Passage To South Africa

Our last days in Madagascar were filled with whales. Humpbacks breaching in the Sakatia anchorage, swimming around and underneath our dinghy in Mamoko, and doing backflips as we passed them underway to Antanimora.

And there were the last meandering walks along the streets of Hell-Ville.

Now armed with a few conversational Malagasy phrases and a comfortable familiarity with the streets, I found people to be far more approachable than when I first arrived, feeling lost and babbling in broken French.

Whenever I would greet people with a ‘mbola tsara’ (hello) or respond to their ‘inona vaovao’ (what’s news) with ‘tsy vaovoa’ (no news), they would smile widely, laugh with delight and try to teach me more phrases.

I felt very welcome in Nosy Be. It had become ‘home’ over our four months stay and I was not ready to leave. But the time had come to say so long to our caretakers, the trusted ‘boat-boys’ Jimmy and Kool at the town pier and to our new friends Marcelo and Brooke at their recently christened Tamana Hostel …

…and bid farewell to our ‘old friends’ Stefano and Andrea in Antintorona, and to the Mpanjaka and all the villagers of Nosy Mamoko.

We lifted anchor and started making way south along Madagascar’s west coast with plans to sail across the Mozambique Channel to Bazaruto and onward to South Africa.

Along our way, we called in at Moromba Bay where a dense variety of baobabs seemed to dance upon platforms of karst limestone.

On our first peaceful morning in this anchorage, I learned from one of my favorite street photographers, Eric Davidove, that my image, Fresh Coat, had been selected by juror Krista Rossow for PhotoPlace Gallery’s ‘Travel: Places and Faces’ exhibit; the icing on the cake to a perfect day.

When we sailed onward to the major seaport of Mahajunga to exit Madagascar, I felt as if we’d traveled to another country. The population seemed poorer than the residents of the Nosy Be area. There were no zebus in sight with goods often being transported by barefoot man-powered ‘Pousse-Pousse’ running along unpaved roads.

Many colorful rickshaws equipped to carry passengers stood empty as the yellow auto-Pousse-Pousse (Tuk-Tuk) had replaced them as the favored mode of transportation.

What left the greatest impression on me was the red-river delta at Bombetoka Bay. Sitting at the mouth of the sediment-filled Betsiboka River, the blood-red colored water ‘results from deforestation causing significant land erosion, a phenomenon that can be seen from space’ [1].

I wanted to linger longer, but expiring visas and distant shores beckoned us to sail to Baie de Baly where we would wait for an optimal window to cross the Mozambique Channel; a notoriously treacherous body of water in bad weather.

And wait we did first with two boats, then five boats, then eleven with more arriving.

After eight very long days, our local weather guru Des Cason gave us the thumbs up and we were finally on our way. The wait was well worth it as we enjoyed a very comfortable five-day passage to Bazaruto in calm seas.

And here we would wait for an even longer time with an ever-growing number of boats for the next window to carry us to the eastern shores of South Africa.

But Bazaruto is a beautiful place to wait with its white sandy beaches, sprawling dunes, clear waters, and charming locals; a great place to hang out and to CELEBRATE.

People often say to me ‘oh you are so lucky to live the life you do’. And I am. But I also know that anyone from the first world can make the same ‘luck’ that I have if they are truly compelled to be out here.

And then there is our friend Dustin Reynolds, the poster child for ‘dream it, do it and don’t let anything stand in your way’.

On October 18, 2008, Dustin was in a head-on collision with an underinsured drunk driver. The collision tore Dustin’s “left arm clean off, flinging it nearly 50 feet from the site of the crash. His left foot was so badly damaged, it, too, was eventually amputated” [2]. The accident also punctured his spleen, broke four ribs and his scapula, and forced his stomach through his diaphragm into his chest cavity. He had vomited into his lungs and aspirated.

On the side the road after the collision, Dustin hesitated before dialing 911, realizing that his life was changed forever, and questioning whether he wanted to continue it. After minutes that passed like lifetimes, he made the call. At the hospital, the doctors didn’t hold out much hope and offered Dustin a choice to spend his last hours saying goodbye to friends and family or enter surgery with a very low chance of survival.

Dustin chose surgery and on that day started a journey along a different path that brought him from Hawaii, across two oceans and into our lives, where he is a constant source of amazement, amusement, and friendship. When he set out on his journey, Dustin didn’t know how to sail, didn’t have any money, and didn’t have a left arm or left leg below the knee. But he had a $12,000 ‘seen better days’ sailboat and a dream to circumnavigate the world; a dream that carried him to Bazaruto by the 10^th anniversary of this life-changing moment.

On October 18, 2018 (Aleutian Standard Time), the crews of some fifteen-odd boats in the anchorage gathered to celebrate Dustin’s choice to live, a decision that transformed him into our captain of misadventure on track to become the first double amputee to circumnavigate the globe solo.

You can read more about Dustin’s escapades here and join us in sponsoring Dustin via Patreon here or GoFundMe here.

On 24 October 2018, the crew of Amandla set out from Bazaruto with a flotilla of twenty-four boats; weather delays having spontaneously formed a rally fleet. We arrived in Durban on 28 October, completing our third ocean transit ‘with ease’ …at least that is how it seems in hindsight. After sailing over 7600 nautical miles this season, we are now enjoying a bit of land travel in KwaZulu-Natal before we carry onward along Africa’s southern coast with plans to round the Cape of Good Hope and return back to the Atlantic by year-end.

See you on the other side of the Cape.