Day 337, Year 5 Staying for Another Day in Honey River
Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Weather: Same, Same-Rain Overnight, Cloudy Early, Sunny, Clear Day
Location: Baramahamay Bay (Honey River), NW Madagascar

We had a quiet day until late afternoon. At 2:30 pm we listened to the weathers on the South African Maritime Mobile Net. The net controller, Graham, says we are going to have winds from the SW tomorrow and the next day and that is exactly the direction in which we are headed. If the winds are actually from the SW, Ed has come up with a plan to sail out to sea and then tack back in so we could use the winds instead of bashing into them. We went to the “honey” village in the late afternoon to take two huge bags of glass and plastic containers that we have emptied over the last few months. We have been giving them away a bit at a time, but we decided that it was time to get rid of all of them. The villagers were delighted to get them as well as a bag of old clothing and I was delighted to get another two wine bottles full of local honey. It is a very light honey but it makes the tastiest granola ever. On our way to the village we saw that Armelle T had come in and anchored, and Dream Catcher and Muneera were looking for a space to anchor when we got back. All of these boats are headed to South Africa and I think all three are staying here tomorrow, so we have decided to do the same. I told you this trip south was going to be mora, mora, and it is certainly starting out that way.

We got emails from both of our kids this morning. Justin, Jo, and Ziggy are on the road again. They are now in California. They were finally able to get the bus started after letting it run out of fuel, but they are hoping that bio-diesel will be easier to find in California and Oregon. We also heard from our daughter Heather and her email prompted a flurry of Caribbean research. She and Jed are thinking that Brazil is just too expensive and too many hours of travel with two little ones, so now we are trying to find a spot that they might join us in the Caribbean. In order to do that we needed to get our tentative sailing schedule set up so they will know where we will be when. That took all morning but we are feeling really good about getting the next cruising season planned out now so we won’t have to think about it until time to leave South Africa. I have a feeling once we get to South Africa we are going to be very busy with inland travel to game parks and boat work that needs to be done. Not to mention the weather watching we will have to do to find our windows of opportunity for doing small hops down the coast to Cape Town.

Since we are here for another day, we hope to go back to the honey village, leave our dinghy there, and walk out to the beach at the entrance to the bay to look for quartz agates that we have heard are there. That plus an afternoon of baking bread are the big plans for tomorrow.

100928 Day 337 Nosy Ankazoberavina, Madagascar–Underwater