My ocean voyage from hell

Wondering what this year will bring, at dawn this morning I stood in the waves in front of our beach house and watched two Swahili sailing dhows battling through monsoon surf, heading out to the fishing grounds. For 1,500 years mariners off our East African coast have voyaged in these lovely boats and now, just in the past couple of years, fibreglass hulls have started to replace teak planking, and outboard motors instead of lateen sails propel men across the ocean. I was looking at the end of a long history. In my life I’ve enjoyed wonderful sea safaris on dhows, hunting for tuna and ambergris and waves to surf — and I wonder what’s ahead.

I didn’t know what was ahead in the late 1980s when I worked as a stringer for the FT in Tanzania, but every weekend I would head down to the bandari or port of Dar es Salaam and catch an overnight dhow to Zanzibar.