Nosy Komba, Madagascar

After our time at the town of Hellville, we wanted to explore further. Our water supply was dwindling, city water was tainted, and good water was rumored to be available at Nosy Komba, a short daysail away. We anchored, brought our jugs ashore, and were met by some young boys who were willing and eager to show us the source of water – for a price, of course.



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The water tasted good, and the girls doing laundry sang a song for us. If we thought at the time that conditions here were a bit rustic, we learned a week later and further down the coast that this tap was much superior to a well on the beach - both for ease of use and taste.



Ginger suggested we use our watermaker more. We had been using shore water as much as possible to conserve fuel.



We heard lemurs were common on this island. We took a walk, never saw a lemur, and then asked a woman standing in the trail “where are the lemurs?” She gave us a strange look and slowly pointed over our heads. A lemur looked down at us. She suggested that we take the guided tour to see more lemurs, so we headed back to the village to sign up. With a group of cheerful friendly French people,



we got up close and personal with the lemurs.



We also saw wonderful lizards.





It was interesting to walk through the village and see how people lived. Cooking is done on neat little stoves. The duck has been rooting around the ashes looking for tasty tidbits.



Octopus were drying for a future dinner.



As far as we can tell, there is no plywood in Madagascar. Many doors and shutters are paneled, in a pattern reminiscent of France in the 1800’s. Nails are rare - most woodwork is pegged together.



The village had many appealing cottages, lanes and courtyards.









The waterfront was busy. We saw these kids looking for fish.



These kids were out on the water, too. There are a lot of very young people in rural Madagascar, at a certain age they are sent away to boarding school.



The little ones were curious and often asked for candy. Giving candy to kids in a country without dentists is cruel, so we prefer to give pens and crayons – also always well received.



Exploring Nosy Komba was a pleasant time for the crew of the Marcy, but as the sun set it was time to make plans to head further down the coast.

Madagascar Dhows

Caution: read no further if boats are boring to you……



While Marcy lay at anchor in the harbor at Nosy Be, we watched graceful lateen rigged dhows come and go. They are entirely engineless, and supply Hellville’s daily needs – bringing produce, building materials, livestock, fish and people. The dhows arrive loaded and leave light.



As they approach the quay, the sail is dropped and the crew pushes the dhow the rest of the way in with poles. This dhow is loaded with sacks of rice.



The quay is thick with unloading dhows, cargo and people.







Waiting for a turn to unload, or waiting to depart for the return trip, scores of dhows ride at anchor just off the quay.



As sailors, we were fascinated by the big lateen sails. This can be a windy part of the world - how is so much sail area tamed? How are dhows tacked and jibed, how is sail reefed, set and doused? We decided to charter a small dhow for a day and find out first hand.



We boarded early in the morning, poled out of the harbor, and set out for a nearby island in fluky light wind. At times we were becalmed. Our sailors showed immense patience, no doubt strengthened by years of sailing without motors.



As we picked up speed, the water burbled cheerfully at the stem.



Ginger settled in under the umbrella, while our captain and crew sprawled on the quarterdeck.



We saw all the familiar operations – everything we do on Marcy, but a bit different. For example, we pump the bilges by pushing a button on Marcy. Our dhow was pretty leaky. The dhow crew bails first with a small bucket, then pours the bilge water into a bigger bucket.



Then the bigger bucket is poured on deck in a special spot.



Then the water pours overboard through a scupper.



On Marcy, we cook on a propane stove. On the dhow, a fire is lit under the foredeck.





Rainwater is collected and stored in this barrel.



The blocks and parrels are all hand fabricated, a bit crude looking but strong and functional.







After anchoring at the island for lunch, we hauled anchor and headed back to town.



We accomplished our goal and learned all about the lateen rig – tacked only in very light winds, they wear about (jibe) usually. This dhow has let the sheet go before jibing, and will let the sail whip like a flag as the yard is moved to the other side.



They rarely reef, either relying on whippy yards to relieve wind pressure, or partially lowering the yard (downwind only) or hitching the sail near the top of the yard like this dhow.



