arrival - 0700 friday

Friday
0700

I'm eagerly snapping photos from the bow of the Anastasis as we approach the west Africa shoreline in the early morning. I feel quite special as I've got a bright blue hard hat on and am allowed in this restricted area of the ship with a select group of deck hands for our final entry into the port. The bow, for those of you who have never sailed, is that place where Leonardo did all that top of the world nonsense in James Cameron's bloated film. The deck crew prepared the starboard (right side) anchor which took about 5 minutes and involved two deck hands with wrenches as they basically unwound it so it dangled over the water, ready to drop it if we should need to.... Mind that sentence. I lazily snap a few shots of this procedure, and of a fishing canoe silhouetted in the rising sun against the approaching coast, and notice that about 100 people have gathered on the dock to welcome us. We've been delayed about a week due to engine problems, and it's been a 10-day sail from a stopover in Tenerife. As a standing crew of 321, a collective sense of restlessness had been evident these past two days, everyone quite eager to reach African soil and begin our humanitarian work in Cotonou, Benin. We are close now, and I notice the ship is coming in a strange angle, actually no angle at all but perpendicular to the cement port wall, and the next minute seems to take place on Mars.

• 1. "Brace for Impact" comes out over the loudspeaker so I run towards the edge of the ship with the camera for a better view until one of the officers grabs me and throws me down against a huge cord of coiled rope. Yeah, yeah, what am I thinking...
• 2. Now I'm scared and see unless we turn quickly we're going to hit at a speed of at least 25 mph (I later find out we were doing 2 knots or about 3 mph...)
• 3. Captain calls over the walkie-talkies to drop the anchor which happens noisily, spitting rust and chunks of metal everywhere.
• 4. Captain calls for the port anchor to be dropped except it hadn't been prepared like the other one but one quick look at the shore tells me it wouldn't matter anyway as we
• 5. Make contact with the concrete port wall. It's a soft sort of jolt. Quite anti-climactic really, and I hang over the port side again to resume action photography, even though I'm to later find I've been outdone by a killer photo from land.
• 6. The ship seems to pull back from the concrete as people on the dock scurry away from the point of impact for safer vantage, and a cloud of disintegrated concrete rises. The ship pulls back from the port wall, I later find out as a result of the anchor catching, and then begins to slide gently alongside her. The back of the ship had also just narrowly missed a huge steam tanker by inches, and has a nasty 2-meter bite mark in the kisser. Surprisingly, we are safely tied up within 20 minutes, and I'm the third one onto African soil to photograph the welcoming committee with its local dignitaries and musicians, encouraged by the crew's waving and cheering en masse. Welcome to Benin.