Passage from Reunion to Nosy Be, Madagascar: Diesel delivery? rounding the northern Cape D’Ambre in the dark? and lots of lobster!

Well…Des Cason said….”This is about as good as it gets and would not delay departure !”…in his email to us a few days. Des Carson is a weather router for most of the Indian Ocean. He does not get paid for his services and does it out of his own kindness and love for the cruisers. He has sailed these waters for many years and lived in Madagascar for I believe 14 years. Now established in South Africa, every year he routes sailors through out these unforgiving waters from as far away as Indonesia all the way to Cape Town, South Africa. This was the first passage we used Des, though we made contact with him over 6 months ago, and as he said….it’s time to go.

The “original plan”

• Depart Sunday, August 25th 10 am.
• 640+/- miles to the Cape of D’Andre = 4.44 days at an average speed of ground (SOG) of 6 knots.
• Head on a rumb line on a course over ground (COG) of 339 degrees magnetic to Nosy Ankao (reefy bits on the NE coast) about 60 miles from the cape then head closer to the shore (in daylight only) to get out of the swell.
• Round the Cape during slack tide or a rising tide on Thursday August 29th between 9-10 am. The closest tide station is at Diego Suarez and it reported low slack tide was at 8:30-8:45 am. We established it’s about 1 1/2 hour delay for the tide to reach the Cape.
• Rounding the Cape early morning should give us enough time to find an safe anchorage during daylight hours between 15-30 miles from the Cape.

My limited understanding is the currents at the top of Cape D’Andre is generally the SE equatorial currents pushing around Madagascar. However, there is the Agulhas current which is flowing South down the Mozambique channel and tends to collide with the Equatorial currents farther north of the Cape. Add in SE trade winds, this “mix” of S and SE seas and winds make for a real challenge for cruisers in this area. For us, we are too close to shore for the Agulhas current to affects us however, we thought a falling tide against the current around the Cape could cause the sea state to be more confused that it already is.

What actually happened!!!!

As Slow Flight and Neptune’s Highway are leaving port, we were told about a vessel who was “drifting” about 60 miles from Reunion. We did not have much information from the Coast Guard’s “Pan Pan” broadcast over the radio except their coordinates early that morning and something about they had run out of fuel. We did not know if the vessel was under sail but we decided that if we were close enough to them, they were in fact on our rumb line, maybe we could make contact and see if they needed help, that is if their radio was working! If they could not start their engine to charge their batteries we anticipated their radio may be off and would not hear us hail them. But it was a far shot in the dark…literally…by the time we would of reached them, it would be in the dark!

I can’t believe it myself….we were about 40 miles out and about 5 pm local time I just happened to look into the horizon and saw sails!!! It had to be SV Miss lea. We hailed them many times, finally got a response but they only spoke French. We hailed the Coast Gaurd to see if they could rely that we were approaching them and possibly translate if they needed anything.

In short, took down sails, turned port, and got close enough to them for me to stand at the bow and used hand signals..thumbs up?!!! They gave us a thunbs up….thank goodness. We could see 2 men, 1 younger 1 older, possibly a father and son,but they were moving around the boat well so we figured there were no injuries. I pointed at our fuel jugs and was saying in english “need deisel?”…. there was silence for moments but finally I got a response… “yes need diesel”….that was it…I yelled back to Trevor, we switched roles…I was steering in circles…he was preparing to toss a jerry can of fuel overboard with a line that had a moneky fist on it. We hope to steer close enough for Trevor to thow the monkey fist on deck of the vessel then release the fuel jug over Slow Flight’s side.

Well, it took 5 tries…mind you in 3 meter swell and it was blowing 20 knots! We swore we would never do this AGAIN…Do you remember when we tried to deliver fuel to SV Storm of Lyton on passage from Australia to Indonesia?! We obviously don’t learn from our mistakes!!!

Once we confirmed they had the fuel on board their vessel, we hailed the Coast Guard to let them know the situation….The Coast Guard asked us if we could board their vessel to make sure they were ok…. I think I tactfully explained that was not possible in these conditions.

Neptune’s Highways was just behind us making sure we didn’t need help ourselves as they were tracking us on AIS. We heard from our friends back in Reunion that they made it in safely in to port the following morning…. we even talked our friends to bring our fuel jug and line to Madagascar for us…it’s a team effort.

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We don’t drink while underway, but my adrenaline was pumping so bad after this ordeal…we agreed we deserved a beer. However, soon after, we heard our mizzen sail flogging like hell….the “U” bracket snapped off and our mizzen was boom was just swinging from one side to another! Trevor quickly got items to makeshift a solution….may what a day!!!

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And the drama doesn’t stop there…. Our 2nd day out, Trevor was shutting down the engine and the prop would not collapse by itself so he had to grab the prop shaft from inside the boat and stop it from spinning and move it back and forth to gt the blades to feather in. A quick “shot” in reverse helped.

