Thursday, October 20, 2011
We have now been here in Madagascar for 53 days. On the last possible day of our visas we cleared out of Mauritius. The sail from Mauritius was pleasant, slow and uneventful - just the way we like it. After one week at see, we saw the island of Ile Sainte-Marie on the east coast of Madagascar ahead and at the same time we noticed humpback whales around us. For the first time ever, we saw a whale diving and the fluke out of the water, the way it is depicted in numerous photos. We were pretty excited, I tell you.
A dark red boat overtook us under engine while we sailed slowly under genoa and we had a little chat with Henry on PARPAR on the VHF radio. We had met him in Mauritius. Clearing-in lived up to expectations. Most of the officials wanted a little "gift" either in the form of money or a small bottle of whisky. While this process was not exactly inexpensive, it did not present the biggest problem. That was reserved for the bank. There was no CIRRUS or MAESTRO ATM machine, only VISA was accepted. Cool, I thought, as I had just obtained a German Postbank VISA ATM card in Mauritius. Unfortunately that one didn't work either and we didn't have enough dollars in cash to even pay the officials. In the end we had no other option but to use the VISA Gold Card for a cash advance, probably the most expensive way to get at your money while abroad. Still, it had already proved its worth when paying the fees for the Panama Canal in 2006.
A little while later we had our 90-day visas and met our friends in a kind of tourist bar, where we celebrated our safe passage and arrival in Africa. The next few days we were kind of busy. There is always something to do on a boat and we had to find out what to do about Liping's visa for South Africa. This didn't work out by eMail. After I phoned the South African embassy in the capital Antananarivo, they only told me that they would read the eMail one of these days and in the end we never really got a useful answer. They did tell us, however, that we would have to travel to the capital in person, which is a trip of several days, mostly in a four-wheel-drive truck without shock absorbers on very bad roads.
So we tried a different tack. An eMail to the South Africa office in Taipei was answered immediately and Ms. Natalie Ng informed us that it would be no problem to do the paperwork over there. Moreover, there would be no fees. Since Ile Sainte-Marie is mainly a tourist place, it would be better to try and do this in Nosy Be. As our friend Arne from IEMANJA had warned us that there would be no rain on the west coast, we spent one day in pouring rain to fill our water tanks. And since our friends Elie, Marie-Laure & Jules of OBERON were just half day's sail away, we decided to visit them in Manumpana.
First I had to clean the bottom, though. I had noticed whales right at the anchorage of Ambodifototra and when I went into the water, I was delighted to hear the whales singing. I had never thought that I would ever hear this amazing sound by myself in the wild. Wonderful! When I think about all these experiences that make our lives so rich and interesting, I sometimes contemplate to make this yachtie-lifestyle permanent.
When heading towards the entrance of Manumpana, my thoughts were completely different. Reefs everywhere, charts all wrong, anxiety of the highest order. If we had followed the charts, we would have lost the boat, as there was quite a strong wind blowing with the resultant heavy swells. When right next to us a gigantic coral head surfaced, I cursed our way of life with all my heart. Fortunately we were forewarned and so we followed Arne's waypoints instead of the charts. Once past the reef, everything was idyllic. Later we heard that one of our friends had almost lost his boat there and finally had to give up on Manumpana.
Elie was totally astonished that we had arrived that fast, as all our friends know that we are the slowest boat imaginable. When the wind is strong, however, DHARMA BUM III really gets up and going. Most other boats start to put in reefs at that time, but our boat likes strong wind. We had a wonderful week with OBERON, but we noticed that they were just as culture-shocked as we were. And this after they had sailed pretty much all over the world in the last 20 years. Like Elie said, this was the first truly third world place any of us had ever been. Even the deepest Papua New Guinea or Kiribati are not quite comparable. During the dry season people starve and are often forced to give up their land, their zebu or their meager possessions just to survive. They still use the old slash and burn agriculture methods that were in use for millennia here. The population was small then, but now it is effectively destroying the environment. But the people don't want to change what has worked for so long. And here at the coast they were lucky, as they had access to fish, shrimp, lobster, octopus, squid and other seafood. Further inland and especially in the high plateaus and mountains, hunger bellies are everywhere.
Unfortunately the time with our good friends had to come to an end as they had to wait for French CNED homeschooling materials there, while we had to take care of the visa. So off we went to round the dreaded Cap D'Ambre. Over there the wind is usually very strong and so is the current. The best way to round the cape is just half a mile offshore. When our boatspeed reached 12 knots, I decided to take in all sail except for about 30% of the genoa. We still surfed along at 12.8 knots! No longer dangerous, but rather exhilarating. We could observe whales again as well as a big turtle. The white lighthouse with the black top looked very well kept and even beautiful, but later we heard that it rarely functions. Just like all the other things in Madagascar.
