by Judy Handley | Jun 15, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 232, Year 5 Working on the Rigging
Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny with Rain Squalls, Winds SE 15-20 Knots
Location: Ampanasia Bay, NW Madagascar
The weather is not cooperating. The winds were a little less today than yesterday, but it is still very windy. Because we have mast steps all the way to the top of the mast, it was safe enough for Mark to go up the mast and investigate the problem with our inner forestay. It was impossible to tell from below what the real problem was but as soon as Mark went up he could see that the stay was definitely broken. This is the oldest stay on the boat, replaced in 2001, and it is worrisome that it broke. We certainly don’t want the headstay to break. It was replaced in 2003, so hopefully it will be fine until we get home. Mark brought the inner forestay with roller furler and sail attached down to the deck and was lucky enough to find the right Sta-Loc fittings to correct the problem. Getting it back up in these winds will be a little trickier, but Mark has asked Ed to come over and help us with this tomorrow. If it goes back up and everything is just right, then we will once again be a cutter rig and all of the things broken on the trip from Chagos to here will be fixed. Maybe then Mark can relax. He has been working like a madman doing one repair after another. Staying with the rigging theme, we are also re-caulking the deck chain plates. Mark also unscrewed all of the nice little wooden plates that cover the massive chain plate fittings in the cabinetry of the main cabin. The chain plates hold all of your rigging in place and our chain plate deck cover plates were leaking a bit which caused some surface rust on the bolts below. So we cleaned and cleaned and got rid of every spec of rust, sprayed some magic corrosion inhibitor on the plates and then covered them once again. This is the first time I have really seen the chain plates and I was truly impressed with the size and number of bolts that hold down our rigging. This boat is really built like a tank and I like that!
We saw signs of life onshore today. A lone man was working on a sandbar attached to shore at low tide. I took photos and zoomed in and could see that he had arrived in a dugout outrigger canoe. We didn’t see him come or go, but there must be a village somewhere near. As more and more of the repairs are completed, and if the winds do not get stronger again, I am really hoping to make it to shore soon. Constance still has much more work to do and they might be able to take the time to go with us, but I’m going to try and convince them that they need a little break. Hopefully I’ll have something land-based to report tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Jun 14, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 231, Year 5 Winds Abating
Date: Monday, June 14, 2010
Weather: Sunny, Winds SE 15-25 Knots
Location: Ampanasia Bay, NW Madagascar
I don’t remember a time when I have been happier about lessening winds. It was still a windy day but nothing like yesterday and the day before, and as evening approached the winds started to quiet down even more. Let’s just hope this continues into tomorrow. Mark needs to go up our mast to check out our sagging inner stay and Ed needs to get in the water to check out the gouge in the side of Constance and then he needs to go up his mast to check out their broken headstay. So a quiet day would be great. We might even get to go to shore for a walk in the dry bush country. It looks desolate, but I’m sure when examined up close there all kinds of things to see. The land here looks very much like the Northern Territory in Australia. It is red soil bush country just begging to be explored. Maybe tomorrow.
Mark continued working on projects all morning while I worked on my never ending job of editing and naming photos from Chagos. I had been looking at photos of turquoise water, white sand, and green islands for about two hours and when I went outside to hang out a laundry. I looked around and wondered why everything had turned brown. It really took me a second to remember where I was. Certainly not in Chagos! After lunch, Ed came over in his dinghy and took us over to Constance. We all examined the damages to Constance and then Mark and Ed worked on replacing a reefing line in the boom. The line had broken sometime during the trip. Lynne and I sat and talked and just enjoyed seeing each other in person again. We got out charts and discussed plans for where we would anchor between here and Nosy Be and Ed got on the SAT phone and called a phone number for a marine shop on Nosy Be that we found in the notes we have about Madagascar. He was told to call another number and finally reached a gentleman on a boat anchored somewhere on Nosy Be who is going to research the possibility of having Constance pulled out of the water for repairs if necessary. We didn’t find out any definites but it was good to make contact with someone who might be able to help. After returning from Constance I was out on the back deck rinsing out the clothes that had gotten salt water splashed on the way back to Windbird. All of sudden I hear Jingle Bell Rock, and I knew instantly that Mark had turned on the CD player. Evidently we haven’t listened to any music since Christmas in Thailand. He had been removing wooden panels to check out the chain plates to see if there was evidence of leaks. In doing so, he jostled some wires from the CD player and decided he needed to check it out. I came in and took out the Christmas music and put in some of our favorites. Right now we are listening to a Nora Jones CD given to me by my friend Linda Stuart back in Concord. Linda gave me the CD as a going away present so I would think of her when playing the CD thousands of miles away. Well, it worked. Linda, I’m thinking of you and missing you so very much.
