LAT 13 27.246 N

LON 15 51.173 W

Speed: 4.9kn

Course: 286

UTC Time: 15:45:09

UTC Date: 29-11-2011

Work in progress

Today at 8:45 we got stuck in the mud pretty badly and I have the feeling that the fault was partially mine, coz I turned on the ice maker that causes the depth meter to go a little crazy. Anyway, after trying to move the vessel with the dinghy, only to make the situation worse, we realized that the current I too strong and the tide will rise only in few hours. So we wait. Till 13:32 to be precise.

In the mean time, we had a bunch of hours to kill. So instead of visiting a national park (that was the plan for today), we do some work on the boat. First I clean he hull, coz the boat was leaning enough to see all the algae. That was fun, mostly because it gave me the excuse to have a “look around” the boat with the dinghy. Then, some earwigs killing. Tonight they came out of nowhere and in the morning it looked like they’re gonna take over our boat.

After that killing spree, it was time for breakfast and carpentry work. Some minor work mostly, but the captain has a new idea every second, so there is plenty of little projects to take care of. That’s also nice, I can play with the power tools and especially, with my favourite one, The Über Frese. Marvalous tool that can do pretty much anything with wood and probably it’s good for metals too. Cutting, edging, drilling carving it’s the jack of all trades of the boat.

Yesterday night and the whole morning we had some trouble with the fishermen. Because we forgot to turn on the anchor light, we got a net around us that eventually got teared apart, so no sleep for those who sleep on deck, coz the fishermen just couldn’t get over with the teared net. I felt very sorry for them, coz they will not fish for a week because of us (that’s what they say). They didn’t want money straight away, African style. First they talked about an hour on how they are sorry, but also what damage did we make, then Micha had to go with the old fishermen to find the other part of the net (it got teared in half), then more talking till dusk, when we headed to their village for more talking and finally paying with a gift net we had on our boat.

We had a similar encounter this night, when me and Frank got woke up by 3 old fishermen shouting in Mandenge, but it seems there wasn’t any problem because after a loud “NEEEE, something in german, sounding like “not again!””, the fishermen left and never came back.

As a result, I might consider sleeping inside tonight…

Stuck in the middle of the river