We've arrived in Madagascar

We finally extricated ourselves from Mauritius late on Saturday afternoon and spent a fairly boisterous three and a half days to make it to Iles Saint Marie on the east coast of Madagascar.  The trip, however, wasn't without that bl**dy Sword of Damacles that's been hanging over our heads for the past three months.  We blew out our mainsail!  

To be fair to it though, it was getting rather long in the tooth.  We'd planned to take it in for a bit of an overhaul but with everything else, expenses sort of ran away with us and we simply couldn't manage it.  We had lived in hopes that it would last the few remaining months it will take us to get back to Cape Town but Murphy butt in and decided otherwise. 

At this stage, we haven't even had a good look at it as, naturally, it happened in the dead of night.  It's highly unlikely we can find anything remotely like a sail loft in this part of the world so we may just have to do without until we get to Richards Bay in South Africa.  When we get a chance, we'll take it down to see if there's any chance of a quick fix but......

Our first stop was at the southern point where we dropped anchor at about two in the morning with a little moon to help find our way in.  We're already well behind on our intended schedule so we've more or less decided we won't hang around the east side but rather work our way northwards as soon as possible.  All the anchorages on the northwest coast are exactly what we've been aiming towards so we want to spend as much time there as possible before the cyclone season is upon us.

This morning , we upped anchor to move over to (wait for it) Ambodifototra - try saying that one without stumbling!  That is the check in town but Madagascar is rife with corruption and we'd been told particularly so with the officials in customs, immigration etc here.  We needed to find an ATM and get a SIM card for Internet which we managed but only made a very half-hearted effort to find the customs official who seems infamous for extorting funds from unsuspecting cruisers.  We decided to give him a miss and will try to legitimise our arrival further up the line.  A little bit naughty but one boat a couple of weeks ago was virtually held to ransom as he couldn't get his passports back without paying a huge bribe.  They kept them for three days until he finally gave in.  There's a limit to everything.

At this stage, all is well aboard the good ship Calypso so we look forward to some more relaxing cruising once we pass over the northern cape to the other side.