On Ancient Winds

"Things have not got off to a good start." This was the thought going through my mind as I lay huddled in a cement storage room - a table barricading the door from the Friday-night bedlam outside. Weekends, it seems, are jovial in ports worldwide. Even in the sleepy town of Palma in far northern Mozambique. I was lying and waiting for the winds to die down and the tide to come up so we could launch our dhow for the voyage through the Quirimbas archipelago to Ibo Island, 250kms south. And mother nature - that crafty old wench - just wasnt playing ball. At 3am conditions at sea were more favourable and in the port were less combative, so I met my crew. I didn't know whether to be terrified or enthused by the fact that our Captain, Seriji, had clearly spent too much time at sea. He talked to himself, wore a zebra skin cowboy hat night and day and insisted on taking his pants off for every launch. This first one was no exception. So with the moonlight glistening off Captain Seriji's bulbous scrotum, we raised anchor and were off.

There was the creaking of the mast. The flap of the canvas sail. The gentle keel of the deck. The musty odour of damp wood. The same has been experienced by thousands of sailors over a millenium on this coast. The dhow design hasn't changed. The means to sail them hasn't changed. The only things that have apparently changed are the cargoes and the crews. The cargo: now instead of awealthy Eastern merchant and his Chinese porcelain they carry a pastey white man and his beard. The crew: instead of a team born and raised as one with the ocean, they have Captain Seriji - unable to catch so much as a sardine in the most abundant waters on the planet. And still attempting to do so with his trousers off.

Over turquoise waters. Over pristine reefs. Through mazes of mangroves. Through bouncing shoals of flying fish. Through phosphorescense sparking around the dhow like flint. To the Swahili fishing village with the worlds hottest peri-peri. To jack-russell-sized coconut crabs. To fishing ports soaking in the crustiest of sailors. To deserted beaches. To deserted five-star resorts. To city-sized coconut groves. To horizons serrated by a hundred sails.

The dhow was the link between all these things. It, and Captain Seriji's animated conversations with himself. Mine were just a few of the infinite experiences carried on those ancient trade winds and in those ancient dhows. None-the-less mine felt pretty unique. I'm pretty sure I ate less fish. And had a lot more full-frontal nudity.