Day 309, Year 5 Baksheesh!
Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Weather: Overcast with Occasional Drizzle
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar

The September edition of Cruising World has an article in it by Fatty Goodlander. It is called “Baksheesh!” and is all about our good friends Robert and Tina of Shirena. Baksheesh is the term for the under the table “gifts” you have to give officials in Egypt and other parts of that part of the world. If you can get a copy of the September Cruising World you can read the article to find out how the whole experience got to be just a little too much for Fatty. If you have been following this log, you probably remember that Robert had a heart attack in Egypt. Robert is Zbyszek Wasilewicz but always introduces himself as Robert. His reasoning is that Zbyszek is just too difficult for people to remember. We spent Christmas and New Year’s with Robert and Tina in Thailand this year and when we had a farewell dinner on New Year’s Day I gave Robert a bottle of wine called Robert’s Rock. I told him if he made it through the Gulf of Aden he was to drink the wine and that we would start calling him by his real name. Shirena made it, so we now call him Zbyszek. But in the article Fatty calls him Robert so I will continue to call him that here. On January 2, Shirena sailed out of Patong Beach and headed for Uligan in the Maldives and then for Salalah in Oman. At that time, none of us would ever have dreamed that Robert would have a serious heart attack in just a few months. As Fatty describes the situation in Egypt in the Cruising World article we relived the whole horrible time again. Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander on Wildcard and Tom and Nicolette Samson on Katanne were ahead of Robert and Tina and were already in Israel. After Robert’s heart attack Fatty and Tom flew back to Egypt to sail Shirena to Israel, but the trouble they had with officials in Egypt is what the article is all about. At this time, Shirena is still in Israel and Robert and Tina are back home in Australia. They do hope to be back cruising next season, but I know they won’t be returning to Egypt. The picture Fatty paints of Egypt’s officials is not a pretty one. Reading the article made me even happier about our decision to come south.

Here on Windbird, the oven has been on nonstop since 10 am and because of the drizzle we have had to keep the all the hatches closed. So its about 89 degrees F in here-not as hot as it was the whole time we were in India, but hotter than we have been used to recently. I baked two loaves of banana bread, two loaves of wheat bread, baked two chickens we bought in town yesterday, and then baked the potatoes, onions, and carrots to go with the chicken. Unfortunately the largest baking pan I have will hold two chickens but nothing else, so the chickens have to bake and then the veggies go in. This makes the cooking a long, drawn out process but the smells are scrumptious. Mark has spent the day working on this computer. It is not fixed so it is another long, drawn out process. We have been able to get mail and get online, sort of, but with online searches we get text only and no pictures, and sometimes we get nothing. Also, his Excel Spreadsheet program will not open. So he will continue to try and figure out what is going on. At some point, we will have to return to Hell-ville and stay there until the problem is fixed. In the meantime, our connection to the internet is tenuous at best, and needless to say, Mark is a bit frustrated.

This afternoon Bruce and Nadine of Pioneer returned to the anchorage and a boat we haven’t met before, Muneera, arrived. Nick and Andrea are the young couple on Muneera and they have two little girls. We talked to Bruce and Nadine on Pioneer briefly and they proposed that we head north with them in the next couple of days. We will talk to them again tomorrow about this but are seriously considering the proposal. We went to Dream Catcher for sundowners tonight with Barry and Tina and Nick and Andrea of Muneera. We had a fabulous evening sharing sailing experiences. Tomorrow Barry is taking the ‘boys’ out for a fishing expedition. At 6 am I will take our dinghy and Mark and pick up Ed on Constance and Nick on Muneera and deliver them to Dream Catcher. Since Tina and her daughter Candice will not be going on Dream Catcher, they are headed to Constance for early morning coffee. Then we will decide if the ‘girls’ will have an organized day of play as well. I like Tina’s idea of taking a book, a beach umbrella, and snorkeling gear to the beach. We can then read and snorkel our way through the day.