Hellville Nosy Be

I'm not joking, there really is a town named Hellville!  It's the main town/village on the island of Nosy Be, a popular tourist destination around the northwest corner of Madagascar.  

It and its surrounding islands, offer beautiful beaches, warm, or rather warmish, (we've been a bit spoilt after so many years around Asia), and fabulous cruising grounds.  

After a couple of stops further north, we headed straight down to Hellsville as we'd heard that there was, surprisingly, a chap there with the necessary fabric, thread and sewing machine who would be able to tackle our blown-out main.  

As soon as we got there, we asked one of the 'boat' boys to take us to him and, Lo and behold, in the absolute back of beyond, here was this guy with all sorts of sailmaking materials!  

We arranged to take it in the following day but it involved several hours of dismantling the entire slider system, removing the stowpack, the battens and attempting to fold it unsuccessfully into a compact blob, all in a fairly brisk breeze.  We finally managed to hoist it into the dinghy to get it ashore where a 'car' (well, sort of a car....) was waiting to take it.  The usual form of transport is a tuk-tuk, but under these conditions, there was no way it way going to fit into one of those. 

Down a steep dirt path between the houses

The guys had to lug this load down to the sailmaker who was down a dirt alley, down a dirt path, down an impossibly uneven dirt track with crumbling dirt steps, across several people's yards and back gardens, but, wow, there he was with everything that was needed to do the job; it didn't seem possible.

Within a day, he had given it the best he could but we had to concede, it is well past its sell-by date; the fabric is shot!  He stitched the errant seam and reinforced the luff and leech, adding a bit of extra support along the weakened spots but...... well, we can only hope that it gets us as far as Richard's Bay if not all the way back to Cape Town but we certainly won't be holding our breath.  We'll have to avoid using it in really foul conditions to give it half a chance.

Not exactly an easy route

Our mainsail getting some TLC