by Judy Handley | Jun 30, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 247, Year 5 A Little Help from Friends
Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Weather: Tenth Straight Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Location: Crater Bay, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
Constance has had a string of bad luck recently, but with a little help from friends, things are taking a turn. There are so few boats here this year, six compared to a usual twenty, and on one of those six boats is Barry who had all of fiberglass and epoxy needed to patch Constance and he has the know-how. And since there is no other fiberglass or epoxy in Madagascar right now, finding Barry was very lucky. Constance went on the wall early this morning at high tide and by 9 am the water was low enough for the fiberglass patch job to begin. Barry of Dream Catcher and his son Michael ground out the crack in the hull and covered the whole area with new fiberglass. They worked quickly and were actually finished by noon. But, of course, Constance had to wait until after 5 pm for the tide to rise high enough to come back to anchor. We had to go in with our dinghy and tow them out to deeper water as sailboats just don’t back up the way you need them to. And unfortunately, they have to do a repeat performance tomorrow as the new fiberglass was not ready to sand and coat with bottom paint today. So once again we will go in early to assist them in getting tied to the wall. Hopefully by day’s end tomorrow, they can put this episode behind them. They will have to do more fiberglass work on the inside, but that might wait until South Africa. The boat is once again safe, no holes or cracks, so Constance will soon be set to enjoy Madagascar. The past two days their bad luck had to do with their dinghy. Yesterday it filled with water and this morning when Ed came over to get Mark to take him to the wall, his dinghy engine wouldn’t restart. So we got our dinghy down and served as the transport to and fro. That, and an email we got from Rich Corbett who is a faithful Windbird log reader, has prompted us to think about how lucky we are to have made the choices we have with our dinghy and engine. Mark is writing a Captain’s Rambling about dinghy choices and I’ll post that when it is completed. The only thing we wish we would have done differently would have been to keep one of our old dinghy motors when we got the new one. We didn’t need it for a back-up, but we sure could have used the old motor here in Madagascar where shiny new Yamahas are tempting fate. Theft is a real problem, but we keep everything locked tight and raise the dinghy and motor every night and lock them securely to Windbird. We are hoping this is good enough because the Yamaha is just too big to hide.
Tomorrow after we help Constance get on the wall, we plan to catch a taxi to Hell-ville and do a little more exploring and shopping there. We are enjoying Crater Bay. We get to watch net fishing from small outriggers and large Dhows sail by. And tonight we are going to enjoy calamari that Constance bought from a local fisherman for us. At the same time, we are anxious to visit another island called Nosy Komba that is very close to here. Black lemurs live there and we’re just dying to see them. Maybe this weekend.
by Judy Handley | Jun 29, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 246, Year 5 Contact!
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Weather: Ninth Straight Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Location: Crater Bay, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
The last twenty four hours have been all about communication. While in Hell-ville yesterday, Mark bought a SIM card for the Sierra USB modem that we bought in Thailand. This looks just like a flash drive but you can replace the SIM card in it with one from a current provider and be on the internet. We used it in Thailand, then in India, and how it is working for us in Madagascar. This means we can have internet on the boat anywhere we have a cell phone signal, and evidently that is most places we will be stopping along the coast. The only issue is how much it will cost us to use it. We have service for a month, but we think we have limited usage. We’ll just have to figure this out over time. As I mentioned in yesterday’s log, we were able to see photos on the Picasa websites of our children and grandchildren, but we are having trouble getting Skype to work. Our cell phone does work, however, and should cost us only 20 cents per minute to all the US, but SHOULD is the operative word here. It seems to be costing more than that as we have already gone through three or four top-up cards. But in doing so, we have talked to my sister in North Carolina, to our daughter Heather in Massachusetts, and to our son Justin who is in England. We heard our grandsons–Sam talking on and on about what he was doing and Jonah and Ziggy squealing and squawking as one-year olds do. It was delightful. So we have made contact, albeit without Skype video, and for now we are happy cruisers. If the only contact we can have is by phone, we will have to send photos back and forth so we can see each other. But that is certainly better than waiting months for a letter that might not ever arrive. It has not been that many years since that was the only way cruisers could connect with family, so we are elated that we can have reasonably priced phone and internet connection. It will probably be the end of October before we reach Richard’s Bay in South Africa where we hope to have an internet connection good enough for Skype video. So for the next four months, we will have to make do with what we have.
