Some words from the wonderful Andy Rogan – the deckhand on our sailing trip from Lanzarote to Dakar, Senegal!
After a calm southerly sail, through a warm and stolid atmosphere enhanced by thick dust clouds rolling off from the Sahara, Sea Dragon anchored off the West African metropolis of Dakar, Senegal on the 11th of September.
Her crew: Captain Eric Loss, First Mate Shanley McEntee and Deckhand Andy Rogan, are all well-seasoned travellers, and it was thus an unexpected and jubilant thing that trip not only represented a new country for all three-but a new continent! And Africa has brought with it many new experiences. Any of these new experiences: observing and enjoying the local culture, the markets, the music, the wide smiles which greet us where ever we go, any of these could be used to create innumerable blogs. In this one however, I wanted to concentrate on a more naturally derived phenomenon.
Let me paint you a quick picture.
There we sit, at the CVD (the local yacht club), catching up on internet, skyping family or emailing colleagues. When we left Sea Dragon the sky was a light airy blue, wisps of cloud hovering over murky yet calm, unhurried waters. Barely twenty minutes have passed as we sit catching up on world happenings, and a glance out the window shows a change on the horizon. Instead of a backdrop of blue and white, a dark and menacing wall is rapidly encroaching upon our tranquil harbour. Swiftly we bring our business to an end, hitting send or saving any last minute emails, close our laptops, scurry down to our dinghy and shoot off towards Sea Dragon. By the time we are almost there (just a few minutes away), it is raining lightly. But by now the storm, which would be equally at home in the CGI department of some Peter Jackson epic, has spread half way across the bay and has brought with it the deep, deep rumblings of what Eric and Shanley call ‘thunder-bears’, in a nonchalant manner suggestive of two people all too familiar with such spectacles.
We hop on the boat, and in an oft rehearsed routine the tarpaulin which protects the boat from the scorching heat of the sun is removed and tied up, and the hatches locked tight-preparation for the fast approaching deluge. Whilst only a few minutes have passed between our noticing of the storm, by now an extraordinarily well-defined wall of rain is visible marching relentlessly towards our boat. It is quite a sight. Beyond this barrier, and later within the bowls of the storm, visibility disintegrates and one can hardly see from one end of the 72-foot vessel to the other.
The rain does however provide an opportunity. On a boat at anchor, in a harbour thick with pollution on the receiving end of southern Dakar’s waste, water is at a premium, and the thick rain presents a brilliant chance to not only cool off, but gain a well-deserved shower (certainly until the lightning gets too close). The rain drops are the kind you often hear David Attenborough describing in the latest BBC documentary, but either don’t really believe or can’t imagine. They’re huge, their size only equalled by the frequency with which they fall from the sky, and it truly is an extraordinary experience.
An almost transcendent flash of white brilliance which seems to hang in the air for an equally unworldly period of time, followed instantaneously by a clap, a boom, a cannonade, a salvo of intent which only nature in her most brilliant and profound can conjure. It is totally out of the blue (or perhaps more accurately the grey), and is so close you can almost feel it in your head, close enough to light up the shocked expressions of the others on deck. The next thing I know I am miraculously below decks at bottom of the companionway, with no recollection of how I got there.
Wildly unpredictable and bursting with charisma, these are the kind of storms which our little corner of West Africa can create, and for the most part any sense of danger is replaced by a superlative feeling of awe and wander. Whilst I had never been to Africa before this voyage, I had listened on many occasions to Toto’s evocative Rains in Africa, and when I leave Sea Dragon there is no doubt in my mind that it won’t be long before I too begin missing these fantastic rains.