Next Stop Mayotte

 

 

We did all of our clearing out of the Seychelles yesterday. Including paying usd$850 of daily anchoring fees for the 4 months the boat has been here.

 We are now anchored in a nice bay on the north end of Mahe (the main island in the Seychelles) for the evening. In the morning we will take off for a 5 or 6 day passage to Mayotte. Mayotte is a French island at the north end of the Mozambique Channel. This will be our first stop on the 2,800 mile trip to Cape Town, South Africa.

The 800 mile trip to Mayotte is a bit challenging.  To begin with you are sailing with wind from the beam forward. The seas are what has been generated by the few thousand mile open run that the SE tradewinds create. If you look at the wind image above, at the label Victoria in the upper right is where we are leaving from. The small islands that are in the middle left are Comoros and Mayotte. To left of them is continental Africa, to the right is the large island of Madagascar, of movie fame. We would have loved to stop in Madagascar and say Hi to the lemurs and check out a Baobab tree, but it is shut due to Covid season.

Looking at the wind in the image you can see where the SE tradewinds get compressed as they go above the north tip of Madagascar. This can make for some rough and unpleasent sailing. The trick to planning the passage is to try and do the 12-24hours as you pass northern Madagascar while the Compression Zone is light. It tends to have lighter days in October than in August or September. 

To add to the fun, the South Indian currents are also compressed as they hit Madagascar, making a strong, up to 3 knot current, over the top (bluish in the image). The current tends to make the seas very disorganised. 

I'll post a brief daily or every other day text-only update as we make the passage. You can track our daily position by looking at the map at the bottom of the blog page. (Don't see a map at the bottom? Then you are on the Mobile version of the blog. At the bottom you should see a blue link that says View Web Version)

One thing that should make this trip a little easier is that we will be sharing the watches with our friend Bill who flew in from San Francisco.

Paul