by Judy Handley | Jun 13, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 230, Year 5 Windy, Windy, Windy
Date: Sunday, June 13, 2010
Weather: Sunny, Winds SSE 30-35 Knots
Location: Ampanasia Bay, NW Madagascar
The weather forecast is for four to five more days of this over-the-top windy weather. Graham on the South Africa Maritime Mobil Net tells us that a 1030 high is sitting at 36S and 63E (as far south as South Africa and almost directly south of Mauritius) and that it plans to sit there for a few more days before moving on. This high normally sits much further south and it creates the SE trade winds, which in normal conditions provide the wind we need to sail the Southern Indian Ocean. In this case, it has moved much further north than normal, pushed there by lows in the deep southern ocean. So it is this high that is far, far away from us, but much closer than normal, that is causing our problems. In the meantime we are stuck here in Ampanasia Bay. (Note: Ampanasia Bay is also known as Jenkinson Bay and Ampanasinah Bay. It is the second little bay from the top of Madagascar.) We can’t even get the dinghy off the deck and even if we could it would be too dangerous to runabout in the bay. The strong gusts and waves could flip you over. Ed launched his dinghy last night out of desperate need. We had some epoxy that cures under water and he needed it to try to stop the leak in Constance. But even though he needs some tools from us to continue his repair work, he doesn’t dare try to come over again until the weather settles. At least the sun is shining. I did laundry today but couldn’t hang it outside because of the wind. I do have some wonderful clips that fit over our stainless handrails just outside the cockpit, so I was able to hang a few things that way. The other pieces are dripping and hopefully drying in the shower stall. I also worked on editing and naming photos. This is a perfect job for right now as we have unlimited power from the wind generator. We haven’t had to run the engine to charge the batteries since our second day of passage, so I can keep the computer on non-stop. This is a luxury that we have never had before. I guess our wind generator likes Indian Ocean wind. Mark spent his day ticking off chores on his list–replace the blocks on the traveler, replaced blocks on the Jyb-Easy, worked on oven pilot light, investigate why our instrument panel is no longer displaying engine hours (maybe we have traveled too many miles), seal the auto pilot cockpit controller with silicon, and on and on. He was a busy man today.
The news from Constance is that the leak is now down to a dribble but not completely stopped yet. The impact from whatever they hit was hard enough to move the cabinetry on the port side of Constance three inches toward the center of the boat. In order to continue to investigate the damages, Ed has to remove a wall that runs behind their settee. To do this, he needs a saw from us but we can’t get it to him. We just have to wait for a lull in the wind and hope that comes sooner than predicted. Ed and Lynne seem to be in amazingly good spirits considering the damage and clean-up from the water that got into the main cabin. Ed also has a number of other little things that broke along the way, so like Mark, he has plenty to keep him busy. When I talked with Lynne this morning she told me that her beautiful basil and arugula plants were killed by the saltwater that constantly blew into their cockpit during the passage. She was so proud of the basil that she had re-rooted from original plants that had turned woody. Her new plants were looking really good. I lost the plants in the pots hanging from our arch on the back of the boat, but since that was an experiment, I wasn’t upset about that and the ones in the cockpit made it through just fine. So I’ll divide and share with Lynne.
