Monday 4th July 2011

I woke up with people moving around the lodge at about 4am. The night at Archipelagos lodge in Vilancoulos had been very comfortable, and I had fallen right asleep as my head hit the pillow. George had cooked some very tasty rump sosaties on the braai, and we organised salad, chips and garlic rolls from the restaurant at the resort for dinner – I especially enjoyed the meat as we imagined we’d be eating a heck of a lot of fish on the boat (read “especially enjoyed” as “climbed right in and took no prisoners.”)  Anyway, I got up at four, had a quick shower, and closed up the bag with my clothes for the boat – leaving a black bag of dirty clothes in Wimpie’s car. We set off on the 15 minute drive through the maze of largely deserted dirt roads towards Smugglers Cove where we would be leaving the vehicles and be picked up on the beach by rubber duck to the Pelagic II our home for the next week and a bit.

It was still pitch black when we shook hands with Brent or ‘Skip’ – the skipper of the 34 foot yacht (about 10 meters) that would be taking us to Bassas da India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassas_da_India about 500 km out north eastwards into the Mozambican channel, roughly half way to Madagascar. The eight of us climbed into the rubber duck with our small clothes bags and were ferried across the 50 or so metres by Brent to the waiting yacht anchored in a calm bay, awaiting our arrival.

Our first sight of the Pelagic II. Smaller than expected...

 

The rubber duck took us the 50m to the Yacht

We had been aboard the afternoon before for a quick tour while we offloaded our piles of scuba gear, photographic and electronic equipment, provisions, booze and other necessities.

It took 3 loads to get our gear on board

Brent, his deckhand Miguel and a couple of local youths they’d roped in to help had taken three trips on an overloaded dingy to get our considerable luggage across to the boat.

We’d watched anxiously as bags containing cameras and laptops balanced precariously as the dingy made its way uncertainly to the yacht. Everything had made it safely across though, and the quick look around the vessel had been quite an eye-opener.

The yacht was an Island Spirit 401 custom twin hull catamaran. We boarded from the rear deck, which was almost flush with the water.

A few steps up and towards the bow and we get to the main outside area – with bench seats, an outside table and the cockpit with GPS and autopilot.

 Around the sides of the boat from here you can move to the front of the boat – with lots of uncovered space and one of those elasticated nets at the front between the two pontoons of the cat.

The mast is fixed in front here, as well as the various ropes and winches and the main sail for use when the winds are blowing in the right direction to assist the twin diesel engines that usually drive the boat.

From the centre of the same outside area, you step down into the galley and saloon area - an open plan kitchen and dining room.

 From the left and right of the saloon you step down into the cabin areas – 2 double cabins on each side, and a single loo and shower on the left, plus a single bed for the skipper on the right.

The cabin hole

“Cabin” is a generous word for the double mattress in a hole that was our sleeping accommodation for the trip.

Miguel had the kettle on when we arrived on board just after 5am and over hot sweet coffee, Brent gave us the safety briefing – where to find the various emergency gear, and what to do and what not do. 

The first task before setting off was to winch the rubber duck and its motor up onto the roof of the yacht for journey to Bassas da India, easy when you have the right winches and ropes. When the dingy and motor were up, Miguel securely lashed them down as well as our dive bags while Brent set the yacht’s GPS-guided autopilot on a course to get us through the Bazaruto Archipelago reef and island system and out into the channel towards Madagascar. The weather was fine and the water was calm, and there was much excitement, camaraderie and photo taking as we set out on our voyage.

A pod of three or four dolphins swam with as at our bow for a few minutes as if to wish us well on our way. Miguel whipped us up a breakfast of fresh Potuguese rolls, sliced tomato and lettuce and chopped bacon with mini chippolata sausages. Yum – perhaps it wouldn’t be all fish after all, I thought as I buttered my second roll. The trip to open ocean took about 3 hours, and cellphone reception lasted until after 7am. Conditions were calm, but Brent had warned us that bad weather was forecast for Monday and I took a motion sickness tab as a precaution. By the time the Stugeron-induced  drowsiness kicked in, we were just passing between the islands of Bazaruto and Benguerra, so I decided to have a morning nap and catch up on my too-few hours of sleep from the night before.

I woke up with water slowly dripping on me from the hatch in our cabin. The boat was listing and swaying as it crashed through the huge swells that George later told me he thought were as big as 5m. The bed was comfortable, but the slow drip-dripping of water through the hatch was not conducive to sleep, so I decided to alert Miguel to the problem. The real problem it seemed was that the waves were crashing right over the front of the boat – and the sheer volume of water from the waves breaking over the yacht was causing the dripping – the hatch was as sealed as it would be during that weather. Walking around the boat was a challenge as it went through the ocean like a toy boat in a giant washing-machine, causing me to stumble in a drunken manner and to hold on to something for every step. After a minute or two out of my little cabin hole, I started feeling quite green in the gills – and following Brent’s advice (that in these conditions, many people simply pop another Stugeron and sleep out the bad weather) I returned to the cabin. Although the cabin felt like a 24-hour long roller-coaster ride, it was comfortable on the body and the only place I could be for longer than a few minutes without feeling completely overwhelmed by the unrelenting nausea. I found that a towel over me was enough to remove the irritation of the occasional little drip from the hatch – now a tiny inconvenience in comparison to the nausea. At lunchtime I popped my second motion sickness pill while the aroma of a great smelling pasta lunch being prepared wafted through, but couldn’t imagine moving anywhere out of the hole, let alone eating. I drowsed through that whole day, sleeping on and off and postponing draining my bladder for way too long. A simple trip to “the heads” was a dreadful thought as it involved getting vertical which induced waves of nausea. Reading or any activity that involved anything other than keeping my eyes shut and breathing was impossible without more nausea, so thoughts merged with dreams as I drifted in and out of shallow sleep, with always the unending churning of the boat, and the crashing sound of the twin hulls smashing through the waves. As I lay there I thought of my wife, and how she suffers from sea-sickness at almost the sight of a boat, and understood for the first time just how lousy it can be.

I woke again around 7 with the fragrant smell of Thai cooking, and decided that I had to eat, even if only to give my stomach a break from digesting pure Stugeron. Only Eileen, Phil and Ali were up with Brent who had conjured up a feast of Thai curried Dorado while on board the aqua roller coaster – freshly caught by Phil that afternoon (Phil seemed the least effected by sea-sickness of all of us, if not completely unaffected). The curry was delicious, and although I managed fifteen minutes of non-horizontalness, I soon needed to return to my cabin hole without cleaning my bowl of what under normal circumstances would have been a ‘three-helping-grade’ meal for me.

Phil and his Dorado

I was certainly hoping for good calm weather so that I could sleep in the fresh air on the open deck, but as I was soon to discover, my sleeping hole that I was to share with Wimpie would bring much comfort later that day.