We play a game on Momo, our Mason 43. When we arrive in a new place, we throw out our first impressions before we have time to build up anything else. Before we establish any rhythm or create any lasting feelings. Then, after spending a few months in the place, we compare notes to see how our early impressions have deepened or changed. In Indonesia, our crew of four — my husband, Bernie, daughters Lola and Jana, and me — arrived in the Kai Islands after spending 10 years in the Pacific. We noted our early impressions in the log: “Gentle, active, smiling, loud, curious, welcoming, photo-obsessed, smoking, Islamic.”

Then, after nearly two years in Southeast Asia, we arrived on the other side of the Indian Ocean in what felt like the other side of the world.

“Bustling, colorful, uninhibited, sails, dusty, poor, welcoming, bright, edgy, energetic, red dirt, thrumming, loud,” I wrote in the log when we arrived in Madagascar.

Even before we arrived, we could smell Madagascar from offshore: the hint of burning wood and grass, something green, something else faintly sickening and almost sweet. Something mysterious, something ancient — but new to us. We snapped photos of our colorful first impressions: dancing women and children, drumming men and boys. Embroidered tablecloths and post-colonial police stations. Friendly lemurs that reminded us of Madagascar, the animated movie, and curious chameleons. Ebony zebu herded along dusty red roads. Silvery fish drying in the subtropical sun. Fishing kids and sailing skiffs.

But there was more to Madagascar, more than we’d understand even if we stayed on a while.

Just east of Mozambique, Madagascar is the fourth-largest island in the world. Its culture is a delightful convergence of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as evidenced by the gourmet French meals, baked goods, mélange of rum drinks, vibrant materials for both traditional and modern dress, and the combination of French and local Malagasy language. A fleet of sailing dhows scatter up and down the coastline daily, triangular sails set against the rising and setting sun, reminiscent of traditional Arab sailing vessels.

In Madagascar we found lemurs, ylang-ylang, distilled rum, vanilla, dancing, late-night revelry, lazy mornings and lavish lunches.

We arrived in late August after 25 days’ sailing from Sumatra. We were originally headed for Rodrigues, but had changed our plan midcourse when the Indian Ocean got a little too rowdy. The weather maps showed more intense wind and waves to the southwest, so we bore away 30 degrees. By the time we rounded Cap d’Ambre, Madagascar’s northern tip, and began the comparably softer sailing down the protected northwest coast toward the island of Nosy Be, we were happy to have made the change in course. We were sorry to miss Rodrigues and had added an extra 500 miles to our passage, but who can complain when you drop anchor after more than 3,000 miles in a town called Hell-Ville? We just had to chuckle.

One of the first things we noticed when we set the hook in Hell-Ville, as the city of Andoany is commonly known, is that it’s a sailing world. We quickly discovered that the people of coastal Madagascar rely on the local breezes to bring them out into the bay and back again. Madagascar is out of the trade winds, so the breezes are land- and sea-based. The wooden dhows we saw had no motors — a stark contrast to the lineup of Yamahas we’d seen in Mexico. We didn’t hear boats vroom-vrooming or tuk-tuking by; instead they sailed in and out of the crowded anchorages at all hours of the morning and night. If the late-night breeze petered out, they dropped anchor until morning. Many nights I watched a dhow ghost past our hull, close enough to reach out and touch, before pulling quietly into the shallows.

Some of the dhows we saw fished locally in and around Hell-Ville and returned each day. Others fished around their villages and dried the catch on large wooden racks, bringing their goods to the city for sale. Some larger boats sailed around the main anchorages of Nosy Be with tourists on board, ferrying them to nearby island resorts. All of the boats we saw relied on the wind and the wind alone.

In the mornings, we sat on our bow with our coffee, watching the line of boats sail out; in the evenings, we did the same, watching the line of boats sail in. It was easy to feel the breath and rhythm of the place from the glassy anchorage. Nosy Be inhaled and exhaled with the offshore and onshore breeze.

During the first few days of our stay in Hell-Ville, a music festival got riotously underway. The festival kicked off with a parade that noisily marched by a bar where we were lunching with a few other visiting cruisers. We followed the crowd along the waterfront road to a very large field with a main stage and a perimeter lined with makeshift bars and restaurants. Women prepared food in the back; children played out front. A girl selling cupcakes made her rounds; a boy balancing a plate of bread smiled sweetly. The parade participants were called to the stage to perform again and receive congratulations or possibly awards; we couldn’t tell because no one in our group spoke Malagasy. We learned quickly how to go with the flow. We drank local beer and a soda that tasted like bubble gum; then, over the ensuing days, we drank more beer and avoided the bubble-gum soda. Some of us even danced.

We were met by an outwardly open attitude during those festival days. A light celebratory feeling permeated the air. In cafes, people chatted with us from the next table over, reaching out to shake hands with our children. “I’m playing in the bar two doors down,” an elegant and commanding woman we met told us one afternoon. “Here’s my number!” Didia, it turned out, is from Nosy Be but now lives in Paris; she was back in town for the big music festival.

We never did make it to see Didia sing, but the music raged on for four days and nights. Some nights we just enjoyed the driving percussion and heavy bass thrum of the salegy rhythms from the bow of Momo. Nightclubs and bars overflowed with gyrating men and women, and the field we had visited on the first day was filled each night with partygoers, with the mood building to the climax on the last night as Madagascar’s top salegy performer, Wawa, took the stage. To one side of the field was another field: the designated latrine. I didn’t go there myself, but reports from my husband and friends made me glad I never had to. We could only assume that the field is well fertilized by the end of each of these community festivals.

Shortly after the festival, we set sail to explore other nearby islands and villages. We laughed each time we pulled up our anchor and sailed in and out of anchorages, thinking back to our early days on our engineless Triton in the Chesapeake. Back then, we had come to grips with sailing in and out of tight places by necessity. Now we did it because it was fun. Unlike in Southeast Asia, where we drifted many an afternoon or night, we could almost always sail in Madagascar from one island anchorage to the next. The breeze was predictable and steady. The pattern was easy: In the mornings, when there was little wind, we readied the boat, gathered groceries or completed last-minute chores. Then, by midday, when the westerly breeze filled in, we pulled up the anchor and set sail for a new anchorage on the next island over. The next destination was never very far. Within 40 miles of Nosy Be, we found a dozen good anchorages with clear water for snorkeling and diving, beaches for roaming and playing, and villages for visiting and socializing.

Each island we stopped at was more memorable than the last. At picturesque Nosy Sakatia, northwest of Nosy Be, whales gently meandered through the pass and cruiser kids splashed from one boat to the next. In the well-protected and roomy Baie des Russes (also known as Russian Bay or Ambavatory Bay), sailors gathered for barbecues and even two birthday parties. Lemurs were everywhere on the small island of Nosy Iranja and came to greet us almost as soon as we’d set foot onshore. We made a day stop at Nosy Tanikely, where the crystal waters and diversity of life around the coral reef beckon divers from around the world.

