January 29, 2024 – Zebrabar, Senegal
Feb 7th, 2024 by rallyadmin
The day starts with a great breakfast – an omelet, beans, sausage, orange juice and hot coffee. A great break from the rat pack breakfast of the last few days. Slowly, other people come out for the breakfast but no one is moving too fast.
Someone suggests a boat ride on the inlet that is just over the beach from the Zebrabar and about a dozen of us sign up for it. The boat ride is on one of the outboard powered long boats the we have been seeing along the coast when were driving close to the sea in Western Sahara, Mauritania and now Senegal scheduled for about 11:00.
When the boat owner finds out that we are such a large group there’s a pause while he gets takes a couple for a ride first. They return and we start to load the boat. The boat is grounded sideways on the beach and as the later, larger passengers get in the boat starts listing. There are no problems loading but loading does show what could happen in bad seas with this many people on a boat designed as a 2 person fishing scow; very definitely not a 12 – 14 person tour boat.
We push off and head south with the wind at our backs. The boat already had some water in the bottom covering the keel. I’m sitting next to Pinky (one of the issues loading the boat was the boating listing while Pinky was loading) and he shows me a large leak in the sidewall of the boat hull, between two planks. He’s been holding a piece of fiberglass sheet against the leak to staunch the flow. We’ll be bailing soon.
After about 15 minutes, we come to an island that appears to be a rookery for an assortment of seabirds, gulls, terns and rather large white pelicans. It’s the middle of the morning so the birds are resting after their morning feeding trips.
They take no interest in the boat as we circle the island, sitting in the bright sun, beaks into the mild breeze, their colors dazzling in the clear light. One pelican, a very large white one, is slowly strutting across the small island seemingly posing for our photos. He reminds me of a very large gray pelican that lived on the sidewalk outside a bar on Mykonos in Greece that was obese and probably unable to fly. He did know how to pose spectacularly, though, probably photographed by every tourist to the island until the day he died, probably of avian cardiac arrest if there is such a thing, definitely not a bad landing after returning from the morning fishing session.
We move on to the sand bar that separates the bay from the ocean. Along the way, the leaking has started to get meaningful and we start bailing since the boat driver doesn’t seem to be interested or concerned. Before the water goes down in the boat, we land and disembark for a walk along the sand bar, leaving the boat driver to deal with the water.
The beach is beautiful but, as usual, there is a lot of trash washed up on the stand though not anywhere as much as we saw on the mainland beaches in Mauritania. That’s probably due to the fact that we’ve just had a full moon and the resulting high tide has washed the previous trash away. All we see is the buried broken glass and the most reason trash from the last couple of high tides.
Nonetheless, a few of the group go in for a swim. I go for a short wade in the cold water but I have no desire to swim in the non-existent surf. (I know the Brits are used to colder water than I am but that doesn’t warm the water any. Soon, we head back to the boat, waking the boat driver (sleeping on the beach, apparently not concerned about the leaks) along the walk back.
The boat ride back to the Zebrabar is against the mild breeze but the boat is riding low in the water and the small waves are occasionally splashing more water into the long, narrow fishing scow, getting us wet but not actually adding much water to that already in the boat. A little precautionary bailing and Pinky pressing the sheet against the leak are preventing the situation from getting any worse. At the Zebrabar landing, we’re till afloat though a bit wet.
The afternoon is just relaxing with lunch and a few beers, catching up on email and what’s going on in the outside world. Everyone is pretty much doing the same thing with the same lack of enthusiasm until Team 23 arrives with a fully repaired Volvo. That appears to be today’s miracle is a long series of daily miracles.
The L200/Volvo combination had peeled off the group after they made it into Senegal and found a shop to repair the Volvo. The L200, Team 2, had left them in Saint Louis while the shop plastic welded the radiator leaks and then properly cleaned the oilpan crack before patching the leak with a better epoxy. So far, the coolant level is holding, the engine is not overheating and the oilpan is dry. This car might actually make it to Banjul.
While we were gone, Team 4’s Honda CRV limped in to the Zebrabar and this morning it wouldn’t start at all. It’s a petrol powered Honda and it will not fire at all though the starter seems to work fine. Our usual suspects immediately tried to diagnose the problem when they first arrived but they got nowhere. Martin, the owner of the Zebrabar called a mechanic that he says works wonders and he came over this morning.
When we finally saw the Honda, the mechanic and his assistant had diagnosed their way back to the fuel tank and while trying to determine if the fuel pump was working, found that someone had put some amount of diesel onto the fuel tank thinking they were putting in petrol. The mechanic used a donated electric siphon pump to empty the fuel tank. It was a very sloppy task and the Honda will smell of mixed diesel/petrol for months, when the fuel system was re-assembled and the correct petrol was put in the fuel tank, the Honda started after a prolonged try. From then on, problem solved.
Another great dinner at the Zebrabar followed by a lot less drinking that the previous night. Tomorrow, it on the Dakar.
Obi-wan