Just like a racing dingy, the sheet was kept ready to let fly in case of emergency.



Back at the quay at low tide we noticed leaky dhows getting caulked by their crews. A fire melts the pitch while oakum is pounded into the seams.



The boats are used hard, and may not last long. We understood our dhow was only a year old. It looked much older! At low tide there is evidence of many dhows that will never sail again.



We felt lucky to observe such ancient technology in daily use. The dhows are graceful and practical, and it was great fun to watch them go about their business.

Life in Hell…ville, Madagascar

Actually, life in Hellville, our port of entry for Madagascar, was quite pleasant for Marcy. After clearing in, anyway. As usual for countries in the Indian Ocean, formalities took a full day and much signing of crew lists, stamping forms with our boat stamp and much walking around town and waiting for offices to open for the morning or after lunch or who knows why.



We always follow all rules and regulations in every country, especially Madagascar. We wouldn’t want to end up in court. The courthouse shows architectural evidence of the French colonial days. We heard that the workings of government have been influenced more recently by China.



The post office is a charming building that could have been transplanted from rural France.



Women of Nosy Be (the island where Hellville is located) make intricate cut and embroidered tablecloths. Every day when we walked to town from the port, we passed a shady lane where they exhibit their wares.



We went to the bank to get some local currency, the ariary.



Peter was pleased to see sailing boats on the money. This is the most water oriented country we’ve visited yet.



As always, we needed to replenish the food lockers on Marcy. We started with the downtown stores and Peter got a treat – steaks were available at rock bottom prices.



Rum is cheaper than beer if you bring your own bottle to be filled.



We were glad for exercise and walked everywhere.



But of course since our walking muscles were out of shape from the weeks on board, we tired easily. Lucky for us, there is a nice French-ish café in town.



Refreshed, we set out to shop at the open air market. As we approached, we saw masses of people shopping at tightly packed stalls. Sailing dhows lay in the tidal mud in the bay behind. We took a deep breath and plunged in.



Ginger found vanilla beans, vegetables and crab and bought what we needed for just pennies, or Ariary as the money is known here. The crab is sold at a discount at market as the claws have already been sold to restaurants. The press of people, noises and smells overwhelmed us.





We wandered past the market to the bay behind, where all sorts of sailing craft lay in the mud. All of the produce for the market arrives by sail. The heavier items are moved from the boats up to the market by oxcart.



Some of the crews were napping as they waited for the tide to return.



It was interesting to see how much work is done by hand in Madagascar. Front yards are mowed by hand. Not with a hand mower, but by swinging a scythe.



The stone used in construction is hand quarried.



The city garbage truck is a tractor and trailer, literally. Garbage cans are not used, one merely piles what is not needed at the curb.



Some of the dhows were under repair, not a power tool in sight.



There are few cars, and many of those are quite old.



Returning to the quay, we agreed that Hellville was a very pleasant town for a pedestrian. Very quiet, very little traffic, and beautiful old architecture is everywhere.



The people are quiet and friendly and many of the women are beautiful. Face painting is common, and seemed quite attractive to us once we got used to it.



Heading back to the boat, we passed dogs that looked as tired as we felt. No northerners visiting tropical latitudes should be out in the sun in at midday.



Back on board Ginger somehow found the energy to cook up our crabs and served a Madagascar lunch: mud crab (not bad) rum (delicious) and French bread (rounding out the major food groups.)

Nov 12 Fixing Stuff

Yesterday evening, as Ginger was on the radio participating in the Peri Peri net, the jib halyard chafed through. All those miles of rolling downwind in Indian Ocean tradewinds had done the damage. The sail dropped itself in the water and gently brought Marcy to a halt. After dragging the thing back onboard, we re-hoisted using the spinnaker halyard, and were on our way again. Since we can’t run a new halyard right away while still at sea, that job requires a calm anchorage or dock, we added another item to THE LIST OF STUFF TO REPAIR. This list must be written, it is hopeless to try to keep things in memory. We know from experience that once in port it is all too easy to forget that the jib is hoisted on the spinnaker halyard (who hoists the spinnaker in port?) Then on the next passage, we’d worry constantly – what if the spin halyard chafes? What if we need to set the chute?

