by Judy Handley | Sep 24, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 333, Year 5 Two More Snorkeling Days
Date: Friday, September 24, 2010
Weather: Partly Cloudy and Humid
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Humid. How can it be humid in the dry season in Madagascar? I have no way of knowing that it is for sure, but after complaining about being hot all day when it is really not all that hot, I finally figured it out. The air has been so dry for so long that we’ve forgotten what it feels like when it is humid. It didn’t help that I was baking all afternoon again, but now we have lots of food in the fridge ready for the passage south.
We went snorkeling this morning with Ed and Lynne of Constance. We only have tomorrow and Sunday left, so we are cramming in every second of snorkeling that we can. The water clarity on the reef near the shore was not all that clear today, but it was clear enough to finally get photos of the Emperor and Semicircle Angelfishes. The Emperor is so beautiful with its vivid shades of blue, yellow, and white and the Semicircles we saw today were juveniles turning into an adult and it was just so special to see it. We are enjoying watching something called a Vermitid that is a type of mollusk. This creature lives in a tube-shaped shell that looks a bit like an empty toilet paper roll and it casts a mucous net to catch its food. Fascinating. We saw a new fish variety, something that always happens when we snorkel here, and then we went out in the channel in search of the magical spot we discovered last week. We found the huge pink Gorgonian fan coral, saw a gorgeous olive green reef stingray with vivid blue spots, a lionfish, and another Semicircle Angelfish all in one spot. And then I ran off with the camera trying to capture the beauty in a video when I saw the same strange fish that Mark saw last week. It has a big fat white head thickly dotted with black dots and slowly changes to a splotchy red body. And it literally just disappears as soon as you see it. Mark got a photo last week and then the fish vanished. I stopped the video mode on the camera today, pushed the photo button, and got a long-distance photo and then it vanished again. We showed Ed and Lynne the photos this afternoon and we are all going on a mission tomorrow to try and get a better look at this strange fish. The gorgeous gray Protoreaster linckii sea star with bright red designs and spikes is also in abundance out in the channel as are the bright orange Anthias females and the fushia-colored males and all of this together makes the channel a very special place to snorkel. We couldn’t identify the sea star last week but since then I have found it on the web and attached its scientific name. By the time we got out in the channel today the tide was flowing fast to the south, so tomorrow we will go out there first and hope for calmer conditions. When we snorkeled there on Monday of last week, Bruce, Nadine, and Tristen of Pioneer were out there. They are now home in South Africa, but Nadine, if you happen to be reading this log, just know that we’re enjoying the snorkeling for you and taking as many photos as we can to share with you when we see you in Cape Town. We’ll be out there again in the morning trying to catch the tides just right.
by Judy Handley | Sep 23, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 332, Year 5 Back Home at Sakatia
Date: Thursday, September 23, 2010
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
We are back in the Sakatia Towers anchorage and ready for our trip to South Africa. Our first order of business, however, is to enjoy every last minute while here. We invited John and his wife Heidi from Sakatia Towers to come to Windbird for dinner tonight and we also invited Lynne and Ed of Constance. Mark and I went up to the Sakatia Towers deck to have a beer with John while Heidi did her last afternoon swim and then we took them out to Windbird where Ed and Lynne joined us. We had a great evening watching the full moon rise. This is our fourth full moon in Madagascar and our next should be on our passage to South Africa.
While Mark and Ed completed the check out procedure this morning, I walked the streets of Hell-ville trying to capture the feel of the town by clicking away on my camera. Hell-ville is a kicky little town with so many different nationalities thrown into the mix. I did my last shopping, sent some post cards, and then met Mark and Ed on the wharf where we headed back out to our boats. We said our last goodbyes to the Hell-ville boat boys-Julian, Johnny, and Romero. And off we went.
