In Ile St Marie
S/V Galatea update
Neil Scott
Tue 29 Sep 2015 06:41
On sunday morning, 6am, we arrived at Ambodifotatra, the "main" town on the east coast of Isle St Marie, which is 30 miles off the east coast, 2/3rds up from the southern end on Madagascar. We had a great sail across from Reunion, uneventful, which is always good, and relatively fast, for Galatea. We picked up an easy anchorage alongside a cat, the only other boat in town. Nice people, Lee and Lander, from the Canary islands. We had a great day. We rowed the dinghy across to the small town, took some money from the ATM, had coffee and croissants and pan raisins for breakfast, checked in with the police/immigration, customs and coast guard. Then we walked through the market to see what they have - some nice vegetables. Then we rented bikes and rode down to the south side of the island. Nice ride. We then put the bikes on a dugout pirogue (like a canoe made out of a tree trunk) and went across to the small island at the tip of Isle Saint Marie. We rode around that island. Then took the pirogue back to the main island. We put uncle ben on a tuk tuk with his bike and wally and i rode back to town. We dropped the bikes off and went for dinner at this nice french style restaurant on the beach. We had a dinghy guard, Zunkin, take care of the dinghy all day, so that was nice. Although, after dire warnings about epidemic crime rates, we saw nothing of the sort. Everyone was friendly, appreciating our attempts at French, the language most spoken after Malagasy. We are going to look for a sim card, have croissants and coffee and maybe rent a quad motorbike thing so we can get to the north end of the island. A tough day, but somebody needs to do it!! Weather permitting, we will depart from the anchorage tomorrow morning and make our way up the coast towards the northern most tip, Cap Ambre, alongside the witches cauldron where SV Simanderal sunk last year. Wild man Wally says: Yeeha - let's have at it. Ok, au revoir for now. Next update once we are underway again. Neil, bernie and wallace. - S/V Galatea (Due to limited satellite bandwidth, please delete any previous text in the string or compose a new message when replying) |