Grenada

I’m going to try and put a positive spin on this: After all I’ve said about not consulting doctors and carrying no pharmaceutical products aboard Samsara, I arrived in Grenada and went straight off to find the health centre.

For most of the 23-day crossing from the Cape Verde Islands, my major preoccupation was whether I was going to lose an arm – and if I did, how I was going to cut it off myself with the aid of the breadknife and a bottle of rum.

…or whether I would chicken out and chuck myself over the side instead.

This was not your average Atlantic crossing.

The 2125 miles between Mindelo and Grenada is supposed to restful – restful to the point of boredom with every day the same – the ship sailing out of a golden dawn and reeling off fifty miles in perfect sunshine before plunging into another spectacular sunset.

To be followed by another fifty miles under starlight so bright that you get a crick in your neck from considering the significance of one little boat when compared to the infinite universe laid out upside down for your inspection.

Even so, the prospect of breadknife surgery on the chopping board does claim the attention periodically – like, for instance, every half-hour or so.

All this needs a bit of explanation:

Two days before leaving, I went to buy the beer. I hired one of the lads who hang around the harbour to carry it back for me – there were going to be 72 cans, after all. While in the shop, I brushed my arm against the sharp corner of a shelf. My porter noticed the blood before I did and made me dose it with hand sanitiser (which stung horribly).

I don’t bother about these things too much because I am so stoked up with my food supplement that I very rarely get an infection – and if one should start up, I can see it off by taking a second helping in the evening.

So when, 24 hours into the voyage, the arm showed signs of infection, I took another spoonful of the white powder.

Now, the fact that it was white powder is important: In the six years since I have been ordering this stuff every month, it had always been light brown – an artist might call it light ochre – and tasted horrible. But a monthly order is no good if I keep moving around – particularly in other countries… and especially after the export chaos that is Brexit. So now I buy a year’s supply at a time. This lot arrived in Falmouth. I stowed the cardboard box under the forward berth.

When I opened it in the Canaries, there was clearly something wrong: this powder was white – and tasted of nothing. It might have been baking powder or cornflour. It certainly didn’t seem to be my wonderful supplement.

I emailed the company. They assured me they had sent me the real thing – the difference in colour and taste was something to do with a chance variation in humidity during the freeze-drying process. All the magic ingredients would still be there. I was not to worry.

And so I didn’t – until one day when I was kneeling on deck, working on the toe rail. Suddenly, I felt that unmistakable sensation of sunburn getting started – not in any of the usual places like the shoulders or the top of the head (by this time I was as golden brown as the Ambre Solaire advert). No, this was the soles of my feet – as white as a newborn baby’s – and now, unusually, upturned towards the midday sun..

Without a second thought, I went and fetched the atomiser from its clip above the chart table. In this, I keep a solution of the powder. This really shows you what this stuff can do: just spray it on, and the burning sensation stops immediately. Of course, you don’t go brown either, so I had to ration it on my knees until they matched the rest of me. It even worked when I burned my thumb on the heater. The next morning there was no blister – nothing to see at all.

Yet, a solution made with the white powder had no effect. I might as well have used plain water – the soles of my feet carried on burning. I had to go and find a pair of shoes.

This was a worry – especially as the company was sticking to their explanation. After all, what did I know about it?

Meanwhile, another customer who was taking it on my recommendation wrote asking my advice. I could only pass on what I had been told. But this man did know a thing or two: he had started life as an analytical chemist and he said the humidity explanation was nonsense. He reckoned they’d run out of the usual stuff and substituted something else.

I was sure they would never do a thing like that, but I went back to them – ending up on a Messenger call with the managing director. Once again, he sought to put my mind at rest – although he would exchange my supply for a consignment of the brown version if that was what I wanted.

 By this time, I was halfway up the Gambia. I might be stuck there for months waiting for a package from the UK. Clearly, I had no choice but to take the MD at his word.

And so, on January 18^th, I set sail for Grenada.

On the 19^th, the ship’s log carried the legend: “Bandaged arm”. We had covered just 44 miles. I was still close enough to turn back. It would mean beating into the light trade wind, and I was without a mainsail, having broken the gooseneck on the way to Africa. I would have to rely on the trysail for windward work. In this wind, it might take 36 hours.

Besides, I had a plentiful supply of the supplement, and it had always healed infections before – just take another helping at bedtime. Even if this was a different colour, I would trust the MD – he was the expert, and I couldn’t believe this idea of him substituting something else…

Of course, it would have been better if this had not been a trade wind crossing. Every day was the same – hours of sitting in the sun and discovering that if you can’t be bothered to get dressed in the morning, it doesn’t half cut down on the laundry when you get to the other side. On the other hand, reading a book every 24 hours does leave unusual crease-marks in the new suntan. I suppose nude models don’t sunbathe with their feet braced on the other side of the cockpit because the boat is rolling through 40° every two seconds.