Even here at anchor the wind is still so strong that we are heeling over during the gusts. That means that even walking around the boat is still a hazardous sport. This morning I made biscuits for breakfast. I put the required butter and blueberry jam on the table and walked away. When I returned the blueberry jam had slid off the table and on to the embroidered silk settee cover I brought for myself for my birthday while in India. I love this cover and was devastated to think that my stupidity of setting something down and expecting it to stay there might have ruined it. Luckily the blue stain came right out but hopefully I have learned my lesson. Another not so bright human error also caused another bigger mess in our forward bathroom. We have four milk crates of food stacked in there along with countless other plastic boxes of crackers and granola, cardboard storage boxes containing our old freezer condenser and bottles of water, many individually wrapped rolls of toilet paper, packages of paper towels, and so on. Well, one of the containers of crackers bounced during one of our rogue wave experiences yesterday and turned on the water in the sink. It was just turned on a little, but over the course of the day, the sink filled and sloshed water all over everything in the bathroom including all of the food in the plastic milk crates. Most everything was vacuum packed but things that weren’t were wet inside the packaging. All of the packages of spaghetti noodles had parts of them that were water logged as well as the hard taco shells and a few packages of crackers. I opened each package of spaghetti (10 in all), removed the dry noodles and threw out the soggy ones. I did the same with the hard taco shells and crackers. A little foresight could have kept this from happening, but that’s what we learn in hindsight. We should have just shut off the pressure water while on passage. I use the foot pump in the galley and we only need pressure water for showers. So we could have turned it on just for showers and avoided any possibility of a leaky faucet in rough conditions. We will do this in the future. This was a lesson learned the hard way. For the second time in five years I also had to re-shelve all the books on the v-berth starboard book shelf. The first time they tumbled down was on our maiden voyage to St. Martin in the Caribbean. In that case, books on both sides of the v-berth were jumbled on the v-berth mattress along with water that came in through the forward Dorade vent. What a mess that was. We now seal that vent when in passage and we installed very sturdy straps that hold the books in place. Well, at least they held the books in place for almost five years. Yesterday’s little jaunt fixed that.
by Judy Handley | Jun 12, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 229, Year 5 Arrival in Madagascar!!!
Date: Saturday, June 12, 2010
Weather: Sunny, Winds SSE 30-35 Knots, Gusts to 50
Latitude: 12 degrees 01.448 minutes S
Longitude: 049 degrees 12.057 minutes E
Passage Statistics:
1466 miles in 9 days 3.5 hours (219.5 hours)
Sailing Hours–216.5
Motor Sailing Hours–3
Average Speed-6.7 Knots
Fuel Usage–1.5 US gallons or about 6 liters
This was by far our fastest passage ever, but it was also the most challenging. Even now that we are at anchor we still have 30-35 knot winds. During the passage we had squall after squall and heavy winds which made for uncomfortable living conditions, but not until today did we feel the potential for serious problems. Conditions were not life threatening but I felt more unsafe than anytime since we left Boston in 2005. We had to be constantly alert as the seas were BIG and the winds were HIGH. We had 40 to 50 knots gusts a few times with winds typically above 30 knots. Seas were 12 to 15 feet and we found ourselves surfing down the waves and then sometimes while surfing we were hit broadsided by a rogue wave that would knock us violently sideways. Those were the scary ones and the ones that made a wreck of the inside of the boat. This really only happened twice, but twice was enough. For a time we were heading up the coast wing and wing with the wind behind us. We had an accidental gibe that blew one of the pulleys that attaches Gyb-Easy to the deck, so that gibe was not easy. The line and pulley flew into the plastic window of the new cockpit enclosure and ripped it two places. That will have to be replaced in South Africa. That same jibe also broke another pulley on the main sheet traveler. Basically this is a device that helps control the main sail. So we have a few things that need to be replaced, but nothing major. And that is why we are so thankful that we chose Windbird as the boat to take us around the world. She is steady and sturdy and very forgiving. We love you, Windbird.
