It is a while since I wrote; there don’t seem to have been enough hours in the day since leaving Luanda. We have had our “Crossing the Line” ceremony, where the uninitiated are welcomed into Neptune’s realm, complete with horrible slime and having to ‘kiss the fish’; a hilarious time was had by all.

We then completed a ‘first’ for me and, I believe for every other crew member and guest; crossing the Equator and the Prime Meridian at the same time, 0° Latitude and 0° Longitude. We all became ‘Emerald Shellbacks’ or ‘Royal Diamond shellback’ depending if you are American or British.

Our destination, Banjul is in the Gambia and to access it we had to transit some very shallow water for 20+ miles, charted depths being the same as our draft. As a consequence I had to wait for the tide to rise and, because of ‘squat’, cross the bank at a very slow speed. It was a very early morning for me as I supplemented the Bridge team. Constantly monitoring the echo-sounder depths, it is not a comfortable feeling watching depths of less than 2 meters constantly repeating on the red glow of the instrument. Having started the bank crossing at 0500, we reached the ‘deeper’ water of the river at 7:30. We had a screaming flood time up our back, 2-3 kts and were being set over 10° by it. A plodding pilot boat came out to us and although we kept the conn, his advice on this particular docking was vital; he knew the idiosyncrasies of the river. With the strong flood tide, we had to dock with the bow facing it, which meant swinging through 180° and then docking port side alongside. I started the turn a long way north of the pier, the current was going to take me south quite rapidly and I wanted to be able to judge the effect of it before I got too close to the ‘concrete’. Having swung I now let the current help me, dropping me south and slowly pushing me in towards the dock, it was just a matter of controlling the ‘ drop’ on the joystick control and at 9 a.m. we were alongside.

Banjul was one of the Slave Trade ports and it was Britain who abolished slavery in 1807, who built a fort on James Island, 6 miles up-river from Banjul. Its intended purpose was to stop the slave ships travelling up-river to ‘load’ their intended ‘cargo’. It is now a World Heritage site, however is difficult to get to. The main subject of Alex Hailey’s book, “Roots”, Kunte Kinte, was kidnapped here in Gambia in 1767 and may well have sailed down this river.

Banjul is a true ‘African experience’, the city is poor, however the inhabitants extremely friendly.   An improvised market was set up on the dock, next to the ship and shuttle buses took guests into the town, the drop-off point being Albert market.

Some of the guests, seeing the poverty and filth didn’t even get off the bus, while the more adventurous, took it as it came, that is what we were here for, after all. An enterprising teenager, speaking excellent English offered his services as a guide and took Karen and I deep into the inner sections of the market, something I’m not sure whether we would have done otherwise. A fascinating hour was spent wandering the deepest depths, some of it in gloomy light.