Tension as MV Templar suffers engine failure

“I suddenly noticed that once again, we were motionless in water. The MV Templar was not moving. I looked around and noticed that the distance to the nearest shore was very short; about 50 metres maximum. The island was uninhabited; not a single house or boat in sight.
It was a very tense moment. I felt a sense of foreboding. For no apparent reason, I turned to speak to Jackie, the person who was seated next to me throughout the journey. I told her: “Man, I just cannot die today.”
Jackie told me that she was also getting very afraid. I told her of how my whole family was already having a very difficult year after losing my father six months earlier in April. It would simply be too catastrophic for them to also lose a son or a brother, in the same year. I was thinking about my mother. “How would she take it? If I died today, it would be an unbearable blow to her,” I thought.
She was living deep in Ibanda District, western Uganda, about 300km away from this place and had no clue whatsoever that I was on board MV Templar. I doubt that she even knew that I had ever been on a boat cruise in my entire life. It would certainly be devastating to her to hear that I had lost my life on a boat cruise. I looked around the boat a second time. The lake shore was very close.

“I can swim this distance in less than a minute,” I thought. “Less than one minute and I will be over there on solid ground and this endless worry would stop.”
Then, I removed my shoes. I will never completely understand what made me do this. I also removed my socks. I looked around the boat and saw a small group of people standing in the corridor near me. They seemed to be talking about the worrying state of affairs that we were in. I stood up barefoot and walked towards them. I do not recall who they were but I wanted to join in their discussion.
While listening to their assessment of the situation, every once in a while, I would take a look to see that I did not step on a broken bottle or something other sharp object. I could see that the entire floor was very dirty with a lot of dust and other rubbish.
I was getting worried that there could be some broken pieces of glass on the floor that I could accidentally step on, which could cut me. So, I dusted my feet, put on my socks and shoes on, and sat down quietly. In the meantime, the calls or announcements about balancing the boat on the microphone continued. But this time, they were more frequent. However, just like before, the announcements were still being made in between the loud music that was playing on the loud speakers.

Boat back on the move
Then the boat began to move once again. It appeared that the engines had been fixed and we were on our way, once again. The MV Templar was moving away from the second point where the engines had failed earlier. It was still moving at a relatively slow pace similar to that after the first engine failure. I felt a huge sense of relief. We moved along that slow pace for about 15 minutes. Then it stopped for the third time.
I looked around and saw at a distance a sign post reading ‘Mutima Beach’. The boat had suffered its third and final engine failure. At a distance, I could see a number of wooden boats, the type used by fishermen. I could see a number of people moving about. I assumed they were fishermen. The Mutima Beach signpost was on one side of this dry land that appeared like a beach.
So at this time I realised that we had arrived at Mutima Beach. In my experience of sailing on the MV Templar, I had never even seen or heard of Mutima Beach. I think it was between 6:30pm and 6:45pm when we arrived at the beach. The fishermen saw our vessel arriving. We had a loud music system on board. This attracted their attention so that for a minute or two, they stopped what they were doing to look at us. After a while, they went back to their business.
As I was staring out at the beach, I asked Pollando who was passing by: “In your estimation, how far away from K-Palm Resort Beach are we?” He said: “Aaahhh, we are still far. We still have like another 45 minutes of travelling on the lake. We have only travelled about 30 minutes.”

Another engine failure
The MV Templar’s outboard engines stopped about 200 metres away from the shore of Mutima Beach. When we got to this spot, the sun was setting. The “balance the boat” announcements were still going on; the boat was swaying from side to side. I noticed that there was more urgency in the tone of the person who was making the announcement. But the reminders were being delivered in the middle of loud music.
This kind of got me angry. It was becoming more apparent that the announcer needed to switch off the music and concentrate on telling us what exactly he wanted us to do. Many revellers still did not know exactly what, “Balance the boat”, meant or whether we were in eminent danger, or what we needed to do. From the tone of the announcer on the microphone, the situation appeared to become more desperate each passing minute. Most revellers were drunk by this time since they had been drinking all the way from KK Beach.
I could hear people at the front of the boat shouting out, “It’s just like the Titanic!” The situation on the boat was getting more worrying. Some revellers were standing in small groups of three to five, saying very little or nothing at all.
At about this time, Prince Wasajja came to our table again and told me: “Omanyi, wano omugezi waakubira ka speedi booti [loosely translated as; You know what; this is the moment to call a speed boat]”
I thought about this and actually realised that it made so much sense. I thought, “We should have probably done this earlier.” Many times I ask myself, what if I had told him, “Yes, please, let’s call a speedboat.”
I guess I was too terror-stricken to say much. I just kept quiet. The speedboat charges about Shs100,000 to transport someone between Ggaba Beach and K-Palm Beach. I had about Shs80,000 in my wallet that day and I knew that I was not in a position to call for a speedboat. I did not even know the telephone number of anyone who ran a speedboat service in the area.
We waited for something to be done, while floating about 200 meters from Mutima Beach. I stayed seated, waiting for instructions on what to do next. No special instructions were forthcoming. As I sat there looking around the boat, I suddenly realised that the water from the lake had reached a bag that one of the revellers had placed underneath our table.
Then, I saw a young man emerge from the captain’s cabin and move very hurriedly to where Templar was seated, at the back of the boat. Until then, I had not seen him at all during the boat cruise. He was dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a short sleeved orange shirt similar to those worn by the crew of The MV Templar that day. He spoke to Templar for a while and hurriedly returned to the cabin. It is only after the incident when I learnt that he was called Joel Eguma. He is the one who steered the boat on the day it sank.
I later learnt that the regular captain, David Mukwaya, had refused to navigate the boat that morning because of grave concerns he had about its mechanical condition.
After a few more minutes, the young man came out of the cabin again and went to speak to Templar. Shortly afterwards, they both hurriedly moved through the corridors of the boat and went to the bow section, just in front of the captain’s cabin. I did not see what they did there.
However, one of the survivors later said they opened one of the hatches that leads to the lower section of the boat and saw something that shocked or frightened both of them. I think they had seen that the water had completely over run the entire lower hull of the boat.
After this, I saw Templar return to his spot at the back of the boat while the skipper climbed the metallic stairs that led to the captain’s cabin. However, I also noticed that this time round, he did not enter into the Captain’s cabin but instead, climbed to the roof of the cabin. After this, I never saw him again. Some of the survivors later said he had taken a dive off the boat into the lake.
It was getting darker, probably getting to about 7:30pm when suddenly, the music stopped. In that moment, I thought to myself: “Thank goodness! Someone has seen the logic of switching off the music so that the instructions about how to balance the boat can now be issued with much more clarity.”
Once again, I could hear voices from the front section of the boat shouting: “It’s just like the Titanic!! It’s like Titanic”.
I could hear them quite clearly. Everyone could hear them. I had noticed that quite a number of people on the boat, had been in various stages of alcohol intoxication. So, I thought: “It must be the alcohol speaking.”

Continues tomorrow