Monday, January 7, 2013

Progress report with conch

I have learned today from Greg that the boat is due to arrive in Dakar on Sunday, Jan 13. It will then be moved to the private harbor of the Hotel Terrou Bi, whose official address is on Martin Luther King Boulevard, which is rather of a surprise and coincidence, as they might well be departing near the US holiday of Martin Luther King Jr Day (Jan 21).

To see where this is, start from the picture showing Dakar as the westernmost tip of Africa, and zoom in.





Thus we can fine tune the departure point we guessed in an earlier article, but that does not change any of the rest of those early notes.

As I understand, the boat is now on the ship SANTA GIORGINA, which is, as I write, headed into the port of Gibralter, to arrive before midnight, tonight. After that stop, it must turn around and go straight on down to Dakar, I would guess. Dakar is about 1600 nmi from its stop in ALGECIRAS, and the ship cruises in the ocean at about 14-15 kts, which will taken them about 4 - 5 days, so we are right at the 13th. You can use the above link to watch the boat on the ship come down the coast of Africa.

So standing somewhere near Martin Luther King Blvd. in Dakar near Martin Luther King Day here the local folks in Dakar will hear Jordan's famous conch signal saying good by. Below is his signal saying goodby to Starpath at our last meeting, with Greg and Pat in the background.

Here is another view of the conch in hand somewhere before or after the Round Vancouver Island expedition. We look forward to hearing it Miami sometime not long after the Vernal Equinox.

So first rough estimates: leave by Martin Luther King Day, arrive by the Vernal Equinox.

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Update added on Jan 24, to follow though on the conch. Here is the conch going off at the start with a neat video attached.


Click the pic to see the French video. It has a 30s ad in front of it.












1 comment:

  1. Thursday, 3Pm Seattle time, the boat on the ship is just passing Cape Bojador, off the coast of Western Sahara, coincidentally very near the place the US Brigg Commerce from CT was wrecked in 1815 and its crew taken into slavery by local tribesmen. After a long and painful enslavement, this led to two books, one famous called Riley's Narrative (http://www.starpath.com/catalog/books/1728.htm) which was a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, as it was a good example of the horrors of slavery regardless of the race of the captors.

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