Mind you, I did wake up one night to find us charging along at seven knots, much over-canvassed. Glancing at the plotter on the way out, I was surprised to see we were heading back to Africa – clearly in the grip of a baby hurricane.

They do this: A tiny disturbance kicks up in the gentle easterly airflow, and the next thing you know, a miniature but intense low-pressure system is in action. In the summer months, the higher water temperature feeds it with energy and turns it into a full-blown hurricane which hits the Caribbean chain like an express train, turns sharp right and lays a trail of destruction all the way to the Carolinas.

I took down all sail and lay a-hull for twelve hours. I didn’t see the point in trying to beat into 35 knots when the passage was going to take three weeks anyway.

And it did take my mind off the arm.

The arm was not doing well. Admittedly, natural healing does take longer than a course of antibiotics – all the same, I was used to seeing the inflammation begin to die down after a couple of days. This was just getting worse.

After a week, I had a hole in my arm the size of a pea and every time I changed the dressing, this would erupt with green pus, like an indoor firework.

A week after that, the hole seemed to be closing up – but another one next door to it appeared out of nowhere, producing pus of a greenish-brown hue. Whether this was an improvement, I was not qualified to say.

The First Aid chapter in the almanac had a section on “Open Wounds” (between “fishhook injury” and “bleeding – internal) but the only help from this was that applying a tourniquet was now out of date and risked “loss of the limb”.

Loss of the limb was something I wish they hadn’t brought up. Whatever happened over the coming days or weeks, it was going to be a very private drama. This would not be one of those occasions for mounting an international rescue operation, diverting supertankers and summoning naval vessels equipped with operating theatres – the skipper being ordered to scuttle his yacht before being lifted off.

The log tells me that for 16 days – between day four and day 20 – I saw no other vessels at all – not even on the AIS. So, a Pan-­Pan Medico call on my little VHF set with its 15-mile range would have been about as much help as Hornblower’s speaking trumpet.

Also, taking the view that health and safety does not apply over the age of 70, I carry no EPIRB. (If you didn’t know this and find yourself aghast, there is a full explanation of the reasoning behind it in the book – and don’t forget that Alex Honnold climbed the sheer face of El Capitan without ropes or safety equipment of any kind “for the fun of it” – and he was only 32.)

In retrospect, it was all a lot of fuss about nothing because eventually, I sailed into St George’s with all limbs intact and the breadknife only blunted on my attempt at a stoneground loaf with out-of-date yeast.

But I did have unfinished business with the supplement company: as far as I was concerned, here was proof that there was something wrong with the white powder. I started emailing round other customers – specifically those who I knew had to buy it in bulk like me. This has become normal since the chaos that is Brexit. My new-found friend Frank in Lisbon had to wait three months for his first delivery. Now he wrote: “My arthritis is coming back, and in general, it feels like the powder is different. I’ve been taking it for three months now, and the effect is zero. With the brown stuff, I had better joints after a month or so. Now I am back where I was two years ago, despite taking two spoons every day.”

Forwarding this to the MD, I added for good measure that I had been obliged to increase the size of the font on my laptop and the dislocated shoulder from getting falling-down drunk in Tobermory was keeping me awake again – something it hadn’t done for months.

To give him credit, he accepted all of this without question – obviously, people who had taken only the occasional month’s holiday from the brown stuff hadn’t noticed the difference. He would replace our supplies with the right colour. He would get the wrong kind analysed. In future, he would refuse to accept anything but the original formula. All remaining stocks of the suspect powder would be spread on his garden…

The no-good stuff – almost pure white.

The good stuff – the colour is brown/beige – what an artist would call “light ochre”

The white “No Good” powder does not dissolve in water – in which case, how can it be absorbed into the body?

So, in the event, there was no harm done – except, of course, to my immune system, which will now have to recover from being knocked askew by a course of antibiotics for the first time since 2016.

And as for the positive spin – well, it does show that the stuff works.

As long as it’s the right stuff…

A passenger. This incontinent booby took up residence and refused to get off for 48 hours. Every time I suggested it, he took off, flew a couple of circuits and came back. In the end I gave up.

The three Frenchmen came roaring up in their RIB and cut the motor alongside so that they lay rocking on their own wake – the harbour suddenly silent, 9.9hp on tickover.

“Do you want a lift?” said the helmsman.

“Do you want a lift?” said the bowman, not realising I had turned down the offer from the helmsman.

The third one just looked, eyebrows up under the brim of his baseball cap. After all, it is the best part of a quarter of a mile from the dinghy dock at Mindelos’s floating bar to the anchorage. Why would anyone be rowing?