Ed and Lynne picked us up this morning and we all went to shore and got a taxi into Hell-ville. Ed and Lynne went to buy a modem so they can get on the internet and to get some papers notarized. Mark and I went along to check the prices of groceries at the Shampion Super Marche and at Akhem Oliver’s, known as the Chinese store. We did buy a few more items at the fresh food market and took a few photos, but we were rushed as things start closing at 12 noon and don’t reopen until 3 pm. We learned that the SuperMarche only closes from 1 pm to 3 pm, but we forget to ask about hours at Akhem Oliver’s. We got back to Crater Bay to find that Constance’s dinghy was full of water. Something had hit their transom and broken the ball that keeps water from coming into their dinghy. Yikes! We bailed out the boat and went back out to our boats. Ed fixed the problem, so hopefully Constance will no longer have a dinghy full of water. Tomorrow Constance goes onto the wall at 5:30 am at high tide and will have fiberglass work done on the hull during the day when the tide goes out. We will probably hang out just in case they need help and not go back into Hell-ville until Thursday. Just hanging out here is most interesting as there is a lot of local fishing going on just around our boats. Huge nets are set out and brought in, dhows are sailing by all the time, and huge schools of small fish thrash through the water. The dhows are old wooden boats built like huge row boats with a single mast that holds a yardarm that raises a giant triangular sail. They move along so smoothly through the water sometimes are almost within arm’s reach of Windbird. It is a downwind boat so they sail out in the morning with the land breeze and back in the afternoon with the sea breeze. We are enjoying the views.
by Judy Handley | Jun 28, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 245, Year 5 Day in Hell-Night in a Crater
Date: Monday, June 28, 2010
Weather:Â Yet Another Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Latitude:Â 13 degrees 23.930 minutes S
Longitude:Â 048 degrees 13.114 minutes E
Location:Â Crater Bay, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
What at day! We left our snug little anchorage at Nosy Sakatia at 5:30 am and arrived in the anchorage off Hell-ville three hours later. We were immediately, and I mean before the anchor was down, met by boat boys in various boats. But we had been forewarned to steer clear. We tried to tell them we didn’t need any of their services, but they continued to hang around. By 9:30 am Lynne was taking Mark and Ed to the dock to meet Frank. John Sheppard at Sakatia Towers said we could borrow his bookkeeper Frank for the morning to help with the check-in process and as it turned out he was invaluable. Mark speaks no French and Ed very little, so Frank served as the interpreter and got them through the process quickly. Lynne and I stayed on the boats just watching. You are warned to never leave your boat without someone on it in Hell-ville as things can go missing very quickly. In this part of the world, everything closes from 11:30 am to 3 pm, so by noon Mark and Ed were back having ‘almost’ completed the check-in procedure. They still needed to go back in at 3:00 pm to pick up the cruising permit, but all else was done. It cost us a total of 320,000 Ariary or $70 per person for a three-month visa, a $10 charge for the boat, and another $10 Custom’s charge for something-not sure what. But in total it is costing us the same amount for three months here as it did for one month in Chagos, so no complaints. And all of the officials were friendly and easy to deal with.
Break. Break. (That’s what you say when you need to interrupt a radio communication.) And I need to interrupt this email to say that Mark just got online (Yes, on the internet on the boat at anchor in Madagascar . . . something we never thought could happen.). And the first thing he did was go to the Picasa photo websites for our kids. I just saw Sam’s graduation from nursery school and he looks so grown up. And there were wonderful photos of Jonah’s birthday party with a perfectly round soccer ball cake. Heather, how did you do that? Jonah’s hair is getting lighter and longer and he looks more like Sam than I have ever thought before. They are two beautiful little guys (no prejudice here). We got see photos of Ziggy’s first birthday back in April and some photos from Father’s Day. Ziggy is another beauty. Smiley blonde chunk describes him. But the biggest shock were some photos of my son with a shaved head! For years he has had longer hair than mine, so to see him with none at all was a bit of a shock  Justin, what brought that on? It is killing me to think that it will be almost another year before we really see our little ones face to face, but in the meantime, at least seeing photos of them helps. We still don’t know if Skype calls will be possible and we are not expecting Skype video to work, but we can try. But I just can’t tell you how exciting it was to just see photos after three months with no visuals. I am one happy Oma.
Now back to today’s happenings. I went in with Mark and Ed in the afternoon to pick up the cruising permits and to make a quick trip to get the internet SIM card for our computer modem and to buy a few fresh veggies at the market. As soon as we hit the shore, we were inundated by boat boys wanting to help. And they do not give up easily. We kept saying we needed no help, but when we got in the taxi to go to the internet provider shop, Julian got in the taxi with us and stayed with us for the afternoon. So we ended up having to pay him for his help. While Mark waited for the internet provider office to open, Ed, Julian, and I walked to the gas station to check out the price of fuel and oil and went to the fresh market and quickly bought some carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, and bananas. The produce is not great, but it sure beats nothing! So we are eating a fresh cabbage salad tonight for the first time in two months. We didn’t get our cruising permits until almost 4:30 pm, so we then had to go quickly back to the boats and race the four plus miles to Crater Bay to anchor before dark. The sun goes down here at 5:30 pm and we just barely made it. Ed and Lynne have made arrangements to tie up to the wall here on Wednesday, wait for low tide, and then have the fiberglass work done. Tomorrow final arrangements will be made for that work and Mark and I hope to get a taxi into Hell-ville to do some more shopping. Hell-ville is named for one Admiral de Hell. He was once the French governor of Reunion and I’m not sure what his connection was to this little place in Madagascar, but his name certainly catches your attention. And actually Hell-ville was much nicer than we anticipated and we look forward to returning there. The architecture is crumbling colonial but it is a clean town with friendly people. The main street is Cours de Hell which we think translates as the Road to Hell. And it is very ironic that the street sign hangs on the Catholic Church. You’ve got to love a place with this sense of humor. We had a great day in Hell . . . ville and so far we are enjoying our evening in Crater Bay.
