MJOJO
I find the film below hypnotic. I’m a little worried that it has an appeal peculiar to me… and might not be of much interest to the wider readership. It’s about a dhow, or at least a dhow like boat, (with elements of Slocum’s SPRAY mixed in) and it’s begins in East Africa, where I was born and now regularly work. And there is a parallel in circumstances between the Beach family and my own, both leaving England to work in pre-independence Kenya and Uganda.
But then I realise that these elements are really superficial compared to the core of the story, which undoubtably has a universal appeal. A group of friends decides to build a boat on a beach in a foreign land and sail it home. They have aptitude, but little experience and despite their mild colonial arrogance, they come to respect the people and the skills that helped them fulfil their dream.
And then they set off. A simple, engineless, roughly hewn craft becomes their home, and crosses half the world. Graham Cox, who really is the leading expert on early small scale, private, sailing exploration, alerted SWS to the story. He writes…
The blue-water dhows fascinate me. One of the most striking boats that came into Durban during my youth in the late 1960s was MJOJO of LAMU. Based on a dhow hull, but with a gaff cutter rig, it sailed up to the Seychelles and then onward to Durban, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and England. I last heard of it a few years ago sailing in the Mediterranean after being restored.
While watching the film there are a few mildly cringeworthy moments but that’s not surprising as that as values and expectations have of course changed in the last sixty years.
But my over-riding impression of the adventure is not one of privileged white folk having fun on the back of the colonised, but of an fast disappearing attitude of discovery and adventure, where the only rules worth obeying, are those that you set for yourself.
This weekend I’m about to sail in a Cat 2 Ocean Race, and I’ve managed to jump through all the hoops required to comply. No doubt my journey will be safer than the Beach family’s was, when they set off to the Seychelles, but I know which journey would be more fun!
Di Beach’s book is available HERE