But I was – and I carried on.

It’s not that I don’t possess an outboard motor. I have written in the past about my little electric job – and then wrote again saying how I had taken to using it for an extra push when rowing into the wind (like an electric bike going uphill).

But now I realise I haven’t used it since the Canaries two months ago – and I’m not sure I ever will again. The acid test came in the anchorage off the deserted island of Santa Luzia. Two hundred yards away was Ruffian of Amble with Iain and Fiona, who have been living aboard for the last four years and are currently heading in the general direction of Surinam. Would I like to come for dinner?

So, here was the decision to make: Should I ship the outboard, or could I trust myself to row back in the dark against the wind.

The wind, I should point out, is not the same in the Cape Verdes as it is in other places. It has a habit of shrieking down the mountains and through the valleys. Gusts of 35 knots are fairly routine. Could I row my tiny inflatable against a 35knot gust? Obviously not – but on the other hand, a gust, by definition, does not last long. Once the wind drops to something reasonable, I would have no trouble.

At this point, I should explain that it was important that I got this right. If failed to row to windward, broke an oar or whatever, the next stop would be Brazil.

The Royal Cruising Club’s guide to the Atlantic Islands points out that rescue services in the Cape Verdes should be assumed to be non-existent (rather in the way that lighthouses round here should be assumed unlit).

Iain and Fiona, of course, have a big RIB for a dinghy and a powerful outboard but they would have to launch it to come to my rescue – that was if I had some way of alerting them that I needed rescuing. Should I take the hand-held VHF with me? Don’t be ridiculous. I had a torch and I’m sure we all knew the morse code for SOS…

Of course, in the event I got there and back for risotto in the cockpit with no mishaps – indeed, I am pleased to say that in one truly ferocious gust, I checked my transits and am proud to say that I was not losing any ground at all (even if I was rowing like the Cambridge crew the year they sank).

But, as John Noakes used to say: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

If you take your little inflatable out of its box and try to row it into 35 knots, two things will happen:

First, you will find that the oars are too short to get any real leverage. To compensate for this, the manufactuer will have made them good and wide … which means that in a choppy sea, they will keep on hitting the waves on the back-stroke and stop you dead in your tracks.

So you will have to row harder – much harder than the designer imagined when drawing up the scantlings for the plastic rowlocks.

Which will break – and off you go to Brazil…

This, I was confident, would not happen to me. I have upgraded my little inflatable. My little inflatable is the Toyota Lancruiser of little inflatables.

Here’s what you do: Get some stainless rowlocks made up to the pattern of the plastic ones – this is not difficult or expensive.

Secondly, buy longer oars in the shape of proper boat race sculls, with low-profile blades incorporating a professional curve to give a kick to the end of every stroke.

Finally, keep the old oars, and on an inky black night with the wind shrieking over the mountains and nothing under your lee but 3,000 miles of Atlantic, sling a spare one in the bottom of the boat. It’s handy for manoeuvring at the jetty, and it might just save all that faffing about with “is it dot,dot,dot,dash,dash,dash or is it dash,dash,dash,dot,dot,dot…”

Next, for singlehanders: once you have a crew hanging half their bum over the transom, you will be going nowhere.

And for old singlehanders: After old age begins to bite, you will find that your muscles begin to atrophy. Your once-powerful biceps become little sticks; your broad shoulders shrink until you start buying girly T-shirts in the market.

But rowing is good exercise.

Atlantic sunset en route to the Cape Verdes

It seems ages since I did this: I’m sitting on the lee berth, laptop on my knees, feet braced against the windward – the hatch is just managing to keep the sun off the screen.

Dyna-mite by Mud is playing on Spotify and the beer in the little electric cooler I picked up second hand in Las Palmas is down to 10°C which is a lot cooler than it would be in the bilges, given that the water temperature is 26°C.

Normally, I  would open the beer at 1200 and it’s now 1130, but I might delay that if the writing goes well – anyway, breakfast was late because I didn’t feel like getting up. Why should I? There was nothing that I had to do.

Welcome to the seagoing lifestyle three days into the passage from The Gambia to Sal in the Cape Verde Islands.

Yes, there has been a change of plan. I was going to set off for the Caribbean directly from Africa but what good is cruising if you can’t change your mind?

Anyway, there was the little matter of provisioning in Banjul market: what I thought were potatoes weren’t potatoes at all – not even sweet potatoes. I don’t know what they were but they had the consistency of stone and a bitter taste that suggested they might have been medicinal.

Also, The Gambia being a predominantly Moslem country, beer was a problem and I won’t sail anywhere without beer. Eventually, I found an Indian shop with something called Cody’s. It said it was imported from Germany (possibly because the German’s refused to drink it).

