POSITION REPORT ON FRIDAY 13 OCTOBER 2017

The Alba Chronicles
Neville Howarth
Fri 13 Oct 2017 08:45

POSITION REPORT ON FRIDAY 13 OCTOBER 2017 AT 0700

 

21:51S 035:24E

 

We’re anchored in Bazaruto, Mozambique, waiting for a weather window to head south towards Richards Bay, which is still 500 miles away.  Here's what we did yesterday.

 

12 October 2017   Bazaruto North to Benguerra, Mozambique

We had blue skies at dawn with a light South 5 knot wind - a beautiful day.  It was Graham’s 70th birthday, so Karen arranged a tea party on “Red Herring” in the morning, which was fun

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At midday, our fleet of 5 boats set off for Benguerra, 15 miles south.  The route was a little torturous passing through a shallow area, where we did a dog-leg west, but the minimum depth that we saw was 4.5m at low tide (3.2m LAT).   (Our waypoints were:  21°42.96S 035°25.02E;  21°44.78S 035°23.33E; 21°45.46S 035°23.28E; 21°46.73S 035°23.12E; 21°46.49S 035°22.19E; 21°47.07S 035°21.83E; 21°51.20S 035°23.75E)

 

The entrance into the anchorage was very shallow.  There’s a 0.4 mile long channel leading to a deeper “pool”, which went down to 2.4m (1.0m LAT) at one spot.  “Red Herring” and “Luna Blu” anchored in the 7m deep pool, which is ¾ mile from the shore and exposed to the south, so we went further to see if there was somewhere closer to shore to anchor.  Unfortunately the depth dropped to 2.1m (0.7m LAT), so we turned around and anchored back with the rest of the fleet.  We slowly dragged (on weed?) a couple of times before settling at 21°51.29S 035°24.42E in 8 metres of water.

 

It’s not a very good place to be.  We’re ¾ mile from land and exposed to SSE winds; the “pool” that we’re in is only 200m wide and surrounded by very shallow water.  I’m not a happy bear.  If the wind picks up from the south tonight, then it will be very, very unpleasant.  The plan is to go to another anchorage tomorrow morning.  High tide is at 09:00, so we’re planning to weave our way through the sand bars starting at 07:00.

 

As it was Graham’s birthday, we all piled into dinghies and went ashore hoping to be able to buy a beer or even have a meal at the holiday lodge ashore.  It was actually an up-market resort catering to honeymooners, so we weren’t allowed to buy anything.  After a short walk on the beach, we retired back to “Red Herring” for a rum or three.