by Judy Handley | Sep 11, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 320, Year 5 Underwater Fantasia
Date: Saturday, September 11, 2010
Weather: Overcast Early, Clearing; Winds 10-12 NNW
Latitude: 13 18.079 S
Longitude: 048 10.715 E
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
You just never know where you are going to end up at the end of a day of cruising. Somehow we gravitated back to Nosy Sakatia which is home base in Madagascar for us. We are here with Constance and Far Niente from the US, Kea and another catamaran from France, and Pioneer and Dream Catcher from South Africa. So it really is like being back home after a week’s vacation of snorkeling. We started our morning in Hell-ville by going to shore one more time. We decided that we should buy beer for our trip south, so we took in the empty plastic crates of HEAVY bottles to shore and traded them in for full cases of cans. Cans are twice as expensive, but they will be able to be recycled in South Africa. If we took bottles south we would have to Deep Six them and that is environmentally not a good thing to do. As soon as that deed was done, we upped anchor and headed for Tani Keli even though it was totally overcast. We were hoping for a miracle of blue skies and no wind so our snorkeling would be perfect. And we got what we hoped for. We had an incredible two hour snorkel under clear, sunny skies in crystal clear water. We saw a couple of fish we have never seen before. We swam with a school of hundreds of neon blue fusiliers. We swam with silvery white, round pompanos with glistening yellow fins. This was just amazing. There were hundreds of these fish and they just hovered at the surface as we swam through and around them. We didn’t see any turtles today but we did see a huge octopus that let us observe and photograph him for quite some time. I saw the octopus and went to get Mark so he could photograph it. I pointed to it and Mark could not see it. He was right above it, but it was so well camouflaged that he really could not find it. I kept pointed and then the octopus changed colors and Mark zoomed in. This guy was twice as big as the one we saw in Mitsio and it put on quite a show for us. Mark and I both wonder how the octopus senses the color of the coral around them. This particular octopus is a common one of the species Cyanea. It is a deep maroon color in the natural state and then totally transforms to look like the surroundings. Watching this has just been amazing for us.
After snorkeling we were supposed to be headed to Russian Bay and then to another small island that is supposed to have incredible snorkeling. But just before we left Tani Keli Mark asked if I would mind if we returned to Nosy Sakatia. We have had a number of boat repairs that we have had to attend to in the past few days such as replacing the impellor on salt water pump on the engine and turning the gypsy on the windlass around so we can pull up our anchor chain without having it slip terribly. And now our bilge pumps are not working quite right and the packing gland around our prop needs to be replaced as it is leaking badly. Mark said he would feel more secure working on these problems where there are other boats around to help out if we have problems, so off we went to Nosy Sakatia.
And here is one more amazing thing that happened today. We went up to Sakatia Towers for sundowners and I sat down beside a young woman I had not met before. She introduced herself as Carmen. She and her husband Olivier are on a catamaran from France that we have seen in Mitsio and Hell-ville over the past few days. The amazing thing was that she is an environmental engineer working on climate change with the UN and many nations from around the world. Our daughter has just launched a blog site in the US dealing with climate change and Carmen was quite excited to see the blog. Carmen and Olivier have a thirteen year-old son and a six year-old daughter onboard and will be rounding South Africa and arriving in Brazil about the time we do in March. Our daughter Heather and her family are planning to meet us in Brazil, so we might be able to get Carmen and Heather together. It is just such a small, small world.
by Judy Handley | Sep 10, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 319, Year 5 Another Day in Hell-ville
Date: Friday, September 10, 2010
Weather: Most Cloudy, Morning Rain
Location: Hell-ville, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
We’re still in Hell-ville but will leave early in the morning and head for Tana Keli to get in another snorkel in Madagascar’s clearest water. From there we will probably go to Russian Bay for the night and then out to a small island that both Pioneer and Constance have told us has spectacular snorkeling. By Monday we should be back at Nosy Sakatia and just hang out for a few days while getting ready for our trip to South Africa. At least that’s the plan for now.