No, much better to stock up in the Cape Verdes – the supermarket in Mindelo is 536 miles to the northwest but that is a mere detail when all you have to do is haul up the anchor and set the sails.

As the crews of Ceruean and Ruffian explained over Christmas lunch, if you check in at Sal, you can sail downwind through islands with sand dunes, pristine beaches and groves of date palms. This also avoids going to Praia.

Praia, on the island of Santiago has always had a dodgy reputation: Don’t just lock up your dinghy at night, lock yourself in the cabin as well. In Cerulean’s cockpit, I met Peter, the German skipper who had called there in the spring with a medical emergency. After depositing his crewmember in the local hospital, and returning to the boat, he woke up in the middle of the night to find himself facing five guys with machetes.

They tied him up, ransacked the boat, held a knife to his throat until he gave them his internet passwords…

Later, monitoring the emails they were sending using his address, he discovered they were trying to buy a car from his bank account  – a transaction that required a photo of the buyer’s passport.

Since Peter happened to be a retired Hamburg policeman, he recognised a clue when it smacked him over the head. Gleefully, he passed the photo on to the Praia police department – apparently, he is still waiting to hear what they’ve done about it.

So, don’t go there.

But Sal is alright. Sal is just fine – best of all, the course puts the trade wind free enough to carry the spinnaker.

This is kind of weird because, along with the enormous, diaphanous spinny, I have hoisted the trysail, the tiny, tough bright-orange storm sail. This is because, on the first day out from the Canaries en route to The Gambia, I contrived to break the gooseneck so, ever since, the boom has been lashed on deck while I look at options for getting it fixed in Grenada.

At the moment the best seems to be a Facebook friend sending me his old one – but finding out if he could get it off the boom wasn’t the top priority in the middle of a family Christmas. So that’s another reason for delaying the crossing.

Meanwhile, we’re still doing five knots in the right direction, the temperature in the cabin is up to 27°C and the beer is still down at 10°C

Even if it is the awful Cody’s stuff.

Spinnaker and trysail – an odd combination.

Old Man Sailing, the book, included accounts of some extraordinarily vivid dreams which I started having once I had been on my own for a while. Whether these were a direct consequence of the enforced solitude, I have no idea – but they went down rather well.

Since this blog is an exercise in pure indulgence (I have no editor to tell me what to write or when – or, come to that, whether it is complete nonsense when I’ve written it) I thought it might be fun to include some more dreams here.

Obviously, this might not be to everyone’s taste so I shall call them all “Then I woke up…” (so that you can ignore them if you choose and just stick to the supposedly serious stuff…)

I was late arriving at Carriçal on the Cape Verdean island of São Nicolau. Carriçal is so small and so isolated that the street lights go out at ten o’clock when the generator switches off. I stuck my head out of hatch and Samsara’s masthead light was the only sign of life. Had it not been for the sound of surf on the beach, I might have been in the middle of an open ocean.

Going to bed, the darkness in the cabin punctuated by tiny, glowing LED lights of various gadgets on charge, I debated the best time to leave for Porto do Tarrafal, 20 miles along the coast. After that, there was another 40 miles to the deserted island of Santa Luzia. I should be able to leave after breakfast…

Odd, that no sooner did I have the anchor up than I set course to the east, rather than the west. Also, I had the wind behind me which was even more strange because the wind in Cape Verdes during January has been blowing from the north east ever since the earth first started spinning – they call it the northeast trades.

Nevertheless, we were going like a train with the sails goose-winged (the boom was no longer broken and lashed to the deck, because in dreams, everything is perfect).

Or not, as will become apparent.

Anyway, we were ploughing along in glorious sunshine doing six and seven knots when I noticed HMS Victory and Portsmouth dockyard to starboard. This was a slight concern because everyone knows that Santa Luzia is further up the English Channel past Newhaven, so the last thing I should be doing is going into Portsmouth Harbour.

Then a high speed launch – customs or coastguard or something – came bouncing across my wake (yes, I was going so fast I set up a wake like a motor-cruiser). He shouted something over his Tannoy – some sort of apology about not being able to raise me on VHF. I ignored him.

I was more concerned with the fact that now I appeared to be in Venice and the canal was getting very narrow – the end of the boom scraping past the houses – startled faces in the windows…

I knew what I could do about this – an old tactic from my Laser days: centre the main – pull it in until the boom is on the centre line. It’s what you do when you find yourself close up behind the boat in front and unable to overtake because this is a race and you have other boats on either side. If you bring the boom onto the centreline, the wind can’t get into the sail and you slow down.

My trouble was that for some reason, the mainsheet was led through the blocks for the headsail furling line and that took it all around the deck – meaning that it was too short for me to reach it without leaving the helm.

