Over the top

For many years, Madagascar was one of those intriguing places around the world that discouraged tourism due to its Marxist government who treated foreigners, and especially yachties, with a great degree of suspicion.  

Back in the late 1800's, France invaded Madagascar but they were granted their independence from France after a violent insurrection in the mid 1900s.  By 1975, a political crisis led to a radical socialist government coming into power.  This government held control until further uprisings in 1991 led to a new constitution and a new republic being declared which has allowed the country to open up to visitors a bit more readily.  Its population has primarily descended from Malay and Asian migrants, with Africans and Europeans mixed in with a strong French influence.  French is still spoken by most but Malagasy is the main language.

Tourism is definitely picking up and there are now hotels, resorts and restaurants to cater for these needs.  Sadly, however, corruption amongst officials is acutely prevalent but the average villager who has no access to this greed are prohibitably poor.  One can only hope that this new-found source of revenue filters down to those so desperately in need.

This is the season for whales but so far....nada.  We've heard from others that they are around so we'll just have to keep a lookout.

As we lifted our anchor at Lokintsy, we experienced a huge red tide caused by an algal bloom which had developed in the bay but once well away from that, we caught our first fish.  It was a smallish blue striped fish with a yellow tail which may have been a bonito but, as we'd never caught one before and I couldn't find it in my fish book, we're really not sure.  Regardless, it was delicious and sufficient for two days and obviously not affected by the red tide as we're still very much alive.  At this stage, the count is Fish - 1  Calypso - 1; we'd lost a really big guy the day before.  Up until this leg, it's been far too rough to land a fish so we just haven't put out any lines.  From everything we've gleaned from those who passed before us, these waters are brilliant fishing grounds which is probably due to the fact that we haven't seen any of those despicable cockroach-infested Chinese fishing boats near here.  We should not starve!

Although Ile St Marie looked interesting, the weather was miserable and we were anxious to get across the top to spend our time in the beautiful islands on the north west coast of this country where the weather is much more to our liking.

In order to get there, we had to transit Cap d'Ambre at the extreme northern tip of Madagascar which is notorious for adverse conditions somewhat comparable to a large industrial washing machine on the "heavily soiled" cycle and not to be taken lightly.  The South Equatorial Current, splits at the centre of the island and runs north and south along the east coast.  This makes for interesting conditions across the top and needs to be planned accordingly.

Early one morning, after having spent two nights en route northwards, we were passing a small bay, Pointe Berry,  so decided to drop anchor for a few hours rest.  This also gave us the time to plan the passage over the top for slack tide and good light.   Having done so, we then left again in the late afternoon.  It was our plan to reach the start of the 'rounding' trip as the sun began lighting up the sky and the tide was slack, both which were to be about 4:45 a.m.  Well, like any plans with sailing, this didn't quite work out; we got too close far too early.  Now to slow down.  We started by furling our already minuscule headsail which meant that we were now bare-poled.  It didn't seem possible but we were still hurtling along at almost 7 knots in rather horrific waves, 25 - 30 knots of wind and more than 2 knots of current.  Our next tactic was to deploy our drogues to drag us back.  This worked a charm but with no sails, we had virtually no steerage so we tried a little of our iron jenny which helped moderately.  We ended up zig-zagging back and forth to use up the hour and a half we needed to waste before we could make the move.  Under normal circumstances, we would have hove-to but with no main in those conditions that wasn't going to work so 90 minutes of bouncing around uncomfortably was the order of the day.

In the final analysis, it worked out perfectly.  We experienced momentary gusts of over 30 knots but generally about 25 and we were soon on the other side with slightly calmer winds and significantly flatter seas by which time we were able to let George (our auto-pilot) get back to the job of steering for us.  Phew!