Ed and Lynne also made it in today which is amazing considering that they have not had a head sail since the second or third day of the trip. Constance is also a steady, sturdy boat but today she was challenged when something hit her on the port side. They really didn’t know what had happened until they arrived here and Ed could get in the dinghy to look at the side of the boat and could see a gash in the hull, but what they did know earlier was that they had a leak into their main cabin. Ed put some epoxy in the cracked fiberglass near one of their scupper drains which helped, but they still have to isolate the real problem and figure out what to do. They also had a problem with a planned gibe that went wrong and broke something in their traveler.
So we are here and will slowly heal our wounds. We are hoping that the extremely high winds will settle in the next day or two so we can get in the dinghy and explore the land around this bay before moving further south. We had a beautiful sunset tonight and look forward to our first sunrise in Madagascar tomorrow morning.
I mentioned yesterday that my niece’s daughter graduated from high school. Today we got an email from our daughter telling us that Sam, our oldest grandchild, graduated from nursery school yesterday. Next fall he will be in preschool. Unbelievable. These babies grow up way too fast.
by Judy Handley | Jun 11, 2010 | Passage to Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 228, Year 5 Passage to Madagascar, Day 9
Date: Friday, June 11, 2010
Weather: Overcast and Squally; Winds SSE 22-24 / 30-35 Knots
Latitude: 12 degrees 01.111 minutes S
Longitude: 051 degrees 29.450 minutes E
Miles to Go: 150
Jessica Price is my sister Patsy’s oldest grandchild and she graduates from high school today. So congratulations to Jessica. It is times like these, when I know family members are gathered to celebrate, that I really miss, but I’m certainly there with them in spirit.
This morning on the radio Mark asked Ed to give his position report and all Ed said was, “Uncomfortable.” That sums up our experience of the last twenty-four hours. Today has been an ugly one-totally overcast with one squall after another. At least we have 30 to 45 minute periods between squalls when things settle down. And we are making amazing progress and should definitely reach the east coast of Madagascar in the morning. If that happens as planned, we will then round the top and be at anchor by afternoon. Evidently we aren’t going to get a break from this weather for another day or so as a weather system is basically sitting on top of us. It should be heading off by Sunday and I’m sure looking forward to sunny skies with no squalls. We had another all-time high mileage day the last twenty-four hours going 170 nautical miles. Yesterday at this time we had 320 miles to go and now we have 150, so progress is definitely being made. We are sailing with almost no headsail and a reefed main, but with winds like these you hardly need sails!
Madagascar: A Little Geography
I keep saying that we are going to round the cape at the top of Madagascar so I’ll take time to give a little background so you will know that that means. Madagascar is about a thousand miles from top to bottom. It is much longer than it is wide and at its closest point it sits only 225 miles from the East African coast, situated parallel to Mozambique. The cape at the very top of the island is called Cap de’Ambre. Once you are over the top and start down the west coast there are three bays, no more than five miles from the top. It is the middle bay where we plan to anchor first. This, of course, is in northwestern Madagascar and this is part of Mad where we will be spending most of our time. If you look at Madagascar on a map it almost looks like someone bit a huge chunk out of the northwestern coast and then they spit out the pieces and these became little islands scattered all along. That ‘bite’ leaves a crescent shape from the Cap de’Ambre out to Cap de’Andre some 350 miles south and west. Islands in Madagascar are called ‘nosy’ so Nosy Be is the island of Be. We will spend a week or so working our way south from Cap de’Ambre to Nosy Be where we will visit Hell-ville, the administrative center where we check-in. The distance is only a hundred miles but there are a number of anchorages on the mainland and a few ‘nosies’ that we want to visit on the way. Nosy Be is about the southern limit of what is referred to as Northern Madagascar. From there south along the coast is Western Madagascar and we will eventually travel the 250 miles from Nosy Be following the crescent-shaped curve of the ‘bite.’ From the southern end of the crescent we will then travel across the Mozambique Channel to South Africa. Geographically, there is also a southern section, an eastern section, and a second eastern section where the capital of Antananarivo is situated. We will only be visiting places in the northern section and some of the coastal western section. If the political situation were different, we might do more travel in the south, but at this time that would require flying in and out of the capital and that is the hot spot for political unrest. So northwest it will be for Windbird’s crew.