So we just went faster and faster. I felt I should be congratulated on remaining calm. Some people might find themselves given over to panic, doing seven knots up the Rio di Palazzo, scattering gondolas like elderly pedestrians before an electric scooter. Yet I remained stoic and philosophical – but then, I knew that when I reached the end of the canal, I would find Chichester Yacht Basin. There would be plenty of room to turn round in Chichester Yacht Basin.

Anyone who knows Chichester Yacht Basin can pick themselves up off the floor, stop laughing and remember this is all a dream.

Anyway, it turned out that Chichester Yacht Basin now featured the Bridge of Sighs, incongruously connecting the palazzo to the nearest of the overpriced new houses they cluster like mushrooms around marinas.

Throwing the helm down at the last moment, I executed a snappy 90° turn and slammed into the 17^th Century limestone carvings sideways rather than head-on … for which I felt I should be congratulated.

Instead, I had to put up with a five-minute tirade from the woman in the house telling me that now she wouldn’t be able to get out to collect her children from school because the council had to send someone to inspect the damage every time there was a “bridge strike” (it seemed this happened regularly – which was not surprising: it was a damn silly place for a baroque masterpiece).

I got the sails off, made fast to a couple of gargoyles and accepted her invitation to tea so we could exchange insurance details.

But when I gave her my card, all it told her was the 0800 number to claim her winnings in the Utility Warehouse £20,000 give-away.

Then I woke up.

Tell me if I’m being patronising.

The other day, I wrote about the desperate situation for people in The Gambia – the economy on the floor, everyone scrabbling for just the basics of life – and how I felt obliged to take on all manner of guides and interpreters and pay over the odds.

Here’s something else: one evening, I anchored at Kuntaur, 133 miles up the river. This is where you stop to visit the ancient standing stones at Wassu. Inevitably a small canoe appeared alongside with a couple of lads offering their services. By this time, I knew better than to refuse – I’d only get hassled by another pair.

Of course, the following morning, four of them turned up. They were called Badou, Bilali, Del and Ibraima. Together, we set off on the dirt road for Wassu.

It was a fair old walk on a hot day, but they showed me the shortcut and pumped water so I could drink from the village well. We got to talking: they were all between 18 and 20, and not one of them had ever had a job. They just hung about the waterfront, hoping for someone like me to turn up.

To stoke the sympathy a little further, they got Ibraima to take off his scarf. In these days of COVID, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why a young man would wear a scarf around his face. The reason was because he had been standing over a petrol generator when it exploded – and no-one at the local hospital had heard about skin grafts. Maybe if I took a picture, someone in England would help…

Believe me, you don’t want to see that picture.

But it did move the conversation on to their situation, and before I had thought it through properly, I said something like this: “Look at it this way: you’re four young men who ought to be working. Working gives you self-respect. Working gives you a reason to get up in the morning. Your problem is that nobody wants to give you a job.

“But that doesn’t prevent you from working. Even if you don’t get paid, having to get up in the morning and go to work – relaxing at the end of the day after a job well done – that’s a good feeling for a young man to have.

“So how about this: Find your own work.”

At this point, they reminded me there was no work – none, nada, niente – or, as they say in Wolof dara.

“But look around you,” I told them. “Everywhere there is rubbish – garbage.”

And it was true. The whole country is one enormous rubbish dump – for a very obvious reason: if your first priority is finding enough to eat and the second is getting a roof over your head before the rains come, the little matter of putting a plastic bottle in a litter bin comes way down the list.

That’s if there are any litter bins…

Rubbish everywhere in a country where clearing up is not the top priority.

So here was a suggestion: “Get up every morning, the four of you, six days a week and clear up the village. Collect the rubbish, and take it out into the bush, and burn it. What won’t burn, you can bury.

“Of course, nobody will pay you for doing it. Probably, nobody will thank you for doing it. But I can promise you this: after a while – a month, a year – whatever it may be, somebody will give you their empty plastic bottle instead of throwing it on the ground. They will ask if you wouldn’t mind taking it away and burning it.

Then some more people will do the same, and – since you’re still busy clearing up – gradually, the streets will start to look better. People will notice this. You will feel a sense of pride. The town will thank you for it – trust me, if you keep on clearing up, people will appreciate living in a place that doesn’t look like a tip.

“And here’s the thing: People in the next village will get to hear about you – and the local town. Heaven’s above, you might even end up on television.

“And one day – it might be a year, it might be five years – along will come an entrepreneur – somebody who owns a business, or maybe many businesses, and they will be looking for four new employees. Will they give those jobs to four young men who have never worked but just hang around the waterfront – or will they give them to the four who decided to make something of themselves and cleaned up their village and earned the respect of their community?

“Then you will get your jobs, and you will get paid.”

