Day 234, Year 5 Still No Break in the Weather
Date: Thursday, June 17, 2010
Weather: Sunny, Winds SE 18-25 Knots
Location: Ampanasia Bay, NW Madagascar

You can’t have it all. Yesterday it was overcast and rainy but the winds were down a bit. Today the sun shone brightly all day but the winds were back up to 18 to 25 knots with no let up all day. We were getting white caps on the bay once again but as the sun fell lower in the sky the winds stayed closer to 18 than to 25 and the number of white caps were greatly reduced. Mark and I took advantage of that and headed out in the dinghy to explore the shoreline. Mangroves line the shore. There are breaks in the wall of mangroves here and there and in one of those breaks we found a pebbly beach with two dugout canoes on shore. We saw three cows but were not close enough to see if they had the fantastic horns of the Malagasy zebu (just another word for cow). And we also found a beautiful tree in bloom. I have no way to identify it as I have absolutely no resources outlining Malagasy flora. I thought this tree was a baobab based on the bottle shape of the trunk, and it might be, but on close inspection of the photos, I see the trunk and branches all have spiny thorns and I didn’t know baobabs were thorny. The tree had no leaves but the blossoms looked like little bouquets. I have to go back and beach the dinghy so I can inspect this a little closer. There are a few others scattered here and there, but none so close to the shore. In this stark environment, a tree in blossom is such a beautiful thing. So on the list for tomorrow is a return to the area where that tree is located for a little land exploration.

Now back to the progress being made on repairs. Mark completed the caulking job on the deck chain plates and I continued cleaning the stainless. It was so windy that one of my rags blew away and the container of stainless polish went flying and landed upside down on the deck making a nice little mess. So I finished the bow pulpit area and quit on that job for the day. I washed the cockpit seat cushions and made pizza for dinner. In the late afternoon Mark went up the mast to inspect the rigging one more time and found a problem we had not seen before. The lower stay on the starboard side has one wire sticking out where it connects to the mast. This same stay had this same problem when we reached New Zealand in 2006 and we had it replaced. Now we will have to replace it again and we have no idea why this same stay keeps having the same problem. Since we cannot replace this until we get to South Africa, we will use some Amsteel line made from Dyneema and fashion another lower so if the wire one goes, the rope one will be in place. Dyneema is a very strong line, actually almost twice as strong as the wire rigging, so we think we should be fine. And even if both lowers broke, it should not affect the stability of the mast. At least that’s the theory.

Constance is still battling the slow leak. They had to take out the contents of yet one more cabinet to dry it out. So their boat is just full of stuff that should be in the cabinets but cannot go back until the leak is completely stopped. Putting the Life Caulk on the outside yesterday slowed things down, but now Ed needs to actually plug the underwater drain that is cracked. He will push a wooden peg in the hole sealing it with the Life Caulk. I don’t know what we would have done without the tubes of this stuff. When Lynne flew back to the states to see her mother in March, we contacted my sister-in-law Sue and her husband Brad in Boynton Beach where Lynne’s mother lives. We had Brad and Sue go to West Marine and buy three tubes of this caulk along with some other stuff and take it to Lynne so she could bring it back to us. We were going to use it to redo the caulking in our teak deck, but that didn’t get done, thankfully, and now we have it to help seal off the leaks in Constance and our leaky chain plates. What a stroke of luck that we happened to have the caulk. I now call it Life Saver instead of Life Caulk. So thank you Brad and Sue for shopping for us.

The South African Maritime Mobile Net tells us that we will get a bit of a break in the winds on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. So if Constance is ready to go, we will plan to head south. Windbird is down to the last two tomatoes from India, the last two eggs from the Maldives, and the last case of beer. We haven’t seen a fresh green vegetable in a couple of months, so it is time for a stop with a store. That would be Nosy Be which is more than a hundred miles from here. But by this time next week, we should be there. Super Marche (the name of the grocery store there) here we come!

100617 Day 234 Ampanasia Bay, Madagascar–Tour of the Bay