Mina Safaga, Egypt

Our first afternoon in Sudan we grabbed the chance to explore the mysterious ruined island city of Old Suakin. The 3000-year-old city had been abandoned since the Second World War, when it had ceased to serve its traditional purpose as a slave trading centre -- the last slave market in the world. Now its buildings were falling down, most of them already transformed into giant piles of coral stone rubble. Amongst the hundreds of mounds, however, there were still many standing houses, two mosques with tall minarets, and a small palace.

The hills of rubble were tall enough that within minutes the five of us were having trouble keeping track of each other. I tried to keep up with Christopher, who was clambering over the four-metre tall piles of stones with the ease of a mountain goat.

I trailed behind, hampered by my modest floor-length skirt, worn in deference to the proprieties of this strict Moslem society in which most of the women keep at least their heads, if not their entire faces covered. Finally I was forced to hoist my voluminous skirts somewhat immodestly over one arm. But there was no one around to gawk; we had this fabulous abandoned city entirely to ourselves.

I had stopped to admire a single wall of what must have once been a beautiful house, because an ornately carved wooden window frame was still standing. Somewhere in the distance I heard a call from Michael, and looking up I spotted him - waving from the top of the tallest point in the entire city, a slender, slightly leaning minaret.

I caught my breath, for he was standing on the outer rim of this tall tower of an ancient ruined mosque, on a slightly slanted ledge with no railings. Abandoning my contemplation of the lone wall, I continued clambering over the obstacle course to where my son was perched, high above the rest of us. Long before I arrived, Jonathan joined his brother on the top of the tipsy minaret. Here and there we stepped over the hooves, woolly skin and bones of long-dead sheep.

Soon all of us had clambered in through a small window, climbed up the narrow spiral staircase, and from inside the tower enjoyed an eagle's-eye view of the entire ruined city.

Finally we convinced the boys to climb down, whereupon they immediately launched themselves into a game of laser tag in this labyrinth of streets and half ruined buildings. By the time we collected the three of them from the far-flung corners of their empire and returned to the boat, the boys were hot, panting and satisfied.

We immediately turned on the motor to charge our batteries and run our fridge. But within seconds the boat was filled with the most horrendous banging and clanging. Herbert whipped open the engine compartment and began frantically examining the motor, tapping on various places with a hammer to figure out what was happening. It truly sounded as if an explosion was imminent.

After a painfully long and noisy minute in which the rest of us were frozen in horror, Herbert called to Michael to put the motor into forward. From inside the engine room, we could see the gear shifter move -- but Northern Magic did not.

"Turn it off!" Herbert screamed hoarsely over the din, and there was, at last, blessed silence. We all took a big breath. Herbert was slumped and silent.

"Is it the transmission?" I whispered nervously. When our captain looks this way, it's best to tread softly.

He nodded, with a look of anguish on his face. I didn't dare say anything more. Half way up the Red Sea with strong winds beating against us, there couldn't have been a worse place to lose our motor - unless it was at the deserted island at which we had been anchored just two days before. Oh yes, it could have been much worse.

The immediate issue that faced us, however, was not the transmission, but production of energy. The motor was necessary for charging our batteries and running our fridge, and we were already low on power. Immediately we switched off all fans, the computer, the Inmarsat and lights, even though it was growing dark. Until the next morning, when Herbert could remove the transmission and see what was happening inside, we would have no idea what it would take to fix the problem. The possibility rose alarmingly that we might be stuck in Sudan for weeks. And the cost of a new transmission? Not to be imagined.

Early next morning Herbert began the job of dismantling the transmission. He hooked up a block and tackle on the boom over the entrance to the cockpit, just over the engine room. Michael was stationed on deck pulling on ropes, hoisting up the heavy transmission so it could be worked upon.

Soon Herbert was holding a set of three steel discs in his hand. This was the transmission damper connecting the motor to the transmission, something like a clutch. Six thick steel springs contained within the discs were gone, and the discs themselves were missing large chunks of steel. Despite the poor mangled damper, the look on Herbert's face was almost triumphant, because this was in fact his best-case scenario. At least we didn't need an entire new transmission.

Also, he discovered that even without the transmission connected, we could still run the motor to charge our batteries. Of course we couldn't go anywhere, but by early afternoon the damage assessment was complete and we were once again running our fridge.