Our second day in Hell-ville was productive. We started our morning by getting six more jerry jugs of diesel. That’s 120 liters of diesel and we pay 294,000 Ariary ($150 US). That means we are paying $5 US per gallon which is outrageous, but it doesn’t get any cheaper in South Africa. We just need to sail more and motor less. Yesterday we took the dinghy to a little landing area to the right of the main wharf. It was high tide and plenty deep and we were greeted by the infamous Tu-pac, AKA Johnny I. He was good to us and we were good to him. He actually got us a better deal on a taxi into town to get fuel than we were expecting. This morning we went back to the same area and this time we were greeted by the younger Johnny. We’ll call him Johnny II. We have met him before and he comes highly recommended, but actually the cost of the taxi this morning was higher than yesterday, and that was after strong negotiations. Johnny II did tell us to make sure we came to the main wharf when we returned, but we were not sure why. That became evident later in the day. When I took Mark back to town we went to the main wharf as Johnny II had told us to do. He met us and Mark took off with his computer to get the English versions of Microsoft Office and of Avast, the anti-virus protection we are now using, installed. He also went to the market to get fresh veggies. When I went back to pick him up the tide was very low and we now understood why Johnny II told us to come to the main wharf. The area where we had entered earlier was totally dry. Later in the afternoon I took Mark in one more time to get two more jerry jugs of diesel and the bananas that I had forgotten to put on the list earlier. By this time, it was obvious that we were not leaving the harbor today, so we settled in for another night here. We have been surrounded by boats we know from India and Chagos-Koukouri that we first met in India left today headed back to Southeast Asia, Armelle T from Brussels that we met in Chagos is still anchored beside us, and Single Malt, a Swiss boat that we have known since Sail Indonesia is still anchored behind us. We are surrounded by friends and all seems safe. Hell-ville has a terrible reputation, but cruisers this year have not found that to be the case. Hope that lasts until we are out of here!
by Judy Handley | Sep 9, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 318, Year 5 Lots of Good News
Date: Thursday, September 9, 2010
Weather: Sunny Day; Winds Not Cooperating
Latitude: 13 24.474 S
Longitude: 048 17.064 E
Location: Hell-ville, Nosy Be, NW Madagascar
Mark’s brother Steve is a grandpa again. We received an email from Steve today saying that we should already know about the birth, so somehow we missed the earlier message. But the happy news is that Steve’s daughter Kristi gave birth to Caleb Stephen on August 23rd. Congratulations to Grandpa Steve and to Kristi, Nathan, and first born Hayden. We are very happy for all of you.
And while on the subject of babies, I will mention that we went to Nosy Komba today to see if the Black Lemurs had any babies yet. We were told in August that the babies would be born in September. Only one has been born and we were so lucky to see the mother with her little baby girl. Female Black Lemurs are brown with an off-white ruff around the face and the males are black. We were told today that both male and female babies are dark brown when born. The baby female lemur we saw today was definitely dark brown and looked more like a newborn kitten than the baby Cockerel Safika lemurs we saw in Moramba Bay. The Black Lemur babies are not as cute as he Safikas, but it was VERY special to have the mother with her baby holding onto to her tummy hop on our shoulders and heads. We thought the mother would not come near us with the baby, but not so. Our guide today was a good one. We could tell, and the animals could tell that he loved them. In addition to having the mother and baby lemur hop on our heads and shoulders, we were able to wrap the Madagascar boas around our necks and we had chameleons crawling on our heads. It was a fun trip through the lemur park. We bought some pieces of recelet (Komba embroidery) and went to Chez Yolanda’s for lunch. We had first heard about this little restaurant in the Lonely Planet and then we heard more about it from John Sheppard at Sakatia Towers. Yolanda and her husband are sailors and when she is in Komba, the seafood served at her restaurant is the best. When we arrived today her two daughters who speak absolutely no English were the only ones there. They went to find a young man who could translate for us and he explained that Yolanda was in Hell-ville. He said he could prepare the food, but that we must understand that the food would not be prepared by Yolanda. That was fine by us and as reported, the crevettes (shrimps) were absolutely delicious. We ordered crevettes l’ail which is shrimp sautéed in butter and garlic and crevettes en sauce (tomato). The shrimp were huge. And just as we were finishing, Yolanda appeared. She wanted to make sure all was okay and it was.
We returned to Windbird and motored against wind and current to Hell-ville. We were hoping to get the English up-dates on Mark’s computer and to get fuel. We will be able to get the computer updates tomorrow morning and we did get six jerry jugs of fuel late this afternoon. We will get another six jugs tomorrow morning and that should just about fill us up. I had hoped to be out of here in time to snorkel at Tani Keli tomorrow at low tide, but I don’t think we will make that. So once again, I’m not sure where we will go tomorrow after the computer up-dates are completed. If it is too late, we will just stay here and go to Tani Keli the next day.
