I had heard of Lazy Lagoon so when there was the chance to go there and spend the night bobbing up and down moored by Foxes Hotel, I jumped at it.
We were in the minority in that we decided to cook our own food and stay 100% of the time on the boat. We arrived near the back of the pack and so some boats had already been there one night.
We were feeling pretty smug as we had been the only boat able to catch a fish. Thanks to Ismail trailing two lines out the back of the boat, we brought in an angry 5kg King Fish. Ismail was given te fish to take home to his family.
After a fine meal of pork and chicken on the ships gas BBQ (aka an African microwave!) the three of us sat around the table drinking and chatting and watching in the light of a full moon, a wooden boat trying to drop anchor. It was struggling to get a hold and in the strong current it was getting pulled backwards.
The crew were unable to control the thing and the unmistakeable sound of boats colliding. Someone phoned Henrick and he came out of the hotel, jumped on a dingy and then spent the next 40 minutes with his crew, untangling the two boats. Fortunately there was no serious damage to either boat, only a broken anchor winch which resulted in the crew having to man-haul it off the sea bed.
Then to add more excitement to the already drama-filled evening, the hotel’s dingy laden full of friends from our small armada, lost power and started drifting out into the bay towards Bagamoyo. Someone on the bgoat phoned a friend and a couple of people hopped into their own dingy and raced out to rescue them.
The third episode happened in the middle of the night as I slept when two drunken swimmers, unable to beat the strong current clambered aboard our boat to save themselves getting swept away.
We left at low tide and very nearly got caught on a sandbank. The depth warning kept going off as we gingerly motored our way back into open waters.
While the other boats stopped to go swimming on the sandbank or on the island, we headed back (I wanted to stop for snorkelling but was not permitted) to the yacht club.
Towards the end I got to try out at the helm and found it quite tricky in strong winds, to keep a steady course and actually embarrassed myself by doing a crash tack when I turned the wheel the wrong way. The other crew had to scramble to put the sail back where it should be.