The next morning Herbert and I set off by bus to Port Sudan, a city about two hours away. Our agent, Mohammed, whose enormous height was equalled by his friendliness, volunteered to come with us. There was absolutely no hope of finding a new damper in Port Sudan, he said; even Sudan's main hydroelectric station was unable to ship in vital needed parts. Our only hope was to find a machine shop to somehow manufacture a temporary replacement.

The bus ride took us through arid semi-desert with only a sprinkling of vegetation. Several times we passed dead camels on the road. Camel roadkill, that's a first. We also saw many tent villages occupied by nomadic tribes. The tents, although large, were real makeshift affairs, built out of a mish-mash of blankets, tarpaulins and flapping bedsheets. They must have been filthy inside because the gap at the bottom allowed that fierce north wind to pass underneath, bringing with it loads of desert sand. The tents were completely open to the south. In truth they were nothing more than lean-to awnings.

Despite the conditions in which these people lived, Mohammed told us that they were very happy with their nomadic life. In fact they were, he told us, quite rich, breeding racing camels and selling them for big money in Saudi Arabia. Surrounding the villages we did often see large herds of camels. What they grazed on, I have no idea.

Several members of that tribe were on our bus. I was fascinated by a young woman who embarked with her husband and infant. All that I could see of her were her eyes, which were astonishingly lovely. She wore a mask over her nose and mouth that was ornamented with a fine tracery of silver beads. Her arms carried a wealth of golden jewellery. She looked about 20 years old.

Sitting at the front of the bus facing the rest, the woman opened her colourful robe without embarrassment to feed the baby on her lap. It seemed strange that she would be too shy to reveal her face, but had no qualms about exposing her breast to the 50 people facing her. I was dying to know what she looked like, for she seemed incredibly beautiful, but I never got to see more of her face than those amazing exotic eyes.

Most of the men on the bus wore great swaddled turbans on their heads. As the bus rumbled through the desert (it was a Canadian Bluebird school bus) we saw that the headdress had an important function. Desert sand had begun freely blowing in through the open windows, and one by one the men brought a loop from their turbans down to protect their noses and mouths. Soon we were about the only people on the bus whose faces were not covered by cloth. Instead, ours were covered with fine grit.

Port Sudan was a rather awful, filthy place, at least the parts of it we saw. Mohammed brought us to the dirtiest machine shop in the world. The cluttered workshop was more like a junkyard, every last corner overflowing with piles of rusty abandoned parts - ancient crankshafts, engine blocks, clutches and pumps, all sorted by type and covered with a thick coating of sandy dust and grime.

Herbert conferred with half a dozen technicians, pondering, waving their arms and gabbling along with each other in loud, gutteral-sounding Arabic. Mohammed translated and Herbert directed each step along the way with sketches, demonstrations and sometimes forceful body language.

The rebuilding of our broken part took the whole day, hampered by the shop's lack of basic tools. While they had a large lathe, grinder and drill press, they didn't have drill bits or even a file. In order to cut one hole, Herbert and the mechanics had to walk a block to borrow an acetylene torch.

By the end of it, very little of our original damper remained. Our "new" damper was made from cannibalized parts taken from several rusty old automotive clutches dug out of a pile, plus pieces of our old damper, machined and welded together. The welder and his two helpers wore nothing to protect their eyes from the glare of the welding flame, an omission which will, sooner or later, cost them their eyesight.

The finished product was a bizarre conglomeration: springs from here, some of which were too big and had to be modified to fit -- a thick disc from there, its inside drilled out and replaced with the inner cog from our old damper -- various bits and pieces of steel welded in neatly or not-so-neatly to replace those chunks that had broken off. This Frankenstein-creation didn't look the best, but we hoped it would at least get us to Egypt, where a brand new part would, we hoped, be waiting.

We returned to Suakin with our hopes resting on that weird, jumbled-together, untrustworthy-looking metal contraption. It took only a few hours to install Frankenstein and get everything hooked up together again. Nervously, we turned the motor on, dreading another horrendous clamour that would mean failure and a long stay in Sudan. But the motor hummed as normal, and tentatively we put it into gear.

It worked! We looked at each other with smiling eyes, but were scared to utter a hopeful word, lest we hex it all.

Frankenstein's real sea trial would come soon enough, but by hook or by crook we were pieced back together, ready to attempt the next leg of our slog up the Red Sea.