The Tanga Yacht Race is a well-known event among sailors in Dar, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate. I was on a boat skippered by a 77-year-old veteran of many Tanga races, so I felt safe. The boat was a clean and tidy catamaran, with many automated systems that made sailing much easier.
Instead of manually hauling the sails to the top of the mast, we simply pressed a button and let the machine do the heavy lifting. This made sailing much more enjoyable for me. Additionally, the yacht was equipped with an auto-pilot that could take us to a designated waypoint, which was a luxury during the day and a necessity at night.
Chris, the skipper, and I took turns at the helm, keeping watch into the darkness. The moon rose directly in front of us, creating a beautiful scene as it danced across the light waves.
We made excellent progress and reached speeds of up to 9 knots. I kept checking my phone for a signal to see how the other 16 yachts were doing on the Afritrack tracking site, and it seemed that they were also making good progress.
By daybreak, we were clear of Zanzibar and heading for the Pemba channel. However, the wind suddenly died down, and we slowed to a crawl. After a brief discussion, we decided to turn on the engines and make our way to Tanga.
It took us another four hours to reach the harbor, where we were greeted by a pod of dolphins that jumped out of the water in front of us.
We were the fifth boat to arrive at Tanga, and the fastest ones had been there since 6 am. The crews were already drunk from the early arrival, but we had a brief discussion comparing our tactics.
I then checked into a hotel and enjoyed a much-needed shower and some air conditioning.
After a restless night on the boat and a full day of sailing, I was in desperate need of rest. Once I had recovered, I paid a local boy to take me on a tour of Tanga, which turned out to be mostly graveyards. My skipper was heading back to Kenya, so I couldn’t join him on the return journey to Dar. I received several offers to crew on other yachts, but I decided to go back by car instead.
As I sit here writing my blog, the other yachts are making slow progress down the west coast of Zanzibar, and I’m glad that I made the decision not to do return leg. It turns out that I’m not as committed a sailor as I thought.
(written by me, improved by AI chatgpt)