Every boat has this list, and it is a common item of discussion among yachties – “that last passage added 20 items to the List” or “the List is down to one page” or “I can’t chat, must work on the List.” Marcy’s list is hovering at around 100 lines. The Indian Ocean thrashed us. We sailed many, many miles of rough ocean, with lots of water on deck and sometimes down below, and constant motion. Weaknesses are exposed, things break. When that happens, usually there is an immediate “temporary” solution, in this example using another halyard gets us out of immediate trouble an keeps us moving. This MacGyver phase is often fun and satisfying – one of our favorites was fixing a hole in the muffler with 5200 goop and a tin can lid last year. That repair lasted for months until we were able to get it properly welded in Papeete.

After the temporary solution comes the permanent repair, modify, or replace phase. The problem here is that often parts are needed. Sometimes you’ll read or hear the advice “bring spares of everything.” While that sounds good, it really isn’t practical. For example, Marcy’s rigid vang has a little plastic sleeve that is almost worn out. There is no way to predict in advance that that would be the part that fails, and carrying a whole vang assembly would be too expensive and take too much room. Multiply that by many mechanical and electrical and electronic systems and it is clear that stocking parts for everything is impossible. So to repair our American equipment, parts must be ordered from the States and shipped to far away places. We’ve found this to be a hit or miss procedure, but if the order is filled correctly and the various shipping agencies and post offices all perform, and the import duty is not too steep, it works. The worst for us was trying to get a wind generator sent to Pago Pago. Being US territory with the US Post Office we thought it should be a slam dunk. No such luck, we languished at anchor for a month waiting, and finally left the island without it. The package caught up to us a few months later in New Zealand.

There is a common definition we hear among cruisers: “cruising is fixing broken boats in exotic ports.” There is truth to that, and we’re lucky that we actually enjoy a good repair. Some skippers do not enjoy repairing things, don’t do their own work, and need shore services often to keep their vessel going. On a world cruise, such services are few and far between. We’ve met a couple of yachts who were ending their long distance sailing and putting their boats up for sale because of one breakage and arduous repair too many.



Peter fixing a balky steering sheave at sea on the passage to South Africa

Port Louis, Mauritius

Port Louis is a prosperous, bustling city. It took most of the day to clear into the country. After the formalities, the crew of the Marcy felt like this stone lion. The paperwork was formidable - all of the officers were friendly but very thorough.





Once cleared, we moved Marcy to a small basin where most of the yachts are tied. It was very convenient to just step ashore anytime we wanted, but it took some time for us to get used to the gawkers. We lived our daily life in a fishbowl, every evening a parade of families walked the quai walls.





We were in the shadow of a big hotel, unfortunately making radio communication with our friends that were still at sea almost impossible.



Our neighborhood was a shopping village done in faux “old Europe” and developed by a South African company. It was an attractive environment, full of restaurants, shops, and happy pedestrians.



To explore further afield, we teamed up with Swedes Christina and Jan, hired a taxi, and spent a day on the road. At our first stop, we saw land turtles and water features.







We stopped at a Tamil temple with wonderful painted statues and designs.









We saw monkeys at the Hindu temple on the hill with the gigantic statue of Shiva.









We stopped at a ship model manufacturing shop, one of the island’s signature cottage industries.







On the drive back to the boat we were treated to views of the landscape and ocean.



Exhausted, we made plans to head out to sea the very next day. We missed having our daily chat on the radio net and needed to get moving again. Destination, Madagascar: land of lemurs, vanilla, and rum.

Marcy is in South Africa

Marcy has arrived in South Africa. We arrived Friday morning, tied to
the quay wall in Richards Bay and have now finished clearing in to the
country this morning (Saturday). Peter is happy to report that the
steak in South Africa is the best steak he's had in years. We will
stay in Richards Bay for a few days and complete some repairs and
projects before continuing south to Durban.