Our hope for tomorrow is to snorkel along the headlands and try to get photos of the elusive angelfish that we see there, and then we will head out into the channel where we saw such fantastic sights during the new moon low tide. We’ll do the same on Saturday and then celebrate John’s birthday on Sunday before heading south on Monday morning.
by Judy Handley | Sep 22, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 331, Year 5 Shopping Day in Hell-ville
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Hell-ville, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
Shopping for the next month was not as easy as I had hoped. There was no cheese that we could afford at the super marche and the vegetables at the market today were not the best. And there was no whole meal flour at the super marche. We’ll be fine, but it made shopping difficult. When Mark and Ed go in tomorrow to check out, I am going to go with them and make one more run through town looking for cheese and green peppers. I’m also going to take my camera and just sit and take photos of people on the street. Mark noted today that people here wear the most “interesting” garb and somehow they look great in it. If you saw the same people on the street in the US it just wouldn’t work, but here where zebu carts haul goods up and down the streets, things just look different. We have all the fuel we can carry, most of the food we need, and hopefully by noon tomorrow we will have completed the check-out formalities and will head back to Nosy Sakatia to snorkel in the low, low full moon tides before heading south.
I got online this morning and checked our daughter’s new blog for the latest news in climate and oceans. She had posted an article today about the extremely warm season we have all just come through and how the higher temperatures are affecting the coral reefs around the world. In 1998 coral in many parts of the world was bleached. We have seen the re-growth of new coral in these areas during our circumnavigation and that was exciting, but unfortunately 2010 could be worse than 1998. Sadness doeth prevail.
Our son Justin and his wife Jo and son Ziggy are currently headed from New Mexico to Nevada for the first stop on their fall music tour. They bought a bus (like an old Greyhound) that they have outfitted for travel. On Sunday when we talked to Jo she was furiously painting the outside of the bus and getting ready for take-off on Monday morning. They made it to Las Vegas last night, so Reno here they come.
by Judy Handley | Sep 21, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 330, Year 5 Nosy Sakatia to Hell-ville
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Latitude: 13 24.419 S
Longitude: 048 17.077 E
Location: Hell-ville, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
I guess I could have named the log “Heaven to Hell” but actually Hell-ville has not lived up to its name. And let’s hope it stays that way until we are out of here! I spent my morning giving Brazil another look after getting an email from our son-in-law this morning. Evidently when you fly to Brazil from the United States you have to fly into Sao Paulo which is south of Rio de Janeiro and hundreds of miles south from where we had planned to land. Brazil is a big country. The cost of flying internally is not so bad, but it is the long number of hours of flying with two small children that is so hard. And flying out to Fernandez de Noronha looks to be just TOO expensive. So I researched the Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro area and found that it is probably Brazil’s best cruising grounds and has some gorgeous beaches as well. The problem for us is getting there. It is so far south that we would have to sail north from Cape Town and then south again to get there in order to stay inside the trade wind belt So the research continues.
Mark went to town with Ed and Lynne this afternoon to do a fuel run and I stayed here working on those photos. It is a never ending job. Tomorrow is a provisioning day. We will do the food shopping for the next month (hopefully we will be in South Africa by the end of October) and on Thursday start the formalities of checking out of the country. We will hopefully be back at Sakatia for a Full Moon Party on Thursday night, John’s birthday party on Sunday, and then head south on Monday morning. At least that’s the plan right now.
by Judy Handley | Sep 20, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 329, Year 5 Looking Ahead to VOW’s Year 6
Date: Monday, September 20, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
The Voyage of Windbird is looking ahead. We have many miles to go to get from here to Richards Bay in South Africa. That will end Year 5 of our voyage. Year 6 will begin with the trip from Richards Bay around the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town and then on across the Atlantic to Brazil and then north through the Caribbean, to Florida, South Carolina, the Chesapeake, and end up on Cape Cod by next July. After talking to our daughter yesterday, we did a day of forward planning. Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah are planning on meeting us in Brazil in March. Justin, Jo, and Ziggy were also going to come but we are not sure what Jo’s situation will be in terms of international travel. So they might have to wait and come to Florida or South Carolina when we reach the states. But Heather’s questions on the phone yesterday prompted a lot of reading about Brazil today and I fell in love. There is an archipelago a couple of hundred miles off the northeast corner of Brazil called Fernando de Noronha and the Lonely Planet says this is “one of the most stunning places in Brazil, if not the entire world.” That got my attention and then I read an article in a National Geographic Traveller magazine. The article was written by Stanley Stewart and he was searching the 8000 kilometers of Brazil’s beaches to find the ultimate beach. He found it on Ilha de Fernando de Noronha. Here’s what he had to say:
“But the best beach on Fernando I left for last. I reached it by bicycle, following a dirt track that wound through forest and scrub. From the viewpoint know as Mirante do Leão, I looked down on it, stretching out like a goddess in the sun, long-limbed and golden. It was love at first sight.