by Judy Handley | Jun 27, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 244, Year 5 A Day at Nosy Sakatia
Date: Sunday, June 27, 2010
Weather: Yet Another Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Latitude: 13 degrees 18.147 minutes S
Longitude: 048 degrees 10.729 minutes E
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Our first day here was spent just getting acclimated. The boats from the regatta were anchored all around us until early afternoon when they took off to the south. We have met Red and Shirley on Solaire and Tina and Barry on Dream Catcher, both from Richard’s Bay in South Africa. A are learning a lot from them about sailing to and around South Africa.
We are leaving here at 5:30 am to head for Hell-ville for check-in and then we will check out Crater Bay near Hell-ville as a possible haul-out for Constance. Barry on Dream Catcher from South Africa has done extensive fiberglass work and might be able to help Constance with their hull repair. Barry and Tina on Dream Catcher are traveling with four of their five children, aged eight to twenty-five. We met them this evening but hope to be able to spend more time getting to know them. But check-in first and then socializing.
by Judy Handley | Jun 26, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 243, Year 5 Happy First Birthday to Jonah
Date: Saturday, June 26, 2010
Weather: Yet Another Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Latitude: 13 degrees 18.147 minutes S
Longitude: 048 degrees 10.729 minutes E
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Happy Birthday, Jonah!!! One year ago at this time Mark and I were taking care of Sam while Heather and Jed were at the hospital welcoming Jonah into this world. I simply cannot believe Jonah is now a one year-old. Evidently he is absolutely crazy about balls, so the theme of his party is spherical. Heather and Jed got him a hundred plastic balls the size of baseballs and filled the kiddy pool with them. I’m sure Jonah will love that. And his cake is shaped and decorated like a soccer ball. And there is also a full moon for his birthday just to ’round’ things out.
We also want to wish Madagascar a happy birthday. Today is Independence Day and we arrived in the midst of a sailing regatta that evidently happens every year on this day. We are now anchored off Sakatia Towers, a very small resort, and the party for the racers is here tonight. So we are surrounded by lots of “overly” happy sailors celebrating. We are getting ready to go ashore for Happy Hour and hope to meet some of these sailors.
by Judy Handley | Jun 25, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 242, Year 5 Nosy Mitsio to Tsara Banjina
Date: Friday, June 25, 2010
Weather: Another Gorgeous Day, Winds 5-10
Latitude: 13 degrees 01.453 minutes S
Longitude: 048 degrees 32.692 minutes E
Location: Tsara Banjina, NW Madagascar
Here we sit in front of the Constance Lodge on Tsara Banjina. The Lonely Planet says this is the place to “drop your swanky anchor” in Madagascar. They describe the resort as “very swish and back-to-the-basics” and that is a perfect description. After dropping our swanky anchor in crystal clear water, we went ashore and walked the perfectly groomed paths that wind through the resort. There are twenty-one bungalows that are built of wood with thatched roofs to help them look native. Each bungalow has a hammock out front and access to the beach with beach chairs. We inquired about having dinner, but it was a bit pricey for us, so we are going in for cocktails at 6 pm. We spent our afternoon snorkeling around some rocks to the east of Tsara Banjina and then we came back to the south side of the island and pulled our dinghy as we snorkeled the southeast corner and up the east side. The water felt wonderful but it was not as clear around the rocks to the east as it was in the anchorage. There was no coral there, just fish, and we decided to head on back to the island and snorkel the southern coast. Here there was coral, but unfortunately, it was nearly high tide, so it was far below us. Because of the upcoming full moon, we have a fifteen foot difference from low to high, so I know the snorkeling would have been much better earlier in the day. There were huge schools of black and white, bigger than normal, Sergeant Majors and bright blue Fusiliers. There were loads of white, yellow, and black Moorish Idols, parrotfish, and just hundreds of tiny fish in the water. We snorkeled up the east side of the island and finally decided to call it quits. Just when we got out of the water, a lone tropic bird with its long, trailing tail put on quite a show for us. I think it must have been a female trying to lure us away from her nest, but she would fly over us and out to sea, the come back and go right up the cliffs, stop with her tail hanging down, and just flutter for a few seconds. Then the whole show would start again. We’ll have to come back and snorkel here at low tide and spend more time observing the birds, but we are leaving early in the morning and heading to Nosy Sakatia. There is another resort there, not the high end like this one, but it has internet. We are so hoping to be able to talk to our kids. We’ll let you know if that works in tomorrow night’s log.