by Judy Handley | Jun 10, 2010 | Passage to Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 227, Year 5 Passage to Madagascar, Day 8
Date: Thursday, June 10, 2010
Weather: Repeat–Squally Night; Sunny Day, Winds ESE to SE 28-32
Latitude: 11 degrees 27.099 minutes S
Longitude: 054 degrees 14.055 minutes E
Miles to Go: 320
Another day, another 160+ miles, and all is well aboard Windbird. We didn’t realize we were going to be flying to Madagascar, but that’s how it feels out here. When we talk to Ed and Lynne of Constance on the radio Lynne says she misses looking out and seeing the “birds”—that’s us. But the “birds” flew away and can’t stop. The wind has not let up, and in fact, today it was even stronger, staying around 30 knots, sometimes gusting to 40. For most of the day we had the little triangle of headsail that we are flying poled out to port and we were sailing wing and wing. But the winds got even stronger late this afternoon and turned from ESE to SE, so now we have the headsail back out to starboard. Our speed over ground is over 7 knots due to a positive current of 1 to1.5 knots and if things continue as they have today, by this time tomorrow (Friday) afternoon we will have about 115 miles left to go to reach the east coast of Madagascar. That means we could reach the coast sometime Saturday morning. If that happens, then we can round the top and be at anchor late Saturday afternoon. I think both of us are looking forward to that. This passage has been fast, and it hasn’t been relaxing. We always have to be on alert for the next squall or a shift in the winds. With strong winds like we have been having, there is very little room for error, so once again being at anchor will be a great relief.
We have heard from a number of our sailing friends in response to our June letter to family and friends. It was so good to hear from friends that we crossed the Pacific with in 2006. Randy and Sheri of Procyon are back in California, Tom and Bette Lee of Quantum Leap are in passage to Fiji for one more season in the South Pacific, and Idunn and Rune of Blue Marlin are now living in South Korea where Rune is working as a subsea engineer on an oil rig being built. The twins, Hedda and Marita, are in the International School and all will be heading back to Norway for a summer holiday. Rune will join the rig in Singapore and sail with it to the Seychelles before he joins the rig
again in Tanzania. We will be in Madagascar at that time and he will try to connect with us via radio. Dave and Patti of This Way Up, friends from Australia that we met in the Sail Indonesia Rally are now traveling to the eastern part of Indonesia with another rally. Friends that we met in Chagos on the boat Nepenthe have made it safely to Dar es Salam in Tanzania and Far Niente has made it to Nosy Be in Madagascar. We’ll be catching up with them soon. Neil and Ley of Crystal Blues, friends we met at the Boat Lagoon while our boats were being painted are currently anchored on the north coast of Borneo. At least Ley is there in the boat waiting for Neil to return from a week’s work in India. Soon they’ll be heading back to Singapore. Friends from the Boston area, Susie Klein and Jim Hammitt are headed up the East Coast of the US in their boat Reveille. They sailed Reveille to the Med a few years ago and had it shipped back to Florida last season. So this trip will return Reveille to her home in Padanarum in Rhode Island. And our friends Larry and Angela Beavers in Fall River, Rhode Island, are launching their 24 foot C & C named Isabel this weekend. So our sailing friends are spread far and wide all over the globe and it is great to keep in touch with them.
