. Two or three times, while we were bobbing around during the intermittent calms that disrupted the feeble northerly winds, one of the boats would tow Varuna while it motored. It was a kind gesture because, with the additional dead weight, speed was greatly diminished, and the others could have very well left me to wait and fend for myself
. And so we averaged 40 miles of progress per day, which was typical of sailing north on the Red Sea.
Annatria and Penny also had ham radios, which were very useful in this part of the world. All the hams traveling the Red Sea had set up an informational network of news and weather reports that were passed down from those who had weather fax machines, as well as plenty of gossip from the cruising grapevine. Reports of murderous 45-knot winds had us trembling in our boots, and then news of calms had us breathing hopeful sighs of relief. Often, Franz or Runa would tell me about a boat I had met in Sri Lanka or Djibouti that had reached the sailing mecca of Port Suez at the end of the Red Sea and I would feel glad for the owner, knowing that the biggest sailing obstacle had been conquered. I wished I could be up there with them. Sometimes the news wasn’t as good as at other times.
One day, our VHF airwaves were buzzing with chat about some horrible news Runa had received on the grapevine. Debonaire had gone on a reef outside Port Sudan, he said, and Henry had lost his boat. A pall drew over me. I knew by now that a boat becomes part of the owner’s personality and for old Henry, who had lived and traveled with Debonaire for many years, it must have been like losing a wife.
On that same day, there was an eclipse of the sun and an empty moon and I discovered that Olivier’s passport and boat papers were still in my bag. We had forgotten about them during checkout in Djibouti and he was without all his personal credentials in one of the most paper-happy areas of the world. There was no question about it. I absolutely had to arrive in Port Sudan first. More than ever I hoped he and Len were watching out for each other.
As soon as we passed out of the territorial waters of Ethiopia, Penny and Annatria wanted to cruise up through the Suakin group of reefs and islands to Port Sudan, but Alexio and I decided to beg off. Preferring the safety of deeper sea to day sailing amid a network of reefs, we separated from the other two and began tacking out on a northwesterly course. The last 60 miles to Port Sudan took three sleepless days of pounding and tacking into viciously steep and short waves in strong 35-knot winds.