We picked up some of our favorite local carvings and crafts and soaked up the hospitality of the restaurants of Nosy Komba, and topped up from a water source offered by Yolanda’s, a cruiser-friendly local eatery right on the beach. In Honey River, we were given a small dried fish, which locals use as an exfoliator (we think, based on the broken French and gesturing). We hung this most peculiar keepsake on Momo to remind ourselves of this generous villager who insisted he offer a gift (perhaps as compensation for having to deny our enthusiastic request for honey).

At Crater Bay, the cruising hub of northwest Madagascar, we were welcomed at the yacht club for a Sunday pig roast, a weeknight pizza and the Rugby World Cup, which we enthusiastically watched with sailors from Australia, South Africa and our beloved New Zealand.

We stopped in the archipelago Nosy Mitsio, only 30 miles north of Nosy Be but far from the noise. With beautiful bays both east and west (and a couple of small villages), the largest island of Mitsio offered plenty to explore, and we found fantastic harbors for swimming at the nearby surrounding islands.

But even as we sailed from anchorage to anchorage, smiling and dancing our way through each new encounter, and even as we snapped photos that captured the vibrancy of Madagascar, I realized we couldn’t photograph the underlying cultural rhythms and tones. Poverty begets petty crime and sometimes more dramatic instances of violence on the island, and there is an inevitable clash of the thriving local culture and a strong expat community (which seem to exist, for the most part, in relative peace).

We couldn’t photograph the way we skirted the edges of dirty streets lined with tenement housing and pulled our daughters in close as we wandered home late at night, holding hands and making sure no one strayed from the group. We accepted local help when it came to extending our visas (and quickly came to understand the tipping system for the man who knows a man who knows a man) but sensed we should decline the offer to travel inland, overnight, with cash in hand for an expensive payoff to help expedite the visas. We understood the need to be cautious about the two different money systems still in operation, and the pitfalls of being gullible foreigners. We traded first-world clothing and tools for bananas, mangoes and other local goods, and strived to be curious visitors and good guests.

And even though we danced with late-night partygoers and felt the vibe, I couldn’t lay it down precisely on the page, or even capture it with a Nikon. We found Madagascar to be playful, edgy, smart, witty, friendly, maybe a little too friendly, welcoming, forward, salacious and — sometimes — dangerous, too.

We documented fishermen and sailing dhows, wildlife and roadside activity, and the outwardly colorful culture. If we had stayed longer in that mysterious and welcoming country, we might have been able to say more about complex cultural undercurrents and countercurrents. In the meantime, we decided to stick around the region to explore Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya. We’ll see how our first impressions deepen and change in the coming months. There’s plenty to take in. And there’s plenty of wind, too.

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor, originally from the Chesapeake and based in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands. She has lived aboard her sailboat for more than 12 years and is currently exploring Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique.

The post First Impressions: Madagascar appeared first on Cruising World.

Laka in Madagascar

As any new destination should be, Madagascar, still beyond the curve of the horizon, was a bit of a mystery to my wife, Nancy, and me. Lemurs, chameleons, jagged rock plateaus, rivers red with soil — we’d heard about that. But what about the coastal people? Or the waters surrounding the fourth largest island on Earth?

A thousand nautical miles of its east coast look over the Indian Ocean. And another thousand miles of its west shores are awash in the currents of the Mozambique Channel. We read that the tides of the east are a fraction of the range of those on the west side, where they routinely reach 12 feet. But there wasn’t much available information about the people, besides the CIA’s World Factbook statistics indicating the dire poverty.

Aboard the 94-foot expedition yacht Whale Song, we’d just left Île de Mayotte, which is officially an overseas territory of France and is, in truth, a colonial dump, if you pardon the straight talk. It did have marine services: a boatyard in the town of Dzaoudzi, on the nearby islet of Petite Terre; welders, painters, mechanics and some marine hardware are available on Grand Terre, in the city of Mamoudzou. Despite these exotic names right out of Sinbad the Sailor-type tales, the place offered only basic support in a dusty, rusty, crowded sort of way.

On the other hand, Nosy Be, the island off the northwest coast of Madagascar that was our landfall, surfaced ahead afloat on lazy swells swirling purple under a pink-streaked dawn sky. A crop of crescent sails from local boats loomed white against distant bluish hills. Coming close to its main town, Hell-Ville, we crossed tracks with dozens of local boutres, lateen-rigged dhow-like cargo carriers whose design unmistakably originated in the Arab world. Hell-Ville, named for a long-dead French admiral, is the administrative center of northwestern Madagascar. We dealt with the officials and made some produce purchases, then backtracked a mile or so to Crater Bay, where most charter and cruising yachts hang out. Outrigger canoes loaded with hay, low in the water to the gunwales, wove through mostly French yachts of all designs and sizes. Charter boats skippered by French expats — clones of the late Bernard Moitessier, the bronzed super solo sailor — occupied most of the bay.

The boats from Dream Yacht Charter favored the playgrounds of the bays and islands near Nosy Be. After a short snorkel by the popular Nosy Tanikely, we soon headed south along the west coast. Fifteen miles later we swung to our anchor, the only other vessel an outrigger pirogue that entered behind us and also sought solitude under a rocky point.

This spot, the practically landlocked Baie Ambavatobi, stretches into several long finger bays filled with exploring challenges. Russian Bay, its other charted name, harks back to 1905, when some deserting Russian sailors fleeing from the Japanese found refuge here and went troppo under the Madagascar palms.

There are ways to navigate pretty far into the interior of Madagascar. We charged into the Loza River, just a bit farther down the west coast. After the wide entrance, the deep river flowed reddish between gentle rounded hills. Small patches of greenery bordered a few small clusters of huts scattered close to its banks and ravines, which had retained moisture after rains. Large outrigger pirogues loaded with waving passengers crossed the river under great spreads of lateen sails. A zebu, a type of cattle, lumbered down to one of the ferry landings. Was it waiting for a boat?

After about 10 miles, the obvious deep channel ended, and the river spread into a broad lagoon that we guessed was too shallow to tackle without a chart. We headed back against a strengthening onshore breeze. Low tide exposed mud flats at Analalava, the village at the Loza River’s mouth where local boats lay on their sides on the mud. At the edge of the channel, the crew of a large dhow hauled the anchor and struggled to get the immense canvas of the lateen mainsail under control.

Given a chance, nature turns lush in the coastal belt. Far up in Morombe Bay, the hilly sand dunes of the outer coast disappeared, and we anchored among islets carrying stands of fat baobabs. Here in the higher trees with thorny trunks, grand vasa parrots cruised overhead, unafraid of the even larger raptors wheeling above.

Farther south along the coast, the small Ambondroampasy River wouldn’t admit our draft of 8½ feet, so we anchored off in a smooth sea and explored with the dinghy. The posh Anjajavy Lodge on the south bank protects a chunk of Madagascar’s natural world. Sifaka lemurs, diurnal creatures unlike other lemurs, watched our progress through the trails with round, innocent eyes. On a sandy hook of the north riverbank lived a boatbuilder, his house awash in naturally curved crooks of timber and boats of different sizes and shapes awaiting repairs.

