Day 311, Year 5 Quiet Sakatia Day
Date: Thursday, September 2, 2010
Weather: Partly Cloudy Morning, Clear & Windy Afternoon
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Finally, a quiet day. We have been having too much fun the past few days and it was time for a rest. I re-wrote all of the emails I lost yesterday and that took all morning. Mark went up to Sakatia Towers to see John and to make arrangements to go to town with him tomorrow. John called the Hell-ville computer guru for Mark and made an appointment for 8 am. Mark spent much of the remainder of the day trying to find out what is infecting the files on his computer, but he was unsuccessful. This computer virus is quite tricky, but hopefully tomorrow’s trip to town will finally solve the problem. But even with all the problems, we were able to get online this morning, albeit briefly, and get an update on Hurricane Earl. What we read this morning indicated that it is picking up steam and heading north along the east coast of the US. Our daughter wrote and said they are expecting Earl to hit Cape Cod on Friday night. I sure hope something happens to send this guy out to sea before it gets that far north.
We spent much of our afternoon underwater. Low tide was mid-afternoon and it wasn’t as clear as usual, but we still enjoyed the sights. I saw a new wrasse today with the most beautiful turquoise and pink coloring. And I was able to finally get a photo of the juvenile phase of the Blunthead Platax. The adult Blunthead is commonly called a batfish, a type of spadefish, that loves to live around anchored yachts in Chagos and eat all the garbage thrown overboard. They are a flat fish as big as a dinner plate. The juvenile is all head with a very long fin going up and a another very long fin going down and then two smaller fins extending downward from just under its mouth. I had the underwater camera today and was practicing, so my photos of this fish are not as good as they would have been had Mark been doing the photography, but at least I now have a picture of it. We also saw the beautiful juvenile phase of the Imperor Angelfish today, so it was a successful snorkel. And just as we got in the dinghy to return to Windbird, we saw hump-backed dolphins in the anchorage. So it was a good day.