Now for the other really good news . . . our son emailed this afternoon to let us know that Jo learned late yesterday that her paperwork has been received and is being processed so that she can return to the United States. It will take up to a year for her to hear the final decision on whether she will be granted a ten-year unconditional Visa so she can stay in the US, but at least for now Justin, Jo, and Ziggy can get on with their lives.
by Judy Handley | Sep 8, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 317, Year 5 Decision To Go South
Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Weather: Sunny Day; Winds 0-2 Knots NE Turning 10 Knots NW
Latitude: 13 24.802 S
Longitude: 048 20.285 E
Location: Lokobe National Park, NW Madagascar
After three magical days of snorkeling off Nosy Ankarea we headed out this morning hoping the wind would make the ‘go north’ or ‘go south’ decision for us. But there was no wind. We motored out of Nosy Mitsio’s Maribe Bay and I couldn’t enter Miles To Go in the Captain’s Log as we still didn’t know where we were going. I really wanted to go north to try and see the mother and baby whales, but with no wind we would be motoring all morning and then would probably be fighting a strong north wind in the afternoon. That plus the fact that the Dominiques on KEA just came from up north and saw no whales probably helped to make the decision to head south. Since there was no wind we decided to motor the twelve miles to Tsara Banjina and stop there for a snorkel before heading on to Lokobe National Park on the southeast corner of Nosy Be. We have a whole page of things we need to do once we have cell and internet service again, so we will hang out between Lokobe, Nosy Komba, and Hell-ville for two or three days and try to get some of those things done. We left Nosy Sakatia the morning after Mark returned from Hell-ville with a virus-free computer, but we really haven’t had a chance to be online to see if everything is working properly. When they did the last fix, they had to take Microsoft Office off the computer and reinstall it-in French. So now our anti-virus program and Microsoft Office are all in French. While we have been gone the computer shop was going to get the English versions and will install them when we return. So we’ll spend a day or so playing around with the computer online, hope we don’t get another virus, and then go back to the computer place in Hell-ville for the replacement programs.
Tsara Banjina is a beautiful little island. Coming from the north it is hidden by larger Nosy Toloho until you are almost there. Then this incredibly white sand beach surrounded by turquoise water starts emerging from behind Toloho. It really is breathtaking. The only thing on the island is the Constance Lodge and it is mostly hidden behind the casuarina trees that sway in the wind and serve as the backdrop to that beautiful beach. We were in the dinghy on our way to snorkel by 9 am. Just as when we were there before, we headed out to the rocky islands to snorkel, but the tide was so low that much of the coral was exposed. And we saw no fish. So we carefully motored around to the south side of the island to a rocky point. On the way there we saw literally hundreds of small jellyfish, all about five inches across. They were clear but outlined in an electric blue. They all seemed to be headed across our path and back to where Windbird was anchored. When we got to the snorkeling area we saw no jellies, so in we went. It was not as clear as Mitsio and the bommies were either too deep or too shallow, but we still managed to have a good snorkel. I saw an incredibly big and ugly grouper and a school of about twenty-five Moorish Idols. There are photos of schools of Moorish Idols in our fish identification books, but we have never seen more than two at a time. I always wondered where the photographers go to get such photos. Now I know, except my photographer did not even see them, so we don’t have that photo yet. We also saw a new fish. It looks like a Humbug Dascyllus which is white with three vertical black stripes, but this one has only two stripes. We actually saw one tiny one like this back at Nosy Sakatia and thought it was just an anomaly. Evidently that is not the case since we saw many of them today. After our snorkel, we pulled up anchor at 10:30 am and started motoring through an absolute maze of those electric blue jellies. If anyone knows why there would be so many of them in one place, please email and let me know. We saw a few clear jellies while snorkeling off Nosy Ankarea, but only a few, and then yesterday when Mark and I got in one last time to explore underwater off the east side of Ankarea, rather than the south where we had concentrated our time, I did get into a nest of the same jellies. They looked just like the ones I saw today but they were translucent-no blue. And since we are always suited head to toe when snorkeling, I was able to fend off any that headed toward my face, so I didn’t get stung and Mark didn’t even see any. I sure hope these guys stay up north and don’t come down to Nosy Be as I really want to do more snorkeling at Nosy Sakatia and back at Tani Keli. No jellies allowed!
