Day 289, Year 5 Exploring Baramahamay Bay & August Letter to Family & Friends
Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Weather: Mix of Sun and Threatening Clouds
Location: Baramahamay Bay, NW Madagascar
Windbird’s dinghy got little rest today. In the morning we took the dinghy back out of the bay and tried to get to the beaches on either side of the entrance. Unfortunately, the tide was too low and there were too many rocks, so it seemed like too much a risk to try and beach the dinghy. We tried three different places and finally gave up. I had hoped to take a long walk on the beach but that was not to be. On our way back to Windbird we stopped to meet Richard on Chant de Mer. Richard grew up in France and then moved to South Africa as a young adult. He has sailed back and forth from South Africa to here numerous times since1991 and we really enjoyed talking with him learning about different anchorage possibilities. We also enjoyed hearing about how he built his built. We spent at least an hour aboard Chant de Mer and then headed back to Windbird for lunch. In the afternoon we took the dinghy and headed further into the river. Richard had drawn a map for us, without which we would have been lost again, and went as far as we could go before there was barely any water over the rocks. The Baramahamay River is big and the tributary we took was also wide for a bit, but then it narrowed. We didn’t see any crocodiles, which is good, but we also didn’t see many birds. Beyond the mangroves, it looks as if the hills have been stripped-of what, we don’t know. Hardwood trees have probably been logged, but we really have no idea.
Tomorrow we will head further south to an island called Nosy Kalakajoro. If it looks like a good anchorage, we will spend the night there. If it doesn’t, we will continue on to a little bay on the mainland called Paradise Hole by cruisers. We’ll see where the wind blows us.August 11, 2010.
In the meantime, we have included our August Letter to Family and Friends below:
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| 100811 Day 289 Baramahamay Bay, Madagascar–River Trip |
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Dear Family and Friends,
Windbird’s Indian Ocean adventure continues. The last letter to Family and Friends was sent on June 2. Since that time we have traveled from the atolls of Chagos to the island country of Madagascar off the coast of East Africa. In the last letter I mentioned that the 1500 miles from Chagos to Madagascar might be windy ones, and that they were. We had our first ever passage where we traveled over165 nautical miles each day at an average speed of 6.7 knots. It was a beautiful day when we rounded the top of Madagascar, but the winds gusting to 50 knots made it a ride we will never forget . and never want to repeat!
The islands of the atolls in Chagos didn’t peak their heads above water until about 6,000 years ago. In comparison, Madagascar broke away from Gondwanaland and has been in its current location for hundreds of millions of years. And because of its isolation from the mainland of Africa and Asia, the plants and wildlife here have evolved differently from any other place on earth. We have done one trip inland to see some of the world’s strangest rock formations called ‘tsingy’ (razor sharp limestone formations) and to see lemurs and chameleons. It was spectacular. As we have sailed around the world, it seems that every place we go we think, “Does it get any better than this?” And then we move on and the next place seems even better. Maybe we are too easy to please or maybe the world is just a beautiful place. Each place is so special in its own way that there can never be an answer to the question most people ask us, “What has been your favorite stop?” Madagascar is very different from anyplace we have been and we are loving it. The red soil looks like that of New Caledonia in the Pacific. The mountains remind us of the Rocky Mountains in the US. The islands are beautiful. The word for island in Malagasy is ‘nosy’ and there are many little off-shore ‘nosies’ that provide great cruising grounds. Some are just patches of sand with a few trees in the center but others have high green hills coming down to white sand beaches. Nosy Be is the most populated island with 40,000 people and it’s main town is Hell-ville, named after French Admiral de Hell and not the condition of the town. The buildings in this once French colonial town are now crumbling, but the town is always buzzing with activity. Some of the houses on Nosy Be are built of concrete block, but most of the housing that we see is in the form of traditional huts with walls built of palm frond stems and roofs covered in thatch of palm frond leaves. Most places have no electricity and plumbing is most often a bucket. Resorts have generators, but most villages do not. In Hell-ville there are little hole-in-wall shops, but no place to buy anything major. There is a super market in Hell-ville, but elsewhere you can only find little shops that carry a limited supply of anything. In the islands, you can trade for bananas, papayas, and sometimes limes, crabs, and lobster, but there are no food markets. You have to travel to Antananarivo, or Tana for short, the political and economic center of the country, if you want to find stores with major appliances, tools, computers, etc. If you want a vehicle, you have to order it and have it shipped to the main port on the east coast of the country. The elected president, who also happens to be the richest man in the country, was Marc Ravalomanana, but he was ousted in a coup last October. The current head of the country is a high profile disc jockey turned politician. Currently, the Chinese are raping the forests of rosewood and other resources. The government is paid for the resources taken, but local people are not hired to do the work so none of money reaches the common man. Madagascar is a poor country, getting poorer everyday, but it is beautiful and the people live simply and happily. The national languages are French and Malagasy (pronounced Mala-GASH) so we do have a language barrier, yet somehow we manage to communicate with these gentle people.