Most of the Vezo people along the west shores of Madagascar live in small villages, typically in little huts of reeds and bamboo. The majority of them relaxed around their homes, quietly excited at having visitors. The most energy radiated from a cluster of women who, under a mango tree, swung long pestles made of shiny hardwood to pound rice in wooden mortars. They shrieked with laughter at their images in a digital camera and posed again with improved postures. In the doorway of a hut, a man strummed a stringed instrument, homemade and square-cornered. A muscular fellow, his ax razor sharp, put the finishing and precise touches on small pirogues that he and his wife had under construction.

The populous town of Soalala, on the other side of Baie de Baly, looked prosperous. Two schooners leaned over, grounded by the low tide; a crewman worked at painting. An outrigger unloaded baskets of fish to waiting women. Across, in a little cove, a generator throbbed in a small French-owned shrimp-processing plant.

Port Bebé, off Morondava, presents a typical picture of coastal life. Only the local outrigger boats can enter through the shoals. The schooners wait for high tide and the onshore breeze, then rush in through the narrow creek to town. They carry sugar, rice, flour and some passengers. Strangely enough, a shed on the wharf was turning out fiberglass copies of the outriggers, rigged with steel masts, perhaps the result of a grant from the European Union.

Restricted by our draft, we stayed anchored outside, in the path of the daily migration of the fishing fleet; they went out with the offshore breeze and came back with the onshore wind. In town, several vendors traded in suspension springs and rods; Madagascar roads are terrible. Others sold homemade wick lamps soldered from tins that once held beans. A seamstress worked her Chinese sewing machine on the sidewalk. Several general stores sold dusty rolls of colorful cloth, and plates, cups, tools and trinkets made in China.

Offshore islands, islets and sandbars were busy with humans. The sandy islands of Nosy Chesterfield, Nosy Vao, Nosy Marify and Banc Bayfield bristled with camps, boats hauled out and sails serving as tents; it was turtle-egging time. So it was a pleasant surprise to see green turtles when we dove through clouds of moorish idols at Dos de Baleine rocks, underwater outcrops that we located at 22 degrees 14.83 minutes south latitude and 43 degrees 11.00 minutes west longitude. Charting for Madagascar waters is particularly bad in this area, where we found GPS fixes differed by as much as 1½ nautical miles and a half from the paper and digital charts.

Belo-Sur-Mer has always been the local center of schooner boatbuilding. More than 20 hulls under construction rested beneath the palms on the waterfront beach. But obtaining timber costs money, and many projects slumbered, waiting for funds. One gleaming hull already rigged was an exception. The owner of a budding resort needed the vessel for her customers. Two other established resorts overlooked a blue lagoon just outside the village. High tide is of an essence to get over the 6-foot bar, but inside, the protection was perfect. And the views: shimmering sand dunes, the dark silhouettes of children foraging at low tide for seafood tidbits, a green margin of low forest to the east, rows of coconut palms to the north, and to seaward, the glistening expanse of Mozambique Channel.

Toliara was our last stop on the southwest end of the island. Extensive flats front the town landing, and as our dinghy grounded before getting close enough, two buffalo-driven carts approached. It took a few minutes to understand that they were the taxis to the dry land. Everyone uses them, including tourists who join local boats for snorkeling outings. On land, the taxis gave way to rickshaws pulled by marathon-legged men.

For the local ships working under sail, Toliara is their southern terminus on the west coast. We passed these ancient-looking craft every day. As a rule, when our boat began overtaking a gaff-rigged schooner, two crewmen would race up the masts, past the gaffs, and unfurl the topsails so the boat would speed up. Almost every ship carried a guy strumming his square-cornered homemade Malagasy guitar and singing. Friendly hands would wave. With the prevailing offshore wind that month, the sailing life seemed free and easy.

Toliara has a wharf where the waves get very rough in the afternoon breeze despite an offshore reef that acts as a natural breakwater. Customs wants your boat tied up for clearing in and out, so after dropping an anchor to pull ourselves off later, we docked right as the sun rose. Even before the wind piped up, our ship was off and heading out, and we were full of regret for not staying longer among these happy people.

Madagascar Snapshot

Wind and weather: From April to June, the light northeast winds of the morning change to fresh southwest winds in the afternoon. East winds, up to 25 knots, prevail from July until October. We were there for part of October and all of November and experienced variable winds and often land breezes, which were light and offshore at night and stronger onshore in the afternoon. Most cyclone activity happens between December and March.

Navigation: Use French charts from the Service Hydrographique de la Marine, but treat them with caution. Digital charting is also unreliable, so keep a very good lookout for breakers on shoals. On the west coast, tidal ranges often reach 12 feet.

Communications: Mobile-phone coverage is available only near Nosy Be. Satellite phones can be rented from Dream Yacht Charter.

Charters: Companies offering crewed and bareboat charters include Dream Yacht Charter, located in Crater Bay, near Hell-Ville on Nosy Be island.

Safety: At night at Nosy Be anchorages, lock the boat, hoist dinghies and secure outboards.

After running yachts professionally, Tom Zydler and his wife, Nancy, now cruise cold northern waters on Frances B, their 1990 Mason 44, an upgrade from their 1961 engineless 38-foot yawl, Mollymawk. This article first appeared in the October 2013 issue of Cruising World.

The post Sailing Madagascar: Land of Crescent Sails appeared first on Cruising World.

The channel is tiny and shallow but luckily well-described by the pilot book. As Essaouira is an active commercial fishing port, the only place for a sailboat is to tie up alongside the 30-foot Essaouira Sailing Tour boat, run by a very nice guy named Saeed and his English-speaking sidekick Omar. The wind rips inside the breakwater but the harbor is very protected.

After tying up we had to visit the Port Authority, the police station, and the harbormaster, to fill out slightly different forms in each office. Everyone was friendly and we particularly liked the guy from the Port Authority. The harbormaster kept the boat’s registration, to be returned on our departure.

Essaouira is Morocco’s windy resort town and a big draw for kiters and windsurfers, i.e. Nate. As soon as we had finished our official business Thursday morning he was on deck with a harness and board shorts ready to make moves. We did a preliminary wander through the market then headed to Explora, the windsurf outfit Nate had contacted from home.

The walk down the beach felt like traversing a desert, with wide swaths of sand, blazing sun and ripping wind. There were even a few camels to complete the picture. It’s definitely not a sunbathing destination but a windsports paradise.

Nate organized a surf trip up the coast for Friday and a rental for that afternoon. Ben and I parked it in a cafe and spent the afternoon drinking mint tea and eating paninis and french fries. After feeling like the only tourists in the city of Rabat, Essaouira brought a strange onslaught of Europeans.