Crossing the Mozambique Channel

We left Belo Sur Mer hoping to head straight for Durban. We are in an area where cold fronts sometimes pass as often as every 5 days and the wind associated with the cold fronts can be sudden and strong lasting 10 hours or more before moderating for the following couple of days. Well, we picked a time where a string of low pressure systems are marching by regularly south of Africa with associated cold fronts also regularly marching by. Currently we're headed for Mozambique to work our way down
the coast in between weather systems. We have had plenty of wind, we're just hoping to avoid getting too much all at once.
We are now about 200 nautical miles from the coast and might be tucked in to an anchorage by Wednesday morning. We check in daily with the weather guy, Roy, on the Peri-Peri radio net. He advises us when to run for cover. Otherwise all is well on board and with our bottom all cleaned courtesy of the boys at Nosy Lava we're making good time.

Madagascar nights

Marcy has been cruising down the west coast of Madagascar for a few amazing weeks, enjoying magnificent weather and truly interesting scenery. In some ways, it's as if we'd somehow been granted a chance to cruise a coast a hundred years ago, in that there are few powered vessels to be seen, and not much evidence of habitation. The thatch roofs and natural materials of most buildings, mostly only huts, make them almost invisible from a distance. Fishing and shipping is carried out under sail or paddle,
and since the roads are so bad, most goods move by boat. Dhows and schooners, pirogues and canoes all daily sail these waters. There is absolutely no light pollution at night. Aside from a couple of lighthouses at the major capes, there are no navigation aids, lighted or otherwise. The winds are made for sailing: consistent in direction and strength. The winds are thermal: a sea breeze roughly out of the west springs up in the morning, and increases all day to about 20 or 25 kts at sundown, then
dies. After a calm, a land breeze of 5 to 10 kts fills in, and lasts until sunrise. The local boats are engineless, and ghost in the lightest breezes. Marcy also - being short of fuel, as well as enjoying maneuvering under sail, we have taken it as a point of honor to use our motor as little as possible.

In the north half of the island, many nice sheltered anchorages are available. South of Cap St Andre, roughly halfway down the west coast, shelter is a rare thing. The anchorages are either on exposed offshore coral and sand islands or equally exposed stops in the shallow mud of the "mainland" side.

Since the charts are not very accurate here, we try to avoid moving at night. We hadn't realized how interesting and sometimes difficult the lack of artificial light makes cruising. A couple of nights ago we anchored just before sunset near a reef, and were rudely awakened at one AM as Marcy's keel tapped the bottom. The land breeze and associated chop had filled in, the boat had swung, and we had contacted a reef that the chart claimed was some distance away. With sleepy eyes and no moon we had
a difficult time maintaining a sense of direction. Even though a nearby island had hundreds of people living on it, and a major city was across the channel, no lights were showing. The most dramatic visual indicator of direction at night has been the heat lightning over the main island. With only sporadic lightning and our urgent need to get our bearings, Ginger finally spotted a faint light on shore, as we got the compass light turned on, and extricated ourselves from the reef. After a pleasant
sail in the light night wind we anchored twenty miles south the next morning in the light of day (10AM) - enough light to know exactly how far from the reef we were. The lesson re-learned here: anchoring near coral is a thing best done with the sun high in the sky. If we're out after dark, we'll stick to the safe and easy anchorages on the mainland side.

We plan to stay on the coast two or three more nights and then will set out across the Mozambique Channel at about 21 degrees south. It's about 890 miles to Durban from there and we expect consistent winds at that latitude and south.

schooners and land/sea breezes

We clawed our way south around Cape St. Andre with foul current pushing us ashore and wind that headed us maddeningly around the cape forcing us to tack several times to clear the wide shallow point. We anchored just south of the cape in 20 feet of water 3 miles away from shore along the open coast. It was a rough night but sleep was welcome. The following morning found us motoring for an hour in windless seas against some north setting current. We have not started the motor for the last 5 days
using the sails to bring us on and off the anchor. It was time to make some water and charge the batteries a bit so it was a welcome opportunity to motor around a river mouth and through the current. As we got away from the cape the currents eased, the seas calmed and the sailing resumed.