It is still the Age of Sail here and there are sailing dhows and outrigger canoes everywhere you look. We are basing our travels north and south out of an anchorage between bustling Nosy Be and quiet Nosy Sakatia. Nosy Sakatia is the home of a lovely little resort called Sakatia Towers, named after the 1980’s British sit-com called Faulty Towers. John Sheppard, the owner, was once a sailboat racer and cruiser and he takes good care of sailors coming in here from around the world. Happy Hour begins at 5 pm on his deck overlooking the anchorage and there is always an interesting mix of his guests and visiting cruisers. There are not many of us cruisers this year, however. The scare of theft in a dirt poor country and of pirates moving further south to the Mozambique Channel has kept most cruisers away. A very few of us came here from Chagos and there are a few South African boats that have come up for the season. There are no marinas in Madagascar, so John’s Sakatia Towers has become a bit like a yacht club for us. It is really the only place where we can gather and meet other people.
When we send our Letter to Family and Friends we always include an update on what is happening in the lives of our children. This time the news is mixed. They are doing great but unexpected things have caused some changes in their lives. Our son Justin, his wife Jo, and their one year-old Ziggy were visiting Jo’s family in England in July. They had a fabulous visit. Ziggy especially loved playing in green grass as there’s none of that in the New Mexico desert. They were supposed to fly home early last week, but when they got to the airport they were told that Jo could not go back to the US because her Green Card had expired while she was out of the country. When she initially received the card, the 2010 renewal date seemed far in the future and she simply forgot about it. So now she and Ziggy are having an extended vacation in England while Justin is back in New Mexico trying to figure out if he will return to England to wait with them until Jo can return or whether he will stay in New Mexico. They have hired a lawyer who says he can get her back in the US in five weeks rather than the six months the US government officials are quoting. So that’s the news from Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. The Goldstones, our daughter Heather, her husband Jed, and three year-old Sam and one year-old Jonah, have been having a great summer on Cape Cod, but the big news in that family is that Heather is going back to work full-time for the first time since the birth of Sam in 2007. This was not planned, but a job opportunity came up a few weeks ago and she just couldn’t pass it up. She is a research scientist by education, but her part-time work since Sam was born has been doing science reporting on the local public radio station. National Public Radio got a major grant to start up a series of blogs around the country to get more people involved in conversations around major issues affecting our lives. Woods Hole on Cape Cod was chosen as the blog location dealing with oceans and global warming. Heather has always wanted to help people understand the complexities of science in order to help them make life decisions that are eco-friendly. She applied for the job and has already started working part-time, albeit reluctantly, as she hates being away from Jonah and Sam. Her blog goes public the first of September, so I’ll update you on that as it develops.
When we reach South Africa sometime in October it will have been a year since we last saw family. Even if we had the money, flying home from South Africa is not possible because we need to watch the weather and take every weather window we get to work our way down the coast of South Africa and then finally round the Cape of Good Hope. The weather of the South African coast is just not cruiser friendly, so you make the trip in small hops from harbor to harbor when you get a good weather forecast and then wait days or weeks for another small window of opportunity. This process will take all of November and December and will begin the sixth year of the voyage of Windbird. By mid-January, we will leave Cape Town, South Africa, to start our voyage across the southern Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. We are hoping that our children and grandchildren can come to Brazil to see us before we start the 1500 mile trek to the Caribbean and then the next 1500 mile trek from the Caribbean to southern Florida. As you can see, we are still a very long way from home.
This is a long and lonely cruising season without seeing friends, family, and fellow cruisers, so that means hearing from you means even more to us than ever. But please remember that we are bandwidth impaired, now more so than ever as Mark’s computer he uses for communications has a virus that is slowing things to a crawl. Please do not send attachments and make sure that you delete our message if you hit the reply button. Whether you are family, friend, or fellow cruiser, we miss you.
Affectionately,
Mark and Judy
S/V Windbird
