Day 345, Year 5 Winds Backing, Anchor Dragging
Date: Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Winds 15 Knots
Latitude: 16 00.347 S
Longitude: 045 20.741 E
Location: Baly Bay, NW Madagascar

The winds were SW yesterday which is unusual and then during the night it starting backing SW to E by morning. And sometime during that counter-clockwise rotation our anchor decided to drag. Thankfully Mark felt the movement and got up just in time to find the anchor resettling about 500 feet from where it started, closer to shore. The depth was fine and all was well, so we stayed in that position until morning and then moved back out a bit. Our anchor is very reliable and we know we were solidly anchored when we arrived, so we are thinking that our anchor was caught under a rock and when we turned during the night the anchor just slipped out. We are just hoping we don’t have a repeat performance tonight.

Today was a low-key work day. We have a cell signal here so Mark visited the other two boats to discuss route planning and did some internet searching on South African weather and I did a huge laundry. We then worked together on some route planning for the trip down the west coast of Madagascar and then across to South Africa. Somehow the day slipped away but we do have a little better idea of when we will move on from here. Right now we plan to leave on Friday morning and go 45 miles on down the coast Then on Saturday morning we will start our trek down the west coast of Madagascar. Odulphus is planning to day hop down even though we have very little information about the anchorages along the way. Constance is thinking they might go to the coastal anchorage on Friday and then do an overnight to the Barren Islands. We are listening to the weather reports on the South African radio nets and will make a decision by tomorrow evening. Looking for those “weather windows” is always a time consuming job.