If that wasn’t enough…. On our 3rd day we were still trying to get the right sail configuration and the wind was starting to shift to the SW. We pulled in the mizzen boom to take it down to reduce sail and “rip”…we heard it from the cockpit through the wind and everything! The wind took the sail from one side to the other in a second and we didn’t have the other back stay loosened so the batten in the sail got caught on it and when it was pulled in it torn the sail.

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And finally, our last day out, after our mizzen sail tore, we were “pooped” by a rouge wave…or at least that what it looked like. I was sitting in the cockpit looking aft and saw this wave come from our port side, slam our solar panel down, pooped our dinghy full of water, and continue to roll to the other side of our deck…..WTF!

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The rest of the trip was very ironic for me….getting to the Cape was supposed to be the easy bits which were hard as explained above…..and the hard bits were easy, rounding the Cape. I think all the anticipation to round the Cape at the right time and conditions made me so anxious and crazy that everything made me crazy….poor Trevor!

Rounding the Cape…it was like cutting butter with a hot knife!!!! As mention previously, we thought we would time our Cape rounding at a slack tide around 9-10 am…well…at speed we were going we were going to round at 5:30 am! Thankfully this was almost exactly at the “other slack tide” but the fact that it would still be dark made me nervous as we still wanted to be close in to shore at the cape.

After rounding the Cape about 6 am and back in deeper waters, the winds were still gusting into the 30’s but the waves abated to almost nothing. Jib sail out and were headed to our anchorage. At one point the wind kicked up Trevor had to wake me up to bring in the jib…that almost never happens!!!

Like I said…the hard bits were easy…the easy bits were hard?!

Cathedral Anchorage: 12 15.8194 S, 048 58.3924 E

Just a spectacular scenery here at this national park. We arrived just before noon on Thursday, August 29th. SV Neptune’s Highway was behind us by an hour. Trevor and I loved it here and planned to stay here as long as we could…..

Guess again…..because this is a national park…you have to pay to anchor here. We don;t h ave any local currency or even Euros for the rangers that showed up at our boat at about 7 am the next morning. We tried to trade with them for beer, clothing, anything, but they wanted cash! They asked us to leave….no big deal…it was to be expected. To avoid any uncomfortable events like this one, have Euros or be smart like SV Neptune’s Highway who left the anchorage as the sun was coming up around 6 am. And so off we go…lifting anchor at 7:45 am head to the next anchorage…..

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Mitsio Island Anchorage: 12 54.3221 S, 048 34.5079 E

The 50 mile passage from Cathedral anchorage to Mitsio Island was a full day. We anchored in 45 feet of water at high tide with a sand/mud bottom. Remember there is about a 2-3 meter tidal swing here. There were 2 or 3 charter catamarans there and we we see why..it’s very protective bay and a beuatiful island a few miles out to swim at.

But first…Bruce declared a fishing tournament and of course…when 2 boats are headed for the same place…that constitutes a race…right?! Neptune’s Highway officially won both by catching a wonderful wahoo and a tuna, and because they actually sailed…we did not!!!! Well done SV Neptune’s highway : )

We decided to stay here for at least 3 or so nights to rest up and catch our breath. Personally I wasn’t ready for “land contact” but that was short lived. Almost immediately and every day after, we had villagers coming out to the boat to trade for fish, fruits, or lobsters?!

Crisis du Jour…..as Laura put it…..We had a massive scare with our water maker…. after washing to boat down twice…we were getting low on water. We had our water maker “pickled” since the boat yard in Mauritius as we had access to potable water from reliable sources. It was time to make water but we could not get it to produce at a acceptable PPM. We were seeing PPM reading of 1800….we are supposed to see something like 400-200…shit! I was ready to lift anchor and make a bee-line to Nosy be. Trevor thankfully thought it was best to disassemble the membranes to take a look and sure enough….he found salt around one of the o-ring gasket….we crossed our fingers that was the problem….and it was….exhale!

After all that drama….the next day we decided to take a day off. We motored to the little island about 5 miles out where all the charter catamarans would go for the day at: 12 50.1950 S, 048 34.9589 E. We anchored in 38 feet of water with mostly sand bottom but there were some large coral bommies around so having someone on the bow for a lookout was a good idea for us.

Every morning, while enjoying my coffee, I would see manta rays at the mouth of the bay and work themselves up the reef. If my memory serves my right, it was about mid-out going tide. We were told this bay was a breeding site for mantas so we finally got into the water to check it out.

Sakatia Island: 13 19.1298 S, 048 09.6286 E

Dropped anchor in 62 feet of water but as we backed down the bottom slopped up and we saw 28 feet under our keel. It was super rolly here so Trevor deployed the Flopper Stopper out, the last time we had it out was….we have no idea but it has been a long time. A quick stop here at Sakatia Lodge anchorage just for the night. We we originally we going to stop at Crater Bay anchorage the next night just 5 miles away, but had learned there were officials checking for clearance paperwork in Crater Bay so we decided to stay here just 1 night and then head directly to Hell-Ville, 15 miles away to officially clear into the country.

Up next: Clearing in “Officially” to Madagascar