As with all beauty, that of Praia do Leão was simple and indefinable, some exquisite balance of sand, sea and over-arching-sky. The water was the colour of pale porcelain. The sands curved away, honey coloured, behind a hill. And here was that hint of wildness I’d sought, that touch of the elemental, in the shoals of coral rock and the sudden gusts of wind that surged off the Atlantic Ocean and set the dune grasses to dancing. I donned a snorkel and fins and waded into the warm blue waters. The Noronha archipelago is known in Brazil for its abundant marine life, including rays and turtles. Soon I was drifting over coral outcrops. A school of parrotfish wafted back and forth in blue shafts of light. Long-finned batfish waltzed past some damselfish queuing up at tendril anemones like partygoers at the punch bowl. Two imperial angelfish pursed their lips and passed on.
When I surfaced, I found Praia do Leão deserted. The handful of other beachgoers had gone off for lunch at one of the simple seafood restaurants just 15 minutes away by scooter. I was completely alone on one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil, a place where nothing seemed to exist but the startling sea, the soft sand underfoot and the warm caress of the sun. It was a perfect moment of escape.”
Wow! I’m definitely in love and I haven’t even seen it. The archipelago is a Marine Park and a UNESCO World Heritage site and is much like the Galapagos in terms of restrictions and cost. We’ve seen some beautiful places, but I don’t think I can complete a world circumnavigation without a visit to this archipelago.
But now back to Madagascar. Tomorrow we will sail to Hell-ville to do our final provisioning for the trip to South Africa. We will then return here to Nosy Sakatia for some full moon low-tide snorkels and a Sunday birthday party for John. Then on Monday morning, we head south. We have loved every minute here but I am now anxious to get on with the show. South Africa means high-speed internet so I can “see” my grandchildren on Skype and it is a land of game parks where we will see the big guys-elephants, lions, leopards, water buffalo, rhinos, and maybe a few zebras. So much to see!
by Judy Handley | Sep 19, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 328, Year 5 Just Another Day in the Life
Date: Sunday, September 19, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
It was another free and easy day. We went snorkeling at 8am to catch the low tide and then came back to the boat and baked bread, granola, brownies, and did laundry. Mark spent a great part of the day sewing, making four more pirogue sails for the Rotary Club. Late in the afternoon we talked to Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Sam. Heather just completed her first full-time five-day work week and all went as well as can be expected. Jonah is getting used to life without a full-time mommy and Sam seems to be taking everything in stride. So all is well on Cape Cod in the Goldstone household. We also talked to Jo, but Justin and Ziggy were not home. Justin and Ziggy were in Albuquerque picking up a friend of Jo’s from England that will travel with them on their music tour and take care of Ziggy when Justin and Jo are performing. They leave in the morning headed for Reno, then San Francisco, and then north to Portland. Things are a bit frenzied since they have only been home from England for a week, but Jo thinks they will be ready to go in the morning. They will return to New Mexico about the time we reach South Africa. We wish them safe travels.
And my really good news of the day came in an email from my sister. Her daughter Jennifer had a mastectomy in mid-August and she has been waiting for the pathology reports from surrounding tissue for a month. She got the good news this past week. The tissue samples put here in the below four per cent rate for a recurrence. Her doctor has only seen this low recurrence rate projection in two other patients and feels that this is truly good news for Jennifer.
We went up to the Sakatia Towers deck for sundowners with John’s Aunt Marianne and Uncle Gerald who have become good friends of ours in a very short time. We had to say our farewells tonight as they leave in the morning, but we made promises to call them when we get to South Africa and we will definitely visit when we are in the Port Elizabeth area. John’s wife, Heidi, flew in from South Africa last night so we got to see her tonight as well. She and John will be away for a couple of days so we will have to wean ourselves from visiting the deck every evening. We will leave here on Tuesday morning and go to Hell-ville to reprovision for our trip south and then we will return by Thursday night to have one last full-moon in the Sakatia anchorage. Tonight John suggested that we have a full-moon party out on the boats so I’ll spend some time trying to organize this during the week.