At the recommendation of our new friends from Explora, we ate dinner at Restaurant Beldy in the souk and were not disappointed. The tajines and couscous were excellent!

Friday Nate went north to Mouley for wave sailing and Ben and I went to explore the market, which is a World Heritage Site. It’s a network of tiny alleys that connect big open courtyards, all surrounded by thick battlements and cannons. While Rabat’s market if full of amazing pottery, Essaouira’s is all about the woodwork. After careful searching and comparing, Ben found some beautifully polished wooden boxes with inlaid designs on their lids. I got a really cool leather bag and then Ben had to get one too.

Haggling in Essaouira is more intense and also more fun. The mantra of “no problem” is so ubiquitous we caught ourselves using it too. “I’ll give you a democratic price” was another of our favorites and we joked that if the price was really democratic we would have out-voted the seller each time.

The fog rolls in thick in the evenings, leaving everything on the boat damp and requiring us to wear sweaters and sweatshirts to dinner. It reminded me of the poem about fog rolling into a harbor on little cat feet, especially apt in a place so covered in kittens. Walking through the fish market every time we went to the boat was interesting to see but left me wishing for a proper shower!

Saturday morning we did a final weather check then prepared for sea. There was a small system developing and we wanted to get out while we still could. We also had a new neighbor, a nice German guy with a catamaran, and we didn’t want to take the pressure of another boat blowing us onto Saeed’s boat for too long.

Apogee, in the center.

We told the authorities of our departure and put together a goody bag of cigarettes, wine and dirhams for our friends Saeed and Omar. I did one last market burn to get rid of the last of our dirhams and got some mint tea to bring home and a small leather duffel.

Ben, our friend from the Port Authority, Nate, Omar, and Saeed.

Morocco was amazing but we’re happy to be headed somewhere we can dry out and not have to pay everyone we meet. So long Africa, Apogee standing by on VHF 16!

Click here to read the previous post, Cruising the Coast of Morocco.
Click here to read the next post, To the Canaries With Swells and Staysails.

There were a few of books we found helpful in Morocco:
Lonley Planet Morocco by James Bainbridge, Alison Bing, Helen Ranger, and Paul Clammer. Lonely Planet, 2011. (This one had particularly helpful maps of individual cities!) Courtesy of Lonely Planet.

Moroccan Arabic: Lonely Planet Phrasebook by Dan Bacon, Lonely Planet Publications, Bichr Andjar, and Abdennabi Benchehda. Courtesy of Julia and Sam Thompson.

Fodor’s Morocco, 5th Edition by Fodor’s Travel Publications. Fodor’s, 2012. Courtesy of Julia and Sam Thompson.

North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia Including Gibraltar, Pantelleria and the Pelagie Islands and Malta, 4th Edition by Graham Hutt and the RCC Pilotage Foundation. Imray, 2011. Courtesy of the Cruising Club of America.

The post Essaouira, Morocco’s Windy City appeared first on Cruising World.

After a quick trip to the grocery store Tuesday morning to restock ice and meat, we readied Apogee for sea. Clearing customs out of Rabat was straightforward and took just under an hour. Our friends from the Bouregreg Marina escorted us out the river and we got a small glimpse of how dicey the breakwater can be with a couple of small breaking waves at the mouth.

We tossed them some dirhams and cigarettes and waved goodbye. Between the markets and mosques and forts, it felt like we had spent far more than two days in Morocco’s capital, and it’s a place I would definitely recommend visiting.

In a brief moment of light wind on Tuesday morning we put up the reacher. It didn’t last long!

Getting offshore we avoided a few fishing boats and nets but had no major issues. The route to Essouira was almost dead downwind to the south so we we went out on starboard tack on a broad reach for about a day then headed back on a port reach just after our first dinner, a ginger orange stir-fry with a mystery meat labeled “Dinde.”

The seas were large and we did quite a bit of rolling but Apogee handled the building wind well. We reefed in about 20 knots Tuesday afternoon, then put in a second reef and rolled in the jib a bit around dinner. We dropped the main and switched to stays’l only just before I got off watch at 6:00am Wednesday morning. By this time we think we were in about 30 knots but with no working wind instruments it’s hard to be sure. Nate said he would be windsurfing on his smallest sail (a 4.2m) so we know it was windy!

We’ve had a lot of shipping traffic here on the north African coast so we’re keeping strict 3-hour night watches and we’re glued to the AIS.

Wednesday we sailed most of the day under stays’l alone, sometimes going up to 9 knots through the water. We also spotted three sea turtles! A little flatter would have been nice but at least we’ve been making good time. It was too rolley for cooking dinner so Wednesday night we had cheese, crackers and salami.

The water temperature dropped almost ten degrees overnight and Ben had a stressful watch in thick fog from 12 to three am. Our AIS was in and out so we used radar as a backup to make sure we could see anything coming our way. As the sun rose, we could just make out the Atlas mountains through the haze. A big pod of dolphins escorted us toward shore which was strangely comforting as we weaved through the morning fishing fleet.

Click here to read the previous post, Sailing into Rabat, Morocco.
Click here to read the next post, Essaouira, Morocco’s Windy City.

Click here to read more of our adventures!

The post Cruising the Coast of Morocco appeared first on Cruising World.

The river that divides Rabat and Salé was too silted in for major use until it was dredged in 2008. Now a huge marina complex is under construction with waterfront condos and restaurants.

We had read horror stories about clearing customs but the process was straightforward and just required a little patience. All officials were professional and friendly, and there were enough English speakers between them to help us through all the appropriate forms. They took our passports and insurance papers for photocopying and had brought them back by the time we had finished cooking and eating breakfast. Then we were escorted across the river into a slip. Our biggest surprise was to find French the language of choice over Arabic.

The Bourgreg Marina is clean and efficiently run. It has a building where men can take hot showers and women can take cold ones, and numerous armed guards. There are a couple of cafes and restaurants that are popular with well-to-do locals and sometimes there’s a dumpster to throw trash, sometimes not. Each slip has power (which we did not use because of unknown voltage) and water which the boat next to us said was potable but we used only for washing.

There were a handful of European cruising boats in port and everyone we met was friendly. The marina has an aristocratic feel, evidenced by the king’s pontoon and Range Rovers that occasionally blasted through. It seems the only things missing at the moment are a nearby ATM and laundry services.

Rabat is an incredible walled city and a great introduction to the Muslim world. Beautiful arches, textures and colors are everywhere, even in run-down neighborhoods. The souk, or market, has pottery, carpets, metalwork, leather goods and more artsy items in its center, surrounded by more modern items (presumably for the locals) near the edges, with everything from panty hose to smartphones.

It’s easy to be deceived by tacky storefronts but wandering into stalls often reveals cavernous shops with far more selection. Sometimes we’d wander down an alley and find a hidden courtyard with even more shops. The souk is a place worth getting lost in for a few hours.

