Day 349, Year 5 101010 and 1111
Date: Sunday, October 10, 2010
Weather: Another Clear Day, Winds 10 Knots NNW
Latitude: 16 02.984 S
Longitude: 44 36.714 E
Miles to Go: 1067
The Captain’s Log entry this morning reflected the date of 10/10/10 with 1111 miles to go to Richards Bay. I’m taking all of these 1’s and 0’s to be a good omen and as I write this log we have been out 11 hours and traveled 44. It has not been a fast day, but we were able to sail. The winds are coming from the NNW and we are headed W, so we have been tight on the wind all day. We are currently 10 miles from the tip of Cape St. Andre, the western most point in Madagascar, and from there we head south down the west coast of Madagascar. Constance is a couple of miles ahead of us and Odulphus has stopped on the coast to spend the night in anticipation of light winds tonight. We made the decision to travel on but we might be motoring, so we are already regretting the decision. But we’ll live with it. We rounded Cape St. Ambre at the tippy-top of Madagascar on June 12th, almost four months ago, and tonight we will round Cape St. Andre and head south. We now know that we will be making a stop in the Barren Islands on Madagascar’s west coast instead of heading directly to Richards Bay. A cold front is headed north from South Africa and will bring strong south winds and heavy seas. At least that is today’s forecast and the weather gurus we check-in with on the radio each day are saying stopping in the Barren’s is a good idea. We’ll be there on Tuesday and just have to wait and see how many days we will have to stay before traveling on. But no worries. There is supposed to be great snorkeling there, so we’ll have lots of fun while waiting. From there Richards Bay is a six or seven day sail, so we should be there sometime next week. I’m betting we stay in the Barrens until Saturday and will be in Richards Bay the following Friday, October 22. That’s Lynne’s birthday and the 23rd is Ed and Carla’s birthday. So we’ll have many reasons to celebrate once we arrive.
Last night we did get to talk to our son Justin. Justin, Jo, and Ziggy were in restaurant having lunch and we didn’t get to talk to Jo or Ziggy, but they are back in California headed for Los Angeles. They play there and then head on to Prescott, Arizona, for the last performance before returning to New Mexico. They are having a great time and love traveling in the bus. I can’t wait to see a photo of it. Jo painted it right before they left and all Justin said is, “You know there is never anything subtle about Jo’s painting.” Mark did some stainless polishing today and I continued to work on naming photos. I am now back to photos in VOW’s Year 3 that never got named and put on the website. Today I visited the three beautiful crater lakes of Kelimutu on Flores Island in Indonesia. Tomorrow I get to revisit Gili Air in Lombok. In between naming photos, I read the Lonely Planet for South Africa and make notes for our travels there. Mark’s reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Abraham Lincoln, The Team of Rivals. He’s loving it and I’ll know everything in the book by the time he is done as he just can’t keep from saying, “Did you know . . . ?”
