by Judy Handley | Jul 3, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 250, Year 5 Crater Bay to Nosy Komba
Date: Saturday, July 3, 2010
Weather: Same Same-Still Gorgeous
Latitude: 13 degrees 26.489 minutes S
Longitude: 048 degrees 21.115 minutes E
Location: Ampangorina Village, Nosy Komba, NW Madagascar
During the night, Windbird became a gentle rocking horse as the swell came into the bay from the south. Early this morning, the anchorage was not a place you wanted to negotiate in your dinghy unless you wanted to get wet, so we cancelled our plans to go back into Hell-ville and decided to just work on the boat until time to leave for Nosy Komba. I did laundry and baked bread while Mark tackled yet another plumbing problem. But by noon we were ready for take-off. Constance, however, needed a little more time, so we set 2 pm as the time for departure. At 1:57 pm we started bringing up the anchor. About half of it came up and then we were at a standstill. I am always in the anchor locker flaking chain when we raise anchor, but Mark called for me to come up on deck. We had pulled up enough chain to be sitting right on top of some big ugly rocks. Fortunately, they were just below our keel but the problem with bringing up the anchor became evident. The chain or the anchor was wedged under the rocks. So we motored forward, backward, and sideways until we could finally bring up the anchor. Whew! We thought we might have to dive on the anchor to get it up, so we were very grateful when the other maneuvering worked. We had almost a knot of current with us for the nine mile trip to Nosy Komba, but the ten knots of wind was right behind us and we had to give ourselves a motor assist to reach our destination before sunset. Nosy Komba is a tourist destination and we can see the little village of Ampangorina from the anchorage. We are anchored right in front of a small resort and we know that there are restaurants onshore. One called Chez Yolande is supposed to have wonderful Madagascar seafood dishes and we are anxious to try that. But tomorrow is the Fourth of July and we will definitely barbecue zebu aboard Windbird. But first thing in the morning we will go ashore in hopes of seeing the black lemurs that live here. I’m just hoping they don’t take the day off on Sunday!
by Judy Handley | Jul 2, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 249, Year 5 Provisioning, Provisioning . . . Again
Date: Friday, July 2, 2010
Weather: Same Same-Gorgeous; Air & Water Temp 80 degrees F
Location: Crater Bay, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
It was off to Hell-ville again today after we got Constance situated on the wall. I’m not sure I have explained what happens when they go to the wall, but basically, they go in at high tide and tie to things on land that will hold them tight against the wall. As the tide goes down, they eventually sit on the bottom and there is no water under them. This is when the work gets done. Then they have to sit another five to six hours to wait for the tide to rise again so they can float off the bottom. Today it was after sundown before we could use our powerful Yamaha to pull them off the wall and help them get back out into the anchorage. The difference between high and low tide is getting less each day, so it is great that the work is completed. I know Ed and Lynne must be celebrating tonight. But I got a little ahead of myself. Let’s go back to this morning.
Mark, Lynne, and I walked into Dar es Salama, visited the super market and fresh market there, and even found a little chandlery. Mark was so excited that they had a snap shackle that we need as a replacement for one of our headsail sheet blocks that needs serious repair. Of course, it was VERY expensive, but I decided that it would make a great birthday present, so we spent the $110 US and I wished Mark a happy birthday five days early. Then we took a taxi into Hellville. We shopped at Shampion’s SuperMarche, the fresh market, and Akhem Oliver’s, the Chinese store. Since we haven’t been shopping since March 27, over three months ago, I shouldn’t complain about provisioning. And I wouldn’t if I only had to go buy the food. It is putting it away that is the killer. All tomatoes have to be individually wrapped in newspaper, limes must be individually wrapped in foil, many things have to be vacuumed-packed, and other things must be put into plastic containers. Each beer bottle must be wiped down and the plastic case has to be washed first in sea water and rinsed with fresh water. But we are now ready to go cruising for a few days, assess the whole food situation, and then come back to Nosy Be for a few days to buy what we have forgotten before heading south for about a month. There will be no stores where we are headed. And we do have to decide if we are going to do any inland traveling now or wait until later, and in order to make that decision, we need to go back to Sakatia Towers and talk with John Sheppard. We are hoping he can give us some guidance on this. But tomorrow, we will make a quick trip back to Hell-ville to the bank to get more money and then we will head off to Nosy Komba to see our first lemurs. We will have to wait until early Sunday morning to see them, but I just can’t wait.