It was a difficult concept to take in, walking along a dirt road under the hot sun, heading for a bunch of stones people had put up 1,400 years ago – all in the hope that the old foreigner might give them a handful of grubby notes.

I plunged on: “Here’s something else. You want to be rich, right? Here’s how to get rich. It’s easy – but that doesn’t mean everybody’s going to do it.

“Here’s what you have to do: the first week your boss pays you, take 10% of that money (they understood percentages) and put that 10% in a secret place. Do the same next time you get paid – in fact, every time you have some money coming in after that, 10% goes in the secret place.

“When there’s enough, you put it in the bank – earn a bit of interest. One day you’ll have enough to invest it in something – maybe start your own business. But whatever happens, you keep adding 10% every time you have money coming in.”

“If you do that, one day, the money you’re earning from your investment will be more than the money you’re earning from your job or the income you’re taking out of your business. In other words, the money will be doing the work, not you.

“At that point, you can call yourself rich, and you won’t need to work anymore.

“You can hang around the waterfront.”

All this happened in the week before Christmas. On Christmas day, I was invited to lunch with the crews of two other boats – all of them retired. I told the story of the four lads who took me to the stones and the advice I had given them and asked whether I had been patronising (other people’s feelings not being my strong point).

But, “Oh no,” they said. It was good advice. Besides, I am an old man, and in the Gambia, the old are respected. Maybe it would make all the difference. Maybe this one small germ of an idea would change the course of four young lives. It was a lovely thought.

Of course, it would be better if they had a mentor. Otherwise, how long would they keep at it – that’s if they got started at all.

Who knows?

But, on the other hand, we’re all on WhatsApp.

His name was Ibrahim. He was a Baghdad taxi driver, and he drove an ancient orange Toyota the size of a tank.

He drove it like a tank too.

However, as far as I remember, Saddam Hussein’s Russian-built T54s did not boast detachable dashboards. It was behind the dashboard that Ibrahim kept his international currency exchange.

As a keen young reporter for the Daily Mail in 1980, this was my first big foreign trip – and my first experience of employing a “fixer” – that essential combination of guide, translator, bodyguard and banker.

Over the years, I went on to know a variety of fixers. There was “Pipa” the rock-star (as far as the Czechoslovakia music scene was concerned). “Pipa” is the Czech word for the tap of a beer barrel – although his real talent was a fantastic news sense as he translated the morning papers over room-service breakfast.

“High-Tower” was the Beijing student (so-called because, unusually among the Chinese, he was well over six-feet tall). He made me sound authentic by peppering my copy with Confucius.

There was the taxi driver in Sri Lanka who took me to see the Tamil Tigers with an open can of petrol between my knees. We couldn’t put the cap on it because this was the fuel tank ever since the one at the back got full of bullet holes.

But whatever risks they ran (and whatever risks I ended up sharing with them), there was one cardinal rule: They all got paid an enormous amount.

Partly, this was because the exchange rate into the local currency was heavily weighted in my favour – but mainly, what I needed was loyalty.

Anyway, it wasn’t my money.

Now I think about it; there was also the man with dreadful teeth and a wall-eye in the fly-blown tea house on the Jordanian border who offered to get me a ride into Iraq in a sanctions-busting lorry if I came back at midnight…

This was the era of the hostages John McCarthy and Terry Waite. Midnight found me back in the bar of the Amman Intercontinental drinking brandy and sodas out of half-litre glasses.

All of this comes to mind because I am back in the third world and, once again, I need a fixer. I sailed from the Canaries directly to The Gambia, that tiny country on the west coast of Africa which consists of nothing much more than the river – up which (130 miles up which) I would see hippos and crocodiles and the legendary Baboon Island.

The aspect which seemed to get lost in translation is that The Gambia is now a very, very poor country. The previous president (now in exile in Equatorial Guinea) sought to get a leg up by accepting Beijing’s offer to build roads and bridges. They needed roads and bridges to service the fish meal factory they had slipped into the small print.

To support the factory, a veritable navy of Chinese trawlers moved in to hoover up a little fish called the sardinella – which just happened to be the Gambians’ staple food.

No more sardinellas also upset the ocean food chain and killed off the big game fishing industry – which, in turn didn’t do a lot for the tourism industry (the smell of fish meal drifting over the beaches didn’t help).

So last year, the locals set fire to the factory and 40 Chinese fishing boats – although the only building they managed to destroy completely was their own police station.

One way and another, the country is in a desperate state, and it seems that everyone is looking for a job. Never mind, Passmore arrived looking for a fixer – several, in fact.

The first was Muhammad who navigated me through the byzantine process of checking into the country (Port Authority, Health Department, Immigration, Customs, back to Immigration, back to Port Authority for the river permit… come back on Tuesday to finish with the man in the Health Department, then pick up the river permit..)