When we arrived in Crater Bay on the tourist island of Nosy Be, we anchored right behind BYAMEE. Originally they had planned to leave so that Paul could watch the rugby world cup in South Africa, but as Darien and Aurora Ulani were so happy at seeing each other again, Paul & Joyce changed their plans. Soon they played with Nadine, the eight year old daughter of Graham (UK) and Veronica (South African Indian) on the catamaran NOW NOW. They have been coming here for 16 years.
In Hellville (what a name!) we had to pay another 100,000 Ariary (US$ 54) to the harbormaster and then we got our cruising permit which is free of charge. The real shocker came at DHL World Express (Deutsche Post), which charged us US$ 130 to send the passport to Taiwan. As with the officials, we had to go twice, this time because we didn't carry that much money and you have to pay in cash. As I write this, the passport is already on its way back.
Here we mostly worked on the boat, which was extremely frustrating. I had an electric problem with the fan in my cabin, but all the cables were glued behind the headliner. I had no other option, but to rip it off. Then I had to cut quite a few cables and at one point nothing in my cabin worked any more. I was ready to murder the designers as well as the headliner guys in Thailand which had caused the problem by simply twisting the wires together before gluing the headliner back on. Then I got sick and was out of commission for a few days. Soon my girls followed suit. When I was reasonably okay again, I decided to do less strenuous work for a while and worked on my novel.
Finally, 14 years, 3 months and 15 days after I had begun it, my novel was published by CreateSpace of Amazon.com! I am so glad that the book is finally available in the printed version and I even made my self-imposed deadline before Christmas. Unfortunately here I am unable to order a second proof, so that I can only hope that most of the errors, formatting mistakes and typos have been eradicated. Every change I make from now on will cost money.
Here I MOSTLY spent time with Henry & Tuk of PARPAR, "Palain" and his girlfriend from the purple Swiss boat MERLIN, Norwegian Lars on LUNA, American "Captain" Kirk of SALSA and a few other yachties.
While most people rave about the scenic beauty of the place and the happy people here, Liping and I cannot ignore the suffering and the numerous problems here. Sure, there seems to be more laughter here than in your average European or American city, but there is so much wrong here, that I hesitate to enumerate it all. As one guy put it: "The people have a problem getting old here." Nothing ever works properly. There are almost no hospitals or real schools, there is extreme poverty, hunger, corruption, injustice, political instability and the ever present threat of civil war, where law and order breaks down completely in a heartbeat. The people are so desperate, that they try every which way to get their hands on some money. As Elie put it: "In business here there are no friends." They steal whenever they have a chance and even burglarize each other. Some French development aid agricultural specialists offered one of their more reliable workers a steady job with a reasonable income and even agreed to pay the school fee for his children. The man joyfully took up the offer. A little while later he was caught burglarizing the home of his benefactors.
Whereas the previous government was corrupt as well, there were at least schools, hospitals, roads and so on being built and there were attempts to protect the unique environment here. Since the DJ strongman came to power, this has all come to en end. One guy (won't mention any names here) says that there has been no progress whatsoever in the last few decades, the development workers are totally demoralized and one local engineer sadly voiced the thought that they would be better off, if they were a colony again.
For us sailors the talk often concerns the Somali pirates which are in the area. One of our friends was anchored in Mayotte behind the reef, when they heard a mayday on the VHF. A container vessel was being attacked by pirates, but because they could go up to 21 knots and take other evasive action, they were successful in thwarting the attack. This was less than a day's sail from where we are now.
The other topic of conversation are the ferocious storms in the southern part of the Mozambique channel. When the wind blows right against the strong Mozambique current, the situation can quickly become murderous. That doesn't make for peaceful sleep at night. In fact, almost all of us will be very relieved when we have finally made it safely to Cape Town.
Once we have Liping's passport back, we intend to make a short trip to Momoko island where there are tame lemurs and giant turtles. After that we will leave here, slowly going down the coast before jumping off around Cape Andre and set course for Bazaruto island in Mozambique and finally down to Richards Bay in South Africa. ARCTRACER left a while ago, yesterday PARPAR, LUNA, SALSA & QUEST left, today GERONIMO followed suit. MERLIN is still here, NOW NOW will remain here and it looks very much as if we will be the last boat to leave. Again.
Anyway, guys, I hope my next update will be a bit more upbeat and I will try to upload a few selected photos to: http://picasaweb.google.com/krautholg/Madagascar#
Cheers!
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
+261334078800 Airtel/Zain
+261348172664 Telma/Internet
Crater Bay, Nosy Be, Madagascar
13°24.04'S 048°13.11'E