Ben worked on his haggling skills and got two beautiful bowls for a total of $40 and Nate got a tiny rug for the boat for about $2. We were surprised how little we were hassled by merchants, and the guide books confirmed that this trait is specific to Rabat.

Closer to the water is the kasbah, or fort, with huge Islamic arches and tiny alleys painted half white and half blue. Our unofficial tour guide (some guy who latched onto us on the street) told us the blue deters mosquitos. He also showed us some lovely architecture (a colonial-Islamic mix) and directed us to the kasbah cafe, which was pretty touristy but had amazing water views and delicious sweet mint tea.

Unofficial tour guides are everywhere and in our experience pretty much always worth the couple of dollars they demand at the end of the tour (even though the guide book says to avoid them). They took us to parts of the souk and kasbah we never would have found on our own. We realized later that it’s best to break the 200 dirham notes the ATM spits out by buying water or soda in little shops. Ben had also bought a ton of Marlborough Reds at the airport and we sometimes hand them out, but what everyone really wants is the money.

After the souk and the kasbah we were getting a little hungry and started wandering toward a restaurant recommended by the guidebook. This turned into a real “three hour tour” wandering the city and when we eventually found the right street the place was closed. Now in the dark and getting hangry (hungry-angry), we got in a cab and named the other, more expensive Moroccan food place place in the book. The taxi cost so little (about $1 for a 15-minute ride), we thought the price was missing a zero at the end. It’s crazy how cheap the cabs are.

The restaurant Dinarjat was everything we were hoping for and more. Out on the street there was a sign that said we were in the right vicinity but the way to find the restaurant is to find the old man with the lantern. He led us down through a maze of alleys, the candle in the lantern flickering as he went. Suddenly he stopped and knocked on a door set into the wall.

Walking through the door was like entering a different world. The restaurant is in an old riad, or house that surrounds an interior courtyard, with intricately carved arches and a gurgling fountain. The hostess asked if we had reservations but didn’t seem to mind when we did not. A silver teapot with water was brought around for hand washing and assortment of vegetables, chutneys and breads was presented to be shared by the table. Nate ordered a lamb couscous and Ben and I had tajines, the Moroccan specialty of slow-cooked meat dishes with vegetables and amazing spices. Everything was delicious and we passed all three meals around to share. Ben commented that it might be the fanciest dining experience he’s ever had and I would agree: the number of servers and plates and courses was truly remarkable. Dinarjat, which may be one of the fanciest restaurants in Rabat, only ended up costing us about $20 per person. We are loving the exchange rate!

I have been wearing long skirts and tee shirts, but in Salé I covered my head with a scarf as well, as it is a more traditional town. So far in Morocco we have seen the full range of women’s clothing: everything from full burka to just hijab (head scarf) to bare heads. It appears to be generational, as it’s common to see a mother in hijab walking with a daughter not covered.

On Monday we headed to Salé, the older city across the river from Rabat. The main attractions there are the Grand Mosque and medersa school for the Qua’ran. Once again we picked up an unofficial tour guide who led us to the courtyard of the mosque, but then he got in an argument with another man and we slinked away around the corner. Our next guide was the best we’ve had so far. He spent over two hours showing us around Salé.

Next he took us to the souk in Salé which was almost deserted at 3:00pm. We only saw two other tourists in the souk and think it is more popular with locals. Our guide told us the market is filled with food in the mornings but quiet in the afternoons. With his help translating, we purchased ground spices including cumin, paprika, saffron, and a few we will have to look up when we get home. Our guide sat with us for mint tea and scratched the ears of all the tiny cats that wandered by.

Click here to read the previous post, Making Way to the Maghreb.
Click here to read the next post, Cruising the Coast of Morocco.

There were a few of books we found helpful in Morocco

Lonley Planet Morocco by James Bainbridge, Alison Bing, Helen Ranger, and Paul Clammer. Lonely Planet, 2011. (This one had particularly helpful maps of individual cities!) Courtesy of Lonely Planet.

Moroccan Arabic: Lonely Planet Phrasebook by Dan Bacon, Lonely Planet Publications, Bichr Andjar, and Abdennabi Benchehda. Courtesy of Julia and Sam Thompson.

Fodor’s Morocco, 5th Edition by Fodor’s Travel Publications. Fodor’s, 2012. Courtesy of Julia and Sam Thompson.

North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia Including Gibraltar, Pantelleria and the Pelagie Islands and Malta, 4th Edition by Graham Hutt and the RCC Pilotage Foundation. Imray, 2011. Courtesy of the Cruising Club of America.

Click here to read more of our adventure!

rabat-sunrise.jpg

rabat-entrance.jpg

rabat-marina.jpg

rabat-city.jpg

rabat-street.jpg

rabat-carpets.jpg

rabat-kasbah-arch.jpg

rabat-kasbah2.jpg

rabat-kasbah.jpg

Moroccan Lantern Man

sale-mosque.jpg

sale-mosque2.jpg

sale-school.jpg

sale-spices.jpg

rabat-yellow-arch.jpg

rabat-souk1.jpg

rabat-souk2.jpg

rabat-riad.jpg

sale-tower.jpg

The post Sailing into Rabat, Morocco appeared first on Cruising World.

crew.jpg

The distance between Lagos, Portugal and Rabat, Morocco is roughly 200 nautical miles. The first third and last third of the trip had very light breeze but from Friday around midnight to Saturday around noon we saw upwards of 25 knots and gusts in the 30s. After motor-sailing for most of Friday afternoon we went almost immediately to a double reef and stays’l, trucking at around 6.5 knots.

Ben estimated the seas at 20 feet an my stomach can attest they were steep, sloppy, and very confused. Luckily I was the only one to get really sick and Ben and Nate took very good care of me.

I knew AIS was great technology, but I did not fully appreciate it before crossing the shipping lanes that come out of the Strait of Gibraltar from the Med. It gave us comfort to see the speed, direction, closest point of approach and name of vessels more than 10 times our size. We made a few small changes to our course to make sure we’d stay out of their way but were able to stick to the rhumb line pretty closely.

We encountered one large ship apparently void of AIS. After hailing without reply, the vessel approached us quickly, passed astern of us, then immediately proceeded to shut off its running lights and power away. Pretty creepy in the middle of the night.

The water temperature rose throughout our sail, from 71˚ Friday afternoon to 86˚ on Saturday. The phosphorescence was beautiful and when we had dolphins around they were lit up in the water.

About three hours before dawn, the phosphorescence really saved us. I was sleeping on the port settee when I heard Ben turn off the engine. “Guys,” he called down the companionway, “we’re on a net.”

Twenty six miles off Rabat, the water is strewn with fishing nets. If you see blinking red and green buoys, do NOT mistake them for navigational aids and go between them: they mark the edges of the nets. Sometimes it’s a red or green and a white buoy. With the city lights of Rabat just appearing in front of us, it was difficult to make out what was on land and what was in the water. If you could see one blinking light, you had to strain your eyes to find the other end of the net, and sometimes we never did. Ben saw a line of phosphorescence light up in the water on either side of the boat as the keel hit the edge of the net, and amazingly reacted fast enough to kill the engine before everything wrapped itself in the propeller. The net had cleared the prop but was stuck on our rudder when Nate and I got on deck.