Muhammad was brilliant. He knew everyone. It was only later – after we had settled on a price for his services – that I remembered it wouldn’t be coming out of Lord Rothermere’s spectacularly deep pocket but my own rather modest cruising budget. Checking with Facebook friends, it appeared I had promised Muhammad many, many times the going rate.

Too late, he’d already shown me a picture of his baby daughter – they all do this. Ibrahim in Baghdad had a daughter who was diabetic. When I got out to Jordan, Lord Rothermere invested in a year’s supply of insulin (which probably ended up with the wall-eyed man in the fly-blown tea house.)

As I progressed up the river, I toughened up my negotiating skills, but it’s no good, the boat kitty would keep a family for a year – and the children are terribly cute.

But I did get to see the chimps on Baboon Island (well, one of them) and heard a hippo in the night – they sound like Winston Churchill getting out of the bath. I missed the crocodile, though – despite rowing out at dawn in the little inflatable.

Maybe that was just as well. I’m not sure a little inflatable is recommended for a crocodile hunting.

Now I’m back at Lamin Lodge – the wood and corrugated iron restaurant open on all sides to catch the breeze above the mangroves. Mahmood, the waiter, keeps me supplied with refreshments, and Bamba, the drummer provides a background rhythm. As a temporary office, it beats all the Hiltons and Intercontinentals into a cocked hat.

The office

If you look closely at the picture, you can see Samsara anchored just next door – where Karim turns up every morning on his paddle-board to deliver fresh bread and collect the laundry.

Karim with the bread (and the laundry)

What did  I say about leaving…

Bamba on rhythm

I was going to be a Spitfire pilot. We all were – backs to the wall, fighting to the death against a merciless invader…

This was 1959, an English prep school; War Picture Library with a torch after lights out. For the price of a Mars Bar, you could borrow Boddington’s flying helmet. It had P/O Boddington inked on the inside and smelled of rubber and sweat and excitement.

Ten years later came the film – Battle of Britain. I went to see it every night until the money ran out. Edward Fox with his silk scarf. Susannah York, fetching in her WAAF officer’s cap.

It remained a fantasy, of course – until now.

Admittedly, I’m not in a Spitfire, climbing through Angels Ten. But the fight for survival – the merciless invader. That’s all here.

And just because I’m a hundred miles up the Gambia, not at Biggin Hill – and I’m up against cockroaches instead of the Luftwaffe, it’s still as desperate a struggle as anything Michael Caine, and Douglas Bader and P/O Boddington had to face.

I knew they were coming, of course: the books and Facebook groups are full of warnings about not bringing cardboard packaging aboard (they lay their eggs in cardboard). There is advice about Boric Acid and Nestles Milk – but that’s no good in a dogfight.

Nobody forgets their first contact with the enemy: I was chopping onions, had discarded the papery outer skin and suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a movement – a flash of scuttling shiny brown carapace.

Wheeling instinctively onto the attack, I stabbed with the vegetable knife. It went wide, but the enemy banked and ran for cover under the engine casing.

That’s when the training kicked in: Don’t let him get away. He’ll be back with his chums, telling them I’m a pushover – won’t last two weeks, just as Kurt Jurgens told Ralph Richardson.

So, fight like hell! Off with the engine casing. There’s the bastard, running for cover along the ledge above the CAV filter. Gun button to “fire”. Press the tit – but, Oh no! Out of ammunition (I’d put the vegetable knife down).

I grabbed a spoon, but a spoon is not a precision weapon. It wouldn’t fit into the corner.

Bare hands, now: slapping and missing until, with a cold and steely deliberation, I bring out a forefinger and crush him into the woodwork. Still, he won’t die: A mess of legs and whiskers stuck to the skin, waving defiance. The coup de grâce, then: I bring down the thumbnail; grind him in two.

Total war.

Yet this is just the beginning. Over the ensuing days, the raids increase both in size and frequency. I keep a daily tally in the back of the logbook. The Nine o’clock news begins with Alvar Liddell reciting the day’s score as if it were a test match.

For a time, it is touch and go. The blackest day brings eleven incursions, eight kills. The cockroaches don’t give up. They come in numbers. I adapt my tactics: don’t go for two at once. Nobody can catch two rabbits…

Tally-ho! The carpet comes up, then the cabin sole: I burrow into the tins of chickpeas and bottles of mayonnaise until – there he is – backed up against freshwater manifold. Out with the forefinger.

It’s relentless: ten, a dozen sorties a day and no quarter given. After the early clashes, I would flick my victims into the galley waste bin – until I found one of them, mortally wounded, yet still trying to escape. After that, over the side, they went – over the stern, in fact – into the two-knot tide sweeping them away with the river. I wouldn’t trust the buggers not to climb up the anchor chain.

