Hi all,

We arrived in Inhambane, Mozambique at 4.30pm yesterday, Monday 26th. This technically completed Galatea's second, out of three, major ocean crossings since departing from San Francisco in April 2011. Although, in my mind, the Indian crossing will not be completed until we arrive in Cape Town later in December. This year, to date, we have completed about 6500 miles since departing Phuket back in March.

Still, it was a meaningful occasion and we broke out a few beers and wine to celebrate. 

We had to arrive at the shallow sand bar to the entrance to the passage through numerous shallow patch shoals by 2.30pm, to catch high tide. We pretty much hit that bang on, and then had the benefit of another hour or so of rising tide as we made our way to Inhambane, 10 miles or so inwards from the sandbar. The current rushes in and out past Inhambane, so Galatea swings a hard 180 degrees at anchor every 6 hours. Well, definitely on the ebb, but only maybe half that in the flood due to the strong southerly wind blowing in the direction of the ebb and against the flood.

That southerly blow is the whole reason that we are in Inhambane. Half way across the channel from Madagascar to Mozambique we got word from our weather and routing gurus, Commander's Weather (based in Boston, USA), that strong southerly winds were expected today and tomorrow along the South African coastline, up into the Mozambique channel. It is those southerlies, blowing against the south setting Aghullas current flowing down the east coast of Africa, that make for treacherous seas off that coast. So, we are sitting out the blow here in Inhambane, one of the few safe anchorages available along the Mozambique coast.

The timing of our departure from Inhambane for the final 390-odd miles down to Richard's Bay will be based on the next forecast switch from southerlies to more favorable easterly/ north easterly winds. This will possibly happen as early as Thursday, but we are still uncertain as to the length of the window before the winds shift back to the south again.

After much needed shaves, showers etc this morning, we were invaded by an 8 person boarding party of customs, immigration, health and harbor master officials. What took 2 guys (well technically one for the second was a trainee), in Reunion 15 minutes to accomplish, free of charge, became an all day run around dealing with a completely incompetent bunch of individuals and shelling out hundreds of dollars for visas, this fee and that fee. I suppose that is our "Welcome to Africa" experience. It seemed like the only reason that bunch came out to the boat was to be able to visit and look around a nice boat and then sit jabbering away in the cockpit with one another while I tried to explain where it was we had come from (Madagascar) and were going to (Richards Bay, just 400 miles away) by reference to paper charts and books. It is not a bad place, but it certainly ain't Reunion!! There are several old Portuguese colonial buildings still in pretty good shape, for example, the court house, built in 1802, and still in use today. The dusty old records room in the maritime police office looked like it had not been touched since the Portuguese departure back in 1994.

So, Wally and Neil had a nice lunch, bought some beers and made our way back to the boat, courtesy of the pricey "water taxi", where Ben had spent the day on anchor watch.

So, i am sure tomorrow will bring more of the same, including southerly winds, but we will enjoy our time here, in the gale!!

That's it for now. We will update you as to weather and departure developments in a day or so.

Neil, ben and wally

- S/V Galatea