Everyone clipped in and Ben attempted to push the net down with the boat hook but it wasn’t long enough to clear the rudder. Eventually we cut the top floating bit of the net and motored forward and the rest of the net slid down off the rudder. Success!

The next five hours were spent with two people on deck at all times watching for more nets which thankfully we did not catch. We were, however, very ready to be ashore and get some real rest!

Click here to read the previous post from Lagos, Portugal.
Click here to read the next post, Sailing into Rabat, Morocco.

Click here to read more of our adventures.

The post Making Way to the Maghreb appeared first on Cruising World.

Map of Quest Attack

It must have been a horrifying few seconds as they were shot. I knew Scott Adam. He was a problem solver, a can-do sailor, a man’s man. He wouldn’t have panicked. He was a strong, calm, thoughtful person. As captain, he knew he set the tone. “Be calm,” he must’ve told himself as the ordeal unfolded. Scott was, above all, a man of logic. He would’ve been reassuring his wife, Jean, and their friends, Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, that, hey, sure things seemed kind of grim, but they’d be OK. They’d be OK, be OK, be OK. The U.S. Navy warship wouldn’t fire upon them. The pirates wouldn’t kill them. After all, they were hostages. And hostages are only useful alive, not dead.

Every bit of logic and rational thinking—every bit of risk assessment—must’ve reassured them all that this was just another experience. Just another event. Just an amazing tale, an adventure to eventually tell their family and their friends and their minister: Captured by Somali pirates, wow!

But it must also have been chaos. Nineteen teenagers aboard the Adams’ boat, Quest, none of whom probably knew how to use a toilet let alone a marine head. Young African kids with large, sophisticated, Western weapons. Kids who were high on drugs. Nervous. Scared. Angry. Worried. Happy. Jubilant. Thrilled. Victorious. Proud. Terrified. And a few so dumb that they weren’t able to parse the difference between macho posturings and group suicide.

I don’t doubt that Jean both scolded and advised the youngsters. Jean was like that. She only saw the good in a person. At first, when they’d been captured three days earlier, on February 19, there must have been worries about rape and torture and the possibility of separation from Scott, but by now she’d have been reassured. These kids were just more of God’s children. Jean believed in God. He was close to her. The Adams had a bilge full of Bibles. She was probably just hoping that no one would get hurt. Not them. Nor anyone from the U.S. Navy. Nor any of the youths aboard.

That’s how she’d have thought of them, as youths. She was used to “youth groups” at church. Drugs were a mystery to her. Violence was an unknown. Jean was just a child of God, and they were just God’s children, so how could it end badly?

No, Jean would’ve been upbeat and optimistic and can-do. She would’ve been giving them dietary advice and scolding their messiness; you know, the usual mother/kid stuff.

There were probably even a few laughs, some shared humanity. It was impossible not to love Jean, she was so pure and simple and straight ahead in her beliefs. So sincere. So trusting. Sure, there was evil in this world, but she believed that goodness, properly applied, would always win. Wouldn’t it?

But still, it must have been terrible: 19 pirates, the boat thoroughly ransacked, threats, guns pointed, backs prodded, ropes tied. Tears. Screams.

Scott would’ve been measuring up the kids. He’d have been learning all he could from them. He was a thinker, an evaluator. Which of them were nice, which nasty. Who was a sadist? Trigger-happy? A leader? A follower?

Scott’s eyes would’ve been everywhere. He wouldn’t have said much, just watched and thought, “Don’t panic. Don’t do anything to set them off. Just cooperate. Must get Jean through this. Must get Phyllis and Bob through this. Must. Must!”

After all, Scott was still the captain. And a captain always carries the responsibilities of the vessel and the crew upon his or her shoulders. Scott’s shoulders were broad. I’m sure he was captain right up to the end, when the shots rang out, until death embraced.

My wife, Carolyn, and I met Jean and Scott in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands in 2006, on the dinghy dock of the Opua Cruising Club. They were excited about setting off on their first circumnavigation and peppered us with questions. But the first thing they did, as was their loving nature, was to compliment us. “We feel like we’ve known you for years, Fatty, because we’ve read of your adventures in Cruising World many times.”

That’s the kind of people they were, always saying something nice and positive and nurturing to friend and foe alike.

We never became best friends. We were both busy getting ready to head north toward Tonga and Fiji and, in a year or two, the Indian Ocean. But we bumped into them a couple of times more, enough to admire and respect them and all the ocean miles they’d sailed together.

“It’s my favorite ocean,” I told them, when questioned about the Indian Ocean region. “You’ll love it. There’s plenty of wind and many, many different cultures. Best place in the world!”

Scott smiled.

They loved their boat. Quest was a 58-foot Davidson that they’d had custom-built for them in New Zealand. They were proud of her, and both Scott and Jean talked about how strong and safe and sturdy she was.

Yes, Quest was strong, but we humans are weak. We’re just flesh and blood and bone. And, according to the Adams, a spark of God.

Perhaps the worst, most difficult part for them—the only thing we really know is that we’ll never know—was the bickering and dissension among the pirates. The pirates have no plan. They’re just kids, just punks, just dumb-ass gang members. All the pirates could think about was getting someone, kidnapping someone, attacking a ship, being a hero, and, most of all, being rich.

Each kid would be paid around US$2,000 if all went well and the ransom was collected (for perspective, the average yearly income in Somalia is less than half that amount). That’s what the kids who guarded our friends Sabine and Jurgen Kantner, of Rockall, for 58 days were paid. (See “A Cruel Twist of Fate,” On Watch, March 2010.) And from what I understand, similar amounts were paid to the cruel young men who guarded the Chandlers, a British couple also held in Somalia, in their case for a year.

Wow, $2,000! Why, that’s all the money in the world, isn’t it? They’d buy a whole wheelbarrow of khat and share it with their whole village. That would be fun. And girls! They’d buy some girls, too, pretty ones. And maybe one of those large-screen TVs or a Sony PlayStation.

Holding hostages would gain them some respect. Until, that is, the U.S. warships turned up and spoiled everything.

What to do, display the hostages? Shoot one in the leg, like in those cool gangsta DVD movies?

Still, the arrival of the U. S. Navy must’ve buoyed the hopes of the hostages. Perhaps it was almost over. Scott was probably thinking, hey, maybe Quest will come out of this without too much damage. Maybe this would end soon and they’d go aboard the Navy boat, have a steak and a beer, and meet the captain and the chaplain.

But that’s not what happened as they approached the coast of Somalia.

As CW goes to press, we’re not sure of the events surrounding Quest on that February 22. But we do know that the pirates were in negotiations and that the officers of the USS Sterett were in direct communications with them. It seemed to be going well, but some of the pirates must have been panicking. And one of the pirates was particularly stupid. He figured he had to show ’em he wasn’t scared. His hands shook as he hoisted the shoulder-fired missile up and fired directly at the warship only a few hundred meters away. The target was huge, but he missed.

