I find that April is a month that’s equally great in the US
or Zambia. In Boston, it’s the true start of spring; in Zambia it’s the ideal
balance of hot and cold, wet and dry. This April started off even better than
usual thank to a lead in from the Easter long weekend. We traveled down to Lake
Kariba, one of the closest vacation spots to Lusaka, and crossed onto the
Zimbabwe side. From there we drove to the Cutty Sark Hotel, which we reached
after only a few wrong turns, where we found our lodging for the weekend; four
catamarans waiting for us on shore. After transferring all the coolers, food
and bags from the car, and listening to a conspicuously brief sailing tutorial
from our guides, we were handed sole command of our ships and turned loose on
the lake.
We spent the first few hours finding our sea legs and
getting a feel for the boats. By the time we had our tacking and jibing down
and were comfortably cruising we realized we were pretty far from the other
three boats. To our concern, two of the boats appeared to be motoring together
off into the distance. Concluding that we must’ve missed a planning session, we
quickly set a course in their direction and kicked our motor into high gear.
Looking over our shoulders we clucked in dismay as the last boat shrank to
a white dot in the distance. We tried texting and calling, in vain, to get them
to start their motor and hurry after us.
The sun went down before us, a very beautiful splash of
color silhouetting the island ahead and setting fire to the water around us. It was
around this time that the last boat finally got through to our phones. Their
motor had broken while trying to “rescue” a shipmate that had been thrown
overboard. They had been drifting listlessly, without power or wind, for the
last few hours that we had been motoring away. In their retelling of the story,
they would claim they thought it was the end and had made their peace with God,
which explains why they’d gone through almost their entire liquor allocation
for the weekend. The three working boats consolidated ourselves onto two and
sent one of the guides back for the stranded catamaran while we went to make
camp at the island. As it was already getting dark by this point, we weren’t
too hopeful about seeing our friends anytime soon.
Once we hit sand at the edge of the island we tied the
remaining two boats together and started preparing dinner. The stars were
coming out in force and before long almost everything above us was alight; the
Milky Way a stroke of white paint across the sky, so bright its reflection
shimmered in the black water. Then came moonrise. Like a great ego it lifted
from behind the Zimbabwean hills, heavy and red; nearly full. It outshone everything else in the sky, its presence adding even more to the romanticism
of our evening. In much less time than we were expecting we saw the twinkling
of flashlights and heard the shouts from the two approaching boats, one towing
the other. Reunited, they regaled us with their ordeal over dinner, after which
we fell asleep one by one on mats and blankets lain on the decks of the boats under huge mosquito nets hung from the masts, the wind blowing through the rigging.
I woke up to sunrise peeking through the tall grass on the
island, waving in the morning breeze. For a moment I thought I was on Cape Cod,
but the grunting of a nearby pod of hippos quickly brought me back. We spent
the day on the water. When there was wind we sailed, when there wasn’t, we
drifted, played cards, jumped in the water (when we were far from shore), and
generally lounged around the boat. We sailed past wildlife; elephants grazing
on shore, hippos basking in the shallows. At intervals we brought the boats
together but we spent the majority of the time on our own. One of my favorite
parts of the day was navigating the boat under wind power through an area of
petrified trees jutting out of the water. We went fishing as the sun was
setting, and some of the catches were big enough to be featured on the menu
that night. We ate together at one long table; a fire behind us, the water
before us and the stars above us.
We got an early start the next morning, Easter Sunday, as
our destination was a long way off and we needed to take advantage of the wind.
That morning we had the best sailing of the weekend, really picking up speed
and covering some ground before the wind died down around lunch. We stopped off
at a nearby island then met up with the other boats on the other side for the final
leg back to the hotel. Hanging off the boat as we pulled close to our cove I
realized how stress-free and happy I was. It was a restoring few days of
good food, good company and a beautiful environment. I think most of us would agree that this was
one of the nicest, easiest and most relaxing weekend trips we’d ever been on.