We had a wonderful sail, sometimes with a motor assist, from Tsara Banjina to Lokobe. Mark caught an enormous fish but it took the hook, line, and sinker and off it went. At least it left the pole behind. Just as we approached the anchorage here, the wind piped up to the 20’s, so we are having a bit of a blow this evening. Pioneer is here but will leave early tomorrow for a snorkel at Tani Keli. We will probably go to Nosy Komba for the day to see the lemurs and buy more recelet. Constance called on the radio this afternoon and said they might be coming this way tomorrow. And that’s the news from Madagascar.
by Judy Handley | Sep 7, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 316, Year 5 KEA and a Baby Langford Arrive
Date: Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Weather: Cloudy, Then Clearing but Hazy; Winds 15 NE, Then W
Location: Nosy Mitsio, NW Madagascar
We spent another blissful morning snorkeling at Nosy Ankarea before the west winds piped up around noon. It was no longer blissful, so we got out of the water. About that time, KEA, a French boat we met in Chagos with Dominique and Dominique aboard, arrived. We had a quick reunion and made plans to get together after 5 pm back in Nosy Mitsio to catch up. KEA left Chagos and went to Rodrigues, Mauritius, and Reunion, and then came up the east coast of Madagascar. Even though it is the dry season, they had rain every single day on the east coast. I guess they mean it when they say they have rainforest over there, while here on the west coast we have dry forest and spiny desert. We had a great evening on KEA and answered many of their questions about Madagascar. We are the first cruisers they have seen since arriving in Madagascar.
Pioneer left early this morning headed for Tsara Banjina. KEA doesn’t know where they are headed tomorrow. And we still don’t know which way we will go in the morning. I don’t think we realized how lucky we were that the weather changed just when we left Nosy Sakatia and headed north. We did have to motor all the way here, but we have had three wonderfully calm days here and enjoyed the snorkeling immensely. Now it appears the normal wind pattern is back and we have strong winds good for sailing if you are going in the right direction, but not good for snorkeling. When we leave here in the morning we will go which ever way the wind blows us. I think we have finally become true cruisers!
We want to send a great big congratulation to our sailing friends Neil and Ley Langford of Crystal Blues. They emailed this morning letting us know that their first grandson was born at 12:50 am. I know they have no idea just how much their world is going to change with the arrival of this little bundle of joy. Our favorite quote used to be one from the The Wind in the Willows. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” That has since been replaced by, “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about with grandchildren.” Congratulations to Grandma Ley and Grandpa Neil!
On the not so happy side of things, the frame on my back-up pair of glasses broke today. So much for titanium frames. I lost my good pair overboard in Chagos chasing Brown Noddies from the bow of our boat. Today the frames on the back-up pair just broke. So now I am wearing my pre-titanium prescription glasses from 2001. Amazing, I can actually see through them, so not all is lost.
by Judy Handley | Sep 6, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 315, Year 5 Happy 7th Anniversary to Heather and Jed
Date: Monday, September 6, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; Land/Sea Breeze Back Again
Location: Nosy Mitsio, NW Madagascar
Happy Anniversary, Heather and Jed! It hardly seems possible that our daughter has been married for seven years, but statistics tell us that is so. This must have been a big Labor Day Weekend for them, beginning with the threat of Hurricane Earl on Friday and ending with their anniversary today. It is also the first weekend after Heather has started working full-time and we know that life has been a bit hectic for them. So here’s hoping Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Sam had a chance to take a deep breath and celebrate the anniversary.
We celebrated Heather and Jed’s anniversary by snorkeling and then snorkeling some more. I know there is nothing they would rather be doing, so we enjoyed it for them. We headed to Nosy Ankarea at 7:45 am, as Bruce, Nadine, and Tristen on Pioneer headed for the long beach on the northern arm of Nosy Mitsio. We arrived at Nosy Ankarea by 8:45 am and jumped in the water for a wonderful early morning low tide snorkel. The fish always seem to be more active in the morning and even though the wind was blowing 15-20 from East causing a bit of chop on the water, we had a fabulous snorkel. We got to swim with a large Green Turtle and got good photos of many of the fish. After about an hour and a half the camera battery died so we came back to Windbird to get another battery. We were both famished, so I fixed French toast for the first time since we were at Heather and Jed’s last summer. We gobbled it down and got back in the water. The winds had calmed down so there was no longer a chop, but the tide was higher and the fish were not as numerous. Maybe they take a three hour mid-day break like everyone else in Madagascar. We snorkeled and then took the dinghy around to the west side of the island to see what is there underwater. I got in but saw only more of what we had been seeing, only much deeper. For the first time that I can remember since Fiij, Mark is even more smitten with the snorkeling here than I am. So we have decided to stay here at Nosy Mitsio one more day and make another day trip to Nosy Ankarea tomorrow. I think that island is enchanted, or at least it is enchanting. We love visiting there.
Pioneer is headed south to Tsara Banjina tomorrow, so we will meet up with them again at Nosy Sakatia in a few days. Tomorrow we will make the decision about heading further north in search of mother and baby whales or heading back to the south. KEA, a boat we met in Chagos, will probably arrive here tomorrow from up north and hopefully they can tell us if the whales are up there. We are making decisions one day a time, so tomorrow we will report on whether we are headed north or south.