And then, things happened fast. The kids (I mean, the pirates) panicked completely, I’d guess. I’m sure that Scott realized what was happening and attempted to calm things down, but there was no backing down. It only took a few seconds, but it must have felt like an eternity to Jean and Scott and Phyllis, and Bob.
They heard the rocket go off, a deafening sound. There was jostling. Screaming. Shouting. A gun went off in the confining, tiny space that was Quest‘s cabin.
A body fell. Someone else opened fire. More bodies fell.

Two pirates and four hostages lay on the cabin sole. Bleeding. Dying. At least two of the hostages were alive and conscious for some time afterward. We can only imagine what must have been going through their minds—the stuff of nightmares.

The U.S. Navy did the best it could. On Sterett, they weren’t expecting anything savage precisely at that moment. It was early morning, and the two sides were talking. But barefoot boys with large weapons and lots of khat often do stupid things that make no sense. The U.S. Navy had just been fired upon by Quest with a rocket. A disorganized group of pirates came topside, raised their hands as if in surrender, and moved forward to the sailboat’s bow, just as, or just after, gunfire erupted from belowdecks aboard the yacht.

The U.S. Navy officers decided to board the yacht immediately to attempt to prevent further bloodshed. They rushed over and dashed below. One pirate was shot inside the cabin as they entered. It was chaos. People were crying, moaning, screaming, dying. A pirate lurched at one of the naval rescuers and, in the ensuing knife fight, was stabbed to death.

The story of the events aboard Quest are the definition of tragedy. Everyone lost. Four pirates were dead, and the rest will, I hope, rot forever in jail. Jean, Scott, Phyllis, and Bob are dead. The rescuers, who risked their lives and did a superb job under stressful, bloody conditions, will forever think of what could’ve been done differently.

The world and our community of cruisers have lost four wonderful people; Carolyn and I have lost two friends. They were sea gypsies who died doing what they were born to do and loved to do best. Don’t judge them; don’t second-guess their decision to roam the high seas. They had every right to be free, loving, and out upon the ocean, sailing through God’s own watery cathedral.

They were doing nothing wrong. It was the pirates who had evil in their hearts, not Jean or Scott or Phyllis or Bob.
The pirates are to blame, no one else.

Jean recently wrote on her blog, “We were so unhappy being ‘dirt dwellers’ during our time in the States that another floating abode had to be acquired.”
There was seawater and love and faith in their veins, and poetry too. Jean wrote of cruising in Fiji, “We’re going to open these islands like the petals of a flower.”

What soft, romantic imagery. What nice people. What a horrible, horrible thing—a completely pointless and stupid and cruel thing—to have happen to them.

Cap’n Fatty Goodlander is the author of Red Sea Run_, which chronicles a 2010 transit of the Gulf of Aden aboard a small yacht._

The post It All Went So Wrong appeared first on Cruising World.

Dockwise

The death of four Americans at the hands of Somalian pirates begs many questions about the rights—and responsibilities—of people out voyaging. Sure, we have the right to sail when and where we want on the world’s oceans. But should we? That’s a question being debated in countless marinas and yacht clubs these days, along with the thorny issue of guns on board and whether the assorted navies patrolling the Gulf of Aden should just blast the bastards out of the water and ask questions later.

What do you think? Given the news reports and warnings from a raft-up of governments and their navies about threats to international shipping, never mind to small pleasure boats, should anyone even sail into the tempest that exists in the Gulf of Aden right now?

Sailors taking part in the Blue Water Rally, who sailed alongside Quest before that boat’s crew—the late Scott and Jean Adams and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle—went off on their own course, think not. Organizers of the round-the-world rally this week announced that the event wouldn’t continue on after arriving in Salalah, Oman. Rather than proceeding to the Red Sea and on to Crete, the sailors have opted instead to ship the fleet of 20 yachts directly to Marmaris, Turkey, aboard a Dockwise Yacht Transport ship.

“This decision was taken when four American ralliers were fatally shot by pirates, after their sailing yacht Quest was captured on passage from Mumbai to Oman, and the subsequent capture of the sailing yacht ING with a Danish family on board,” rally organizers said in a release.

“These incidents and other recent acts of piracy in the area have made proceeding in any direction from Salalah too high-risk for the vast majority of participants. Strong recommendations from the U.K. Maritime Trade Organization and the Maritime Liaison Office were decisive factors,” organizers said.

Few would leave a safe harbor when confronted with dire weather warnings. In the case of these ralliers, I’d say good judgment and common sense prevailed.

For cruisers who’ve reached the far side of the Pacific, Dockwise offers delivery from Singapore and Phuket, Thailand, to Genoa, Italy. The company is also considering making an Oman-to-Marmaris delivery a yearly sailing as well.

The post Piracy Halts Round-the-World Rally appeared first on Cruising World.

Cyan

Below is a blog post from Lynn and Chuck Evans aboard the Island Packet 380 Cyan_. This post was written for the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s next Commodores’ Bulletin, but the Evans’ have encouraged other publications that are interested in their story to post it. They are currently cruising in the Gulf of Aden, and were friends of the crew of_ Quest_. We will be following the Evans’ travels here, or you can visit their website (www.starsonthesea.com).
-J.B._

Indian Ocean; February, 2011; Decisions and Emotions
S/V Cyan, Island Packet 380

I begin writing these comments at sunset, just as Cyan enters the patrolled corridor, in the Gulf of Aden, February 25, 2011.

In January, while finishing repairs in Phuket, Thailand, the original decision to cross the Indian Ocean and Red Sea wasn’t difficult. Over 200 yachts had safely crossed the year before, and the pirates weren’t attacking yachts anymore, apparently. We felt OK about leaving and planned a cruising stop in the Andaman Islands. That turned out to be a waste of time, money, and patience with bureaucracy. They closed the rights to anchor in the most interesting locations, and the average anchorage costs $10 a night, $60 a day for the marine park [and you have to be gone by night time], and we had to call and check in twice a day. Forget that. We’d been to much better places in the Pacific from where we have wonderful memories.

Then, in February when we arrived in the Maldives—Uligamu, actually—we found 22 cruising boats that were in somewhat of an uproar with differing opinions on future cruising. Apparently, the pirates had become more aggressive in January while we were en route, and there were more events happening in the middle of the Indian Ocean than along the coast. It seems the small pirate boats were working from a mothership that supplied guns and drugs and encouragement to bring in bounty and captives. Some cruisers had changed plans and were returning east, some arranged shipping for their vessels and many in the TTT (Thailand to Turkey) rally headed to Pakistan to follow the coast. While we were there, it came down to four vessels that wanted to go ahead with the rhumb line, heading straight for the Gulf of Aden. Then three more followed a few days later. Just two days before we arrived in the Maldives, six boats had departed the straight route, so there were a number of cruising boats out there. We understand that this first group from Uligamu stayed in visual contact with each other, and we did not hear them on the Flying Fish net in the AM.