Of course, it couldn’t go on. Not at this level of attrition. There had to come a time when one of us would crack. Remember the scene right at the end, when the pilots are waiting at dispersal, lounging in broken armchairs, sleeping on the grass?

Edward Fox (he survived) folds his newspaper and looks up at the sky.

And the sky is empty.

Cut to the Luftwaffe packing up and heading for Russia.

It has been ten days since a cockroach has shown its face aboard Samsara. The battle is won. I’m not a hero – somebody had to do it – and yet the war grinds on: when I restocked the onions the other day, I sat in the dinghy peeling off the outer skin, dropping the pieces carefully over the side.

Do you think they sell Boric Acid in the market?

*You can read more about Boddington and his flying helmet in Old Man Sailing, the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Man-Sailing-dreams-lifetime/dp/B08TQ9KV48

This is nice: Yachting Monthly has reviewed Old Man Sailing and called it a “word-of-mouth bestseller”.

And there’s some evidence for that: the daily sales from Amazon tend to be higher than they were a couple of months ago – with a higher proportion coming from overseas. Now a Dutch sailing magazine has asked for a review copy.

It’s all very gratifying – particularly meeting someone new and finding they’ve read it already.

This would never have happened if had been picked up by a mainstream publisher.

The latest news is that the Audible edition is nearing completion – that is to say, the narrator has recorded it and is now dealing with the inevitable glitches and corrections. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

… at least I will if I have a mobile signal. On Ed Sheeran’s Desert Island Discs recommendation, I’m now headed for The Gambia.

The marina and the anchorage at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Drone photo by Emmie and Tim of Shadowfax (www.chasing-contours.com)

Everybody’s waiting.

That’s what you do in the Canary Islands at this time of year. The boats have to get across the Bay of Biscay by the middle of September to avoid the equinoctial gales – but they mustn’t reach the Caribbean until the end of the hurricane season, and that means not setting off until the middle of November. So, for two months, they wait.

A lot of them are just parked in marinas – their crews flown back to the office. The rest exist in a peculiar sub-tropical limbo of cold beer under awnings.

The first week I was here, I stopped in a different place every night. That’s what you do when you’re cruising. Now I haven’t moved for two weeks. It took a while to realise the Canaries are not like Essex.

Well, of course not: The temperature is in the 30s. From twelve until four, nothing moves. I’ve given up soap – instead, I dive over the side before breakfast…

But, there’s more to it than that. Essex is full of rivers, so you can creep in around the mudbanks and find a sheltered spot whatever the weather.

The Canaries are extinct volcanoes (actually not so extinct – the one on La Palma is blowing off at the moment). Anyway, it means there are no estuaries. The only places to stop are open bays where the Atlantic swell rolls the onions off the chopping board or marinas where the man behind the counter shrugs sympathetically and tells you it’s high season. Not only does this mean high prices, but you might have to move on tomorrow because he’s got someone else booked in.

So there’s a great tendency for everyone to stay put – particularly the ARC boats.

The ARC is the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers – a massive event in which 200 boats with 1,200 crew sail across the Atlantic from Las Palmas to St Lucia all at the same time. It is one of the great mysteries of the sea that they don’t all bump into each other like a regatta of seven-year-old in Optimists. The event is massively social and hugely expensive, which means that most of the boats are seriously posh. This year, some of the catamarans have three decks, like wedding cakes.

It does seem rather a waste that they leave from Las Palmas, because – for some reason that nobody seems able to explain – the capital of these islands boasts the cheapest marina in Europe. They quoted me €55 for eight days. It’s like being in Southampton’s Port Solent – but the only time I stopped there for a night, it cost me £40. I could have stayed in a hotel.

Ah, but wait: In Las Palmas, this municipal generosity extends not just to the marina but also to the anchorage next to it. So that must make it the cheapest anchorage in the world!

Well, obviously, most anchorages are free. But it is one of the cruising yachtsman’s perennial moans that over the past 20 years, harbour authorities have sought to cash in on their local topography. For instance, halfway up the Truro River in Cornwall, where seafarers have sheltered for nothing ever since the first caveman stopped to fish from his coracle, the harbourmaster now turns up in his launch to relieve you of £7. There is no landing stage, no water tap. Nothing has changed in a thousand years – except for the introduction of “Harbour Dues”.

Yet here I am, securely anchored just off the popular Playa de las Alcaravaneras – high season and all that – and paying €1.42 a night. That doesn’t even cover the cost of the paperwork (there’s plenty of that). Also, they let me leave my dinghy in the marina and fill up the water can while I’m at it.

For a small additional charge, I could queue for the showers with all the ARC people. But if the sea is free and about the temperature of bathwater anyway…