A Sea Story

[BobSmalser]

At the end of each year's Dubai-Muscat yacht race, the Sultan of Oman's finish line celebration includes a traditional Dhow race.

http://www.bboman.com/marina/regatta/2002results.htm

The years I did it he made it amusing by asking for three crews...one American, one British, and one Omani. Each crew had two weeks to repair, rig and sail the 35' "Barkas" out of the naval museum's yard. Problem...you can imagine how dried out those thick teak planks were from 11 mo, 2 weeks in the Gulf sun, eh?

Usually we could only get two of the boats functional in time to race, and two crews would combine. As the sail had to be lashed to the yard with traditional braided coir, fids and mallets...a 3-5 hour job...we would also extend the yard if necessary with poles and lashings...one had to guess the wind the day before...sometimes with disastrous results.

Between sinking a boat from a sprung plank in 5 fathoms and recovering it....the resident Australian marine archaeologist separating his shoulder from a crashing yard during a dismasting...to having the strongest crewman dedicated to the one manual and traditionally-constructed pump...to caulking 2" thick carvel planks of flint-hard teak with additional coir side by side with a seafaring Omani who's grandfather had been a real pirate...it was a rich experience.

The pirate's grandson...a greybeard naval warrant who crewed Oman's national Dhow on it's motorless China voyage in his youth...was the crew captain and helmsman the year the American and Omani crews had to combine. My usual position was yard man because of relative size and strength...the yard has a lanyard used to pull up to 200lbs of sail and yard down from the short end to reverse the yard and invert the sail during tacks and jibes.

The British boat, crewed not by residents familiar with that part of the world but by a visiting warship crew of young sailors, made a better sail choice the day before and was a boat length ahead...as our tacks crossed my Omani captain ordered we ram the British boat, hailed them with his intentions and stated we would board, kill and eat them....I knew he was joking...and we missed in our attempt to ram (yes, he really tried to hit them)...

(There was precedent for the threat that all concerned were well aware of...in 1905 or so a British vessel full of colonials shipwrecked on Masirah Island where the locals did kill and eat them...musta been a bad year for fishing...and the Sultan then banished Masirah inhabitants from any improvements done to their way of life. When I left there in 1998, Masirah remained a very primitive place...and a large stone monument remains commemorating Britain's casualties.)

...but the British youngsters strangely kept their distance from us later at the firelight feast of baby goat, baby camel and saffron rice.

Couldn't find a Barka...this is the dhow that sailed to China:

PS. Baby camel tastes a bit like veal...and baby goat like lamb with a lighter flavor.

A traditional feast is a pit roast of baby camel with a baby goat inside...it with a chicken inside...the chicken with an egg inside....done for 24 hours in a sand pit covered with tarps and seaweed or more sand. The seaweed makes for a great clambake taste.

The meat laid out on a bed of saffron bismante rice on a 4'X 3' platter, messmates sitting crosslegged around the platter eating with only your right hand. Large fingerbowls and towels before and after eating, the entry courses often being fresh dates (more like coconut than dried dates), green salad and sometimes poached fish.

Meal finished off with a flan made from camel's milk for desert and gahwah coffee roasted in a copper pan over the fire, ground in a mortar and pestle, and brewed in a copper pot with moss used as a filter as it is poured.

A great time once your train your knees to sit like that for the two hours this all takes.

PPS...and the honored guests get to eat the eyeballs of the critters...raw.

An Omani friend of mine was commander of their Air Force and a city boy not from the sticks where this is routinely done. He would delight in presenting the chilled eyeball tray to visiting dignitaries...taking one first and popping it into his mouth with delight...then watching his guests squirm as they chewed uncomfortably for several minutes on their (tough) eyeballs....what his guests never knew...

....was that Muhammed Mafoud's "eyeball" he ate with so much relish was actually a peeled grape.

[Charlie Jones]

Fascinating!!

I own the book "The Sindbad Voyage" about the Arabian Boom named Sohar sailing from Muscat to Canton. Written by Tim Severin, who also did the "Brendan Voyage".

Found it to be a great read and made me want to be aboard.

I assume this voyage is the one you are speaking of, but in the book they call the ship a "Boom" which was a double ender, rather that a "Dhow". Probably a picky technical difference. Really interesting the difficulties he had having Sohar built exactly as she would have been during Sindbad's ( or whoever generated the Sindbad stories) time. Really interesting just what having a head of state behind you can do huh?

Still a neat post - thanks for putting it on the board

[BobSmalser]

they call the ship a "Boom"

Thanks. Yes, they do..."dhow" is a western corruption lumping dozens of traditional individual designs into one category.

But the pic I posted from the roundabout next to the Indian Ocean south of Muscat is indeed the vessel of which you speak and my friend crewed.

[MikeStevenson]

Thanks for the cool post. We've been intrigued by the traditional ships still working around the world for some time. The two brothers who did that Ring Of Fire documentary/book (Blair bros.?) opened our eyes to the great late-nineteenth-century ships still being made in Indonesia. I wonder if they're still being done? That documentary was done quite a while back.

Mike

[BobSmalser]

The Gulfies still build them in traditional yards all up and down the coast.

The yard in Kuwait was out my back door and we made friends over there among the Kuwaiti, Indian and Iranian shipwrights, who all still used traditional tools...including bow drills.

Teak carvel planks on teak and mango frames from India caulked with coir from coconut husks, payed with a shark oil and whiting slurry also used in a thinner mix to coat the hull below the waterline where it is not coppered. These boats have dead flat timber keels and carry stabilizing poles aboard to ground out at low tide where the hull needs regular maintenance in those warm, worm-infested waters.

You can see the whiting resdiue on the hulls below and also bituminous tar which is a later development used pretty much interchangeably. The brown seam compound you see is fresh coir caulking....not compound.

They had a 26-foot hull that was commissioned but never rigged or delivered as GWI intervened. I wanted to bring back home and coulda got it for a song but then me and the engineers did a good measurement and weight estimate...those 2"-thick teak planks and 6" X 6" teak frames were a bit heavy for my household goods allowance. I'da had to have done a container shipment...5 grand to New York then another couple grand to haul it west...too spendy.

See the square box under the stern deck extension on the port side? That's the traditional head.

http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/Front_Page_Photos/December/12_20_03_hires.jpg

[Fintan Murphy]

Excellent post Bob.

I've seen the Brendan voyage ship. It's on display up near Galway. I'ts a small boat to go crossing the atlantic in. :shock:

What I always found worrying is that if I ever visit somewhere that has a tradition of not using their left hand (for anything other than toilet duties), I am going to be in trouble as I'm left-handed.

[Mark Hughes]

Aye to that, Fintan. I was just thinking that myself as I read this. I am so left handed, I even have a left handed keyboard and mouse at work. I suppose put in the situation I would figure out how to eat right handed though. Better to embarass myself then offend the host.

[BobSmalser]

My wife is left-handed and had zero trouble living over there for the better part of a decade.

Allah is very understanding.

[Guest]

I may have posted these before here, but I can't find it, anywhere. This is in a Bahrian shipyard. Anyone like to cut these timbers and form them into ribs?

[seahawk]

Fitan...belive me hi crossing the pacific..when you stay at my home place you don't belive wats going on....1 ship great god for 2000 peoples it's going over the pacific with 4000 peoples...no baddy nos.

here its life.