It may be necessary to explain a few things about this story first. The Phoenicians were a Mediterranean sea-trading civilisation of the first millennium BC. They founded Tyre, Lisbon (probably), and Carthage. The word Punic, used to describe Rome's wars with Carthage between 264 and 146 BC, comes from the word Phoenician. Famous Carthaginians include Hannibal and Dido. No, not her. The other Dido. When I first saw the word dildo, I thought that word looks a lot like Dido. Not the other way round, you may have noticed. What kind of preparation for life is it when they teach you about mythical Phoenician queens before they teach you about dildoes?

Incidentally, there's a place called Dildo, in Newfoundland. There's a headland there, called Dildo Arm. At the other end of Dildo Arm - Dildo Cove. I kid you not. Next to them is Dildo Island, and once a year the whole area celebrates Historic Dildo Day. They've even got a mythical hero of their own, called Captain Dildo. I find myself thinking of John Barrowman for some reason.

Herodotus was a Greek historian of the fifth century BC. In his Histories, he tells the tale of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, with some backstory over the whole region. In the backstory, he casually refers to a Phoenician ship which had apparently sailed all the way round Africa, and back to the Mediterranean again.

You're now ready to read the BBC article referred to in the heading (Around Africa in a Phoenician boat). To paraphrase for the ninety per cent of you that couldn't be arsed, some latter day Thor Heyerdahls are going to try and recreate this voyage, in a ship built to a Phoenician design, but mainly crewed by British volunteers like John Bainbridge. It's about how you get on with people, that's the most essential skill, he said.

I'm not so sure, myself. I would have said the most essential skill was the ability to control an ancient Phoenician sailing ship. And they probably ought to read their Herodotus more carefully. He says the original crew took three years, and had to stop off twice to plant and grow some more food. Good luck doing that in the Congo.

They don't think that's going to be necessary. They think they can do all 17,000 miles in nine or ten months. By my calculations, that's about 60 miles a day.

I reckon that's a bit tight. According to the BBC article, the ship has a top speed of ten kilometres an hour, which is six and a bit miles. That's 150 miles a day, at top speed all the time.

Which means they're expecting to average 40% of their top speed. Day and night, for nearly a year. Not including stops to take on provisions, days when there's no wind, or it's blowing the wrong way, or you have to put in to avoid bad weather.

Good luck to them though. And here's their website (The Phoenician Ship Expedition). You can track their progress here.