There is a story in my family passed down over the years about a great, great…however many times… grandmother who was widowed in the early 1800s and received a land grant in Tennessee. She packed a wagon with her belongings, a mother-in-law and five children and traveled from east Georgia through the mountains to settle in her new land. This story and others were the topics Chuck and I shared while making the decision to voyage through the Indian Ocean. We talked of how Chuck felt the first time he landed his A7 jet on an aircraft carrier at night when he flew as a Navy pilot in the 70s. I mentioned the stress, during labor, of being told my first/only child might be severely malformed from the x-rays taken. We talked about the most stressful things we have encountered…and the list wasn’t long. In 38 years of marriage we have been blessed and had only routine challenges in life. There runs a strong naval tradition in both of our families that affects us with determination and a love of the sea. Both our dads [USN retired] and three uncles fought in the Navy in the Pacific. My dad was at the flag hoisting at Iwo Jima. Other close relatives fought in Korea and Vietnam and, of course, Chuck spent seven years and two cruises flying off an aircraft carrier in the Med. We have always felt at home on the sea and planned and saved for our cruising life for 38 years. We felt a right to be able to travel the seas freely. We prayed about our decision and for God to help us consider, responsibly, all the alternatives. It came down to both of us agreeing to follow our plan right for the Red Sea and hope for the best.

I want to say that there was no right or wrong way to go for those of us making these important decisions. Each crew had to decide within their level of comfort and pocketbook, and according to their values. Many opinions were shared and it came down to each captaining their own vessel. As of today, we just heard that 14 boats are now being shipped to the Med from several places. I told Chuck that every time I had an anxiety attack on this voyage [as I am prone to do] about the present threat, to just say “$30,000” and it would change my attitude. We all have our own motivations.

The sailing has been much more enjoyable than we anticipated with steady winds 10-15 knots and flat seas. We only motored 40 hours in 14 days so far. We were handling the voyage carefully. The four boats that left together are checking in faithfully on the SSB morning and night with a few others calling in their locations, too. We give our location as a range and bearing to a predetermined waypoint. Then there was that dreadful morning net when we heard that our wonderful friends, Scott and Jean Adam and two of their friends on board s/v Quest, were taken captive in an area we all thought was relatively safe. Our anxiety level hit new highs, but we kept on our route NW. At this time any other decision just didn’t make sense to us.

We were in an area about 500 miles off the horn of Africa [about halfway from the Maldives] before we began to see any shipping vessels since we had set out eight days earlier. On the SSB, we could only get connected to Winlink for email and weather about every other day and hadn’t heard anything from the media or even received many emails since folks were writing on Sailmail, and we couldn’t connect there. Then one midnight we got the CNN report from our son about the tragic outcome on Quest when all four crew were brutally murdered during negotiations. All kinds of feelings and thoughts went through our minds and we held each other a lot and cursed the savages and their criminal organizers with “typical sailors expletives.” I never thought I would hear Chuck say, “Now, I’m scared!” Whew, now was the time for praying for strength, guidance, and stamina.

Word was out that U.S.A. vessels were being targeted in retaliation for one pirate justly convicted in the U.S.A. How irrational is this thinking? Some recommended we remove our flag. For us, there was no question about it. We were not going to remove our flag. It just wasn’t in our values. We sailed with no lights or the emitting of an AIS signal, but we could still receive. We kept a U.S.-registered EPIRB ready to launch and told our son [our primary contact] that if an alarm was activated, it was due to an attack and send help immediately. We emailed our son, Geoff, that if we were captured we wanted the forces to take all aggressive measures even if it put us at risk. We still have an Australian EPIRB on board. We checked the radar often and also removed our reflector. Today we restored it. We did every reasonable thing we could think of to prepare. Actually, we do not consider ourselves in a safe zone yet. Finally, today, we are in a more patrolled zone with P3 airplanes overhead taking our I.D. info, and we hear them talk to warships on the radio. They asked if we’d seen any suspicious activity and reminded us that channel 16 was being monitored.

On February 26th, as I finish this, we caught up with s/v Joseba of France and Chulupa of the U.S.A., and we plan to travel the corridor with them. They are two of the three other boats in our group. S/V Senang of The Netherlands has taken the coastal route to cruise with German-speaking vessels. Eduardo, on Joseba, told us about an encounter they had just a few days ago when a 100-foot boat tried to get him to stop while he was sailing in an area about 100 miles off Socotra island, and they were waving a U.S.A. flag by hand off the bow, but did not contact him on radio. [We think they did not speak English.] He motored his boat erratically, winding all around, as well as he could, and they finally gave up. We consider any vessel that does not use radio contact for permission, a threat in this situation, and would do the same. If we see guns, we set and pitch the EPIRB!

We are still coping with our grief and anger over the loss of our friends. This will take time. There were tears and cries of anger and frustration. We have only read part of a few relayed articles to know about what is being reported concerning this situation and how it is expressed in the media. We both know that this was one of the most stressful and emotional events we have ever dealt with. At this time, we hope that there are more enlightened minds making decisions that will put a stop to this needless cruelty and acts of crime on the high seas against the rest of the world.

Today, our goal is to refuel in Aden, 400 miles away, and continue on as quickly as possible. We understand that the TTT rally has not reached Pakistan yet. We hope the coastal route will be safe for them. We sometimes wish we had weapons on board but they can be even more dangerous when outnumbered by pirates. We do wish we had bought a satellite phone.

We hope with all our hearts, that all the vessels arrive safely, both cruising boats and merchant ships. We hope some of the nice anchorages in the Red Sea allow us to recuperate and enjoy cruising our beloved sea again.

Presently, en route, just north of the safety corridor in Gulf of Aden….
Lynn Evans, Commodore, SSCA along with Chuck Evans, Commodore, SSCA
Beaufort SC is Cyan_’s hailing port but our home base is Jacksonville, Florida._

The post Stress in the Gulf of Aden appeared first on Cruising World.

American’s Killed by Somali Pirates

A sad turn of events for an American crew has taken place off the coast of Oman, which is on the Arabian peninsula. According to various sources, including the BBC and the New York Times_ , the four Americans on board _Quest, a Davidson 58-foot pilothouse sloop which was hijacked by Somali pirates on February 18, have been killed. The Quest_ (www.svquest.com), with owners Scott and Jean Adam, and veteran Blue Water Rally participants Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle aboard, was sailing with the Oz-Med Rally, a portion of the Blue Water Round the World Rally in which the participants cruise in company from Mackay, Australia, to Crete in the Mediterranean. They left the rally on February 15 to take an independent course between Mumbai, India, and Salalah, Oman. The Adams have been sailing _Quest since 2002 and began their circumnavigation in 2004.

The post American crew killed by Somali pirates appeared first on Cruising World.