Then, disaster! The VERY LAST roll of toilet paper was found and put on the rack. With 2 weeks to go until South Africa we have now instituted strict TP rationing. We still have a few eggs and some carrots but fresh supplies are dwindling. The last pineapple was cut yesterday and will be gone today. As far as meat, we caught a wahoo a couple of days ago and thanks to the advice of Steve from Oz we enjoyed fried wahoo skin and have been dining on sushi and sauteed fish as well. The fish will
be finished today and we're proud to have eaten the whole fish (except for the head) which is a big feat for 2 people.

Our anchorage last night was again a couple of miles from shore in 20 feet of water completely open to the ocean waves. Fortunately the swell is less than a meter and not steep. As we anchored we thought we saw a small anchor light a mile north but couldn't be sure if it was a boat or ashore. Peter was thrilled this morning as we got under way at 4:30A to see that it was indeed an anchor light of a schooner that had just gotten underway with top sails flying as it passed us. This, of course,
was a photo opportunity not to be missed and much time was spent just after sun rise photographing this beautiful boat. We hope to go about 60 miles today and anchor in a sand patch protected by a reef that we found on the chart. We'd like to get there before the sun goes down so we're flying the spinnaker to get every breath of wind out of the light morning breeze.

Southbound Madagascar

As we make our way slowly (very slowly at times against the current with no wind) down the coast we have been treated to beautiful views of red cliffs, beaches and small villages almost invisible in the mangroves and trees. We just passed one of the major cities on the west coast, Majunga, which is known for it's crime and specifically mentioned in guide book after guide book not to be visited. We declined to stop and passed by safely off shore dodging anchored fishing pirogues on the banks at
the river mouth.

We know many of the boats who crossed the Indian Ocean with us but in Madagascar we found a new mix of cruisers from South Africa and other areas. Among those we met was one family just beginning their cruising headed to the Seychelles. The father and skipper is a container ship captain by profession and while not aboard his big ship they will be living aboard their sailboat in the Seychelles. Incidentally his container ship route is to the Mediterranean through the Suez canal and the Red Sea.
He confirmed for us that given the current situation in the Gulf of Aden he wouldn't consider taking his sail boat there right now. Stories of pirates in that area have increased recently in the cruising community and it seems that people are really taking great care with the Gulf of Aden right now. We met a French single sailor who received a message from home to divert from the Red Sea due to the dangers. He has extended his sail by several months to go around Africa to get back to France.
We also met a crew member on an Italian mega yacht who just finished a sailboat delivery through the Red Sea. The boat was approached by pirates who got within 60 feet of them before help arrived. As soon as pirates were spotted the crew of the sailboat increased their speed to max (13 knots) and sent a mayday call via VHF radio. Airplanes and helicopters responded and chased the pirates away while a military escort vessel got into position to accompany them for the next 6 hours. They were able
to pass through the area without further problem but it was a close call. All of the pirate stories make us glad we are not faced with having to decide whether to risk a trip through the Red Sea or to head south. We prefer dodging weather to dodging pirates.

We also met a boat we haven't seen since Santa Cruz California. The boat is a Japanese boat "Emu II". When we arrived in Santa Cruz, California, our first stop ashore since Neah Bay, Washington, the fishermen there told us that the Japanese boat in the marina had just arrived non-stop from Osaka Japan. They were all impressed that he had come so far on a small boat and made Santa Cruz his first landfall. Anyway, we may have seen his boat on the way to Mexico but had not seen or heard of him since.
It turns out he went east through the Panama Canal, the Med and around Africa while we went west. This is the only time our paths will cross as he's on his way across the Indian Ocean and then on to Japan. We visited with him and remarked on the unlikely chance that we would meet again in Nosy Be, exactly half way around the world from Santa Cruz!

The nature of cruising is such that no matter what country you are visiting the common community of cruisers is always welcoming and ready to accept new members. From mega yachts to the smallest boats there is always someone ready for a chat or a beer. As we hop down the coast in search of more traditional Madagascar boats we look forward to joining our South Africa cruising community in a few weeks to see old friends and meet new ones.