Building the Sail Boat

Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

A huge portion of our time in Segou was spent building the sail for the boat. Jonathan worked endlessly designing, sewing, building, stressing and barely sleeping to fulfill his dream of owning his own sail boat.

The reason was that we had been troubled by the harmattan winds, which have the potential to stop our boat in its wake, or even reverse the direction of the river. Jonathan figured if he built a sail, we would be able to tack down river against the wind. Although we had never seen any sailing pirogues do anything except go down wind, Jonathan pointed out that Polynesians could sail long distances in small canoes against winds using false keels, which basically meant lots of weight right in the middle of the boat. We would also have two sails, instead of a single spinnaker, like everyone here. I didn’t know a thing about sailing or how sailing boats even work, so I was open. Blai wasn’t sure, and figured we would need some sort of keel under our boat.

The first step consisted of sewing together a whole bunch of grain sacks to make the two sails. We had to find the strongest sacks, which turned out to be the sacks from sugar imported from Brazil. Jonathan didn’t stop sewing for several days, and Blai and I helped out as much as we could.

Sewing the sails at home. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

The next challenge would be to build the mast. Most boats used the trunk of a certain kind of tree, which looked pretty shoddy, and none were very tall. Jonathan wanted a 5-meter mast, so we ended up using a beam of high quality (and expensive) red wood, the same type that tour boat is constructed from.

Quality rope was impossible to find, so our lines were made from a 1 cm thick nylon rope. We spent hours “whipping” the ends, which consists of melting the tips, then sewing it up tightly to ensure it would never fray.

Jonathan and Blai set up the rigging on the top of the mast before we installed it on the boat. We nailed a board across the boat, parallel to one of the benches, then two more smaller boards across to make a square the size of the mast. Next we nailed a wooden square on the floor, for the mast to drop into. This was good because it made our mast just pop in and out. The whole rig would be easily removable and not nailed in. Putting it in the first time was difficult and scary, since it was so tall and heavy, but we managed to not drop it or crush anyone’s head. Just to have the mast up after nearly three weeks in Segou was an exciting moment. We just stared around and looked at the new addition to our boat. Jonathan was beaming.

Blai and I after setting up the mast for the first time. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

Our vessel awaits.

As soon as we got the front sail up, the jib, Jonathan announced, we’re going sailing! We knew we wouldn’t be able to go up wind, but he wanted to feel us move by wind’s power. I didn’t even get a chance to put my things away in the house, so I just hopped in the boat. I was on the bow of the boat with a paddle, while Blai was in the middle to control the sail and Jonathan was in the back to steer us with a paddle. With the 5 meter mast, our boat was now completely wobbly, and any little move would send the whole boat rocking back and forth. When we got in the middle of the river, for some reason, I needed to move from the bow, to the middle, but there was a line in my way. As I tried to curl my body around it, the boat started moving back and forth. I tried to recover, but I over-corrected, and went flying off the boat. As I resurfaced, the guys were laughing, and Blai asked if I had my phone on me. Oh, I forgot, yes, I did. And my money belt for some reason. I swam back to the boat, handing Blai my sensitive items. My phone looked finished, and my passport was pretty wet. My Mali visa (the best visa I have ever seen) was pretty ruined, but the rest was ok. After taking apart my phone and letting it dry for a couple days, it made an impressive recovery.

Balancing act. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

A few days later, we had the whole rig more or less complete. A mast, a main sail, a jib, a boom (made of bamboo) plenty of lines, cleats, etc. For a sailing rig built from scratch with local materials, I have to say it was very impressive.

The first time we took it out, however, we were unable to move forward. The best we could do into the wind was go sideways, and cross the river without advancing an inch. This led to a long succession of new and fairly crazy ideas.

The first thing that Blai and Jonathan came up with was to make a huge paddle to use as a rudder in the back. We had seen some of the local sailing pirogues using this to keep them straight so we gave it a shot. We needed materials, though, and didn’t want to make investments into things that we did not know would even work. This is the point where I would say that we got controversially resourceful.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

There was a broken down donkey cart in front of our house, and at night Jonathan and Blai tore off one of the metal walls of it. It was 3x1 foot piece of metal that would become the paddle. They wrapped the paddle in grain sacks so nobody would know we had confiscated a piece from the donkey cart wall.

Our testing of the paddle was unsuccessful. We could only get a slight forward motion, and the amount of effort it took did not make it worth it. We needed a keel.

Jonathan with the wrapped up paddle and lines and tools hanging off his belt. Photo Credit: Blai Coulibaly

Jonathan toiled the next couple days on the keel. He grabbed the other wall off the donkey cart, and nailed it into a frame with the other wall and some boards from Blai’s bed frame. He then wrapped the metal pieces in bags to conceal them from sight. When we hauled the keel down to the boat for testing, we saw that the women in their gardens immediately recognized what we were doing. One of them started yelling to the other women, while pointing at the unused donkey cart that was mysteriously missing its walls. They never confronted us, but everyone knew. The thing is, we weren’t really going to steal anything, we just needed to see if this would actually work, and then we would go and buy materials to replicate our experiments.

So we lashed the new keel under the boat and set out with high hopes. This was not an ideal thing to do, as many parts of the river are extremely shallow and this would reduce our clearance by at least a foot.

It didn’t work. We tried the placing the keel different places on the boat, but we still couldn’t do more than just cross the river without advancing against the wind. Back to the drawing board.

The keel, lashed underneath our boat. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

There was constant brainstorming, and our next big idea came when we were just sitting around looking at materials at our disposal. Half jokingly, I suggested using the huge metal shutters on our windows for the keel frame. We ended up deciding that it was worth a shot, so Jonathan started planning it out. He also decided that instead of a big paddle in the back, we really needed a big rudder. He built it out of the large wooden seat from the stern of the boat and used extra bamboo and bed frame boards to attach it to the boat.

I was scared that this would actually work, as it made our boat incredibly complicated. Not only would we need to set up the sails every day, but we would need to get our boat into deep enough water to attach the huge keel and rudder. We would only be able to sail in depths of at least three or four feet, which frankly was frequently impossible.

The new extra large keel, made from window shutters from our house. Photo Credit: Jonathan Diarra

At the last minute, we decided to just go all out and use our other keel at the same time. Two keels, and a rudder. It was as far as we were willing to go and we knew it. Setting it up was a headache and we would need to start with the larger keel inside the boat, then put it in place when we got to deep enough water. Jonathan would dive under the boat to tie it up underneath. When we dipped it into the water, we heard a squeak then a splash. I saw a bat in the water. It had been sleeping inside the shutter the whole time, including the entire time that Jonathan had been banging at it with a hammer.

Jonathan dives under the boat to secure the keel with rope and bamboo.

It seemed to work at first. We were moving, and the rudder had a lot of power to keep our boat in the right direction. But within a few minutes, we saw that we were still not moving forward. We had to throw in the towel. Jonathan was extremely dejected. He had put his heart and soul into this project and it seemed obvious now that we wouldn’t be going anywhere with it. We took down the sails, took off the keel and pulled out a bag of wine sachets to drown our sorrows. In a way, though, I was relieved. I was never interested in over-complicating this journey, although moving on the windy days would have been nice. Still, I had been a part of this for the entire month, and it felt disappointing to see all that hard work wasted. I learned a lot, though, and at least understand how sail boats work (and don’t work).

On our last days in Segou, we put the bed back together, returned the donkey cart walls and shutters. The whole community must have thought we were insane this whole time, especially for the fact that we were trying to do something that they already knew as impossible.