by Judy Handley | Jul 1, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 248, Year 5 Another Trip to Hell-ville
Date: Thursday, July 1, 2010
Weather: Same Same–Gorgeous
Location: Crater Bay, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
What gorgeous weather we are having here. And what a difference from what we had when we were up north in Ampanasia Bay. It is officially winter here, but the daytime temperature is in the mid-80’s. It does cool down when the sun sets and by morning the temps are probably in the mid-70’s and it feels really cool. This morning I got up very early and had to shut the front hatch so I wouldn’t freeze. But you are enjoying the same kind of weather; it is just summer for you.
Constance went to the wall again today and unfortunately they have to go back again tomorrow. We are all going to get really good at this routine. Once the patch was sanded a decision was made that it needed more epoxy faring compound and another sanding before bottom paint could be applied. So today the additional epoxy was applied and tomorrow it will be sanded and hopefully the bottom paint will go on. We helped Constance get situated this morning and then we walked into the little town that is close to here. The road is hard-packed rock and dirt and very rough for driving or walking. The transport of local goods here is done by a cart pulled by a zebu and I think that is probably the best mode of transportation on these rocky roads, but we enjoyed the walk. Along the waterfront there are storage sheds for local building materials-bamboo poles, hardwood poles, palm fronds for thatching, a different palm frond for fencing, cut boards, sand, gravel of all sizes, paving stones, and even a little operation producing concrete blocks. In between all of this were thatched roof huts where people live. Once we were further from the water, the enterprise changed from building materials to small roadside shops selling a little of this and that. It seems like every hut has something out front for sale-a few lemons, some tomatoes, small bags of snacks, bananas, or squash. Then we came to the small town. The taxi drivers call it Dar es Salam but the local fresh market sign said Ambatoloaka, so we’re not exactly sure. But it is bustling little town with a nice super market and a decent fresh food outside market. So it was worth the walk to find out what is available without having to pay for a taxi. But in order to get to Hell-ville, we did need a taxi. The first one we got into had to be push-started and it would only go for a few feet and die. So we got out of that one and found another one heading our way. We went all the way into the harbor area so we could make another ATM withdrawal. Then we used our Lonely Planet map of Hell-ville to guide us through the town. Our first stop was the Catholic Church with the famous Cours de Hell sign tacked on the front. Someone has damaged the street sign so only the H and part of the e are still readable, but it still gives you a chuckle. We then walked up a street with a few neat restaurants that we will have to go back to visit as we made our way to the SuperMarche. I needed to walk the aisles one more time to write down prices so I can make comparisons with other shops and to check carefully to see what is available. We bought a few things that we know we won’t find anywhere else, so comparing prices on those things is not urgent. Mark went to buy more top-up cards for the cell phone and the computer modem while I went to the fresh food market. By the time we got a taxi, our backpacks were full, as well as huge LL Bean bag. But we made one more stop at Akhem Oliver’s Chinese store to buy a couple more cases of beer and a bottle of local rhum-must give it a try. When we got back to Crater Bay, we say that our dinghy was high and dry on the rocky beach. Yuck! Mark went to check-in with Ed and Lynne while I started carrying the bags down to the beach area. Just as I was contemplating how in the world we were going to carry our dinghy across all the rocks, two young men came by and offered to help me. With one of them on each side of the back where the heavy engine sits and me on the front, we were able to carry the dinghy into the water and then I loaded all the bags and waited for Mark to load the beer. I have to explain that a case of beer here is 20 heavy glass bottles, about 2/3 of a liter, in a plastic case 14 inches wide x 17 inches long x 12 inches high. And when I say ‘heavy’ glass, I mean ‘heavy’ glass. You don’t see broken bottles along the roadside here because I don’t think you could break these bottles!
Tomorrow is more of the same. We’ll get Constance situated on the wall and then we might take Lynne and go to Hell-ville again. It is a kicky little town and we’d love to have lunch there. Cruisers from another boat told us they had huge zebu steaks for lunch and the cost was $5 US. Sounds like something we’d like to try. Lynne is strict vegetarian, but she is even contemplating giving zebu a try.
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.
