Before I forget again, I want to give our anchoring position at Alphonse Island. With the different people writing the blog lately, I plum forgot to give it. I did report our position such that it shows in the GoogleEarth map that you can pull up from our blog but I did not give it in the actual blog. We were anchored within the lagoon at 07° 00.85'S:052°43.82'E in 28 feet of water over a sandy bottom.

We weighed anchor this morning around 0930. We wanted to leave during a higher tide and when the sun was high enough in the sky to see the bommies. We left on a +4.8 foot tide that was falling. I am glad we waited a bit for good lighting since we had to move around a few bommies as we made our way across the lagoon to the channel that goes through the reef. We had a 3 knot current pushing us through the channel but made it out just fine. When we get Internet access in Madagascar I will load the various waypoints into this new cruiser's website called Good Anchorages (http://www.goodanchorage.com). It has been created by a friend of ours and it is still in the testing stage but a number of us are loading our various anchorage positions and information into it and I believe anyone can now sign up for it. It is free and is a very powerful tool for cruisers. It now has anchorage information for places all around the world and is growing every day.

Once we were outside the reefs that surround the atoll we were greeted by a whale. Steve was first to spy it waterspout and soon we were all seeing it. It only was near the surface for a short time but we were heartened by that good luck sighting.

The wind blew all day between 15 and 25 knots with most of the time being in the 16 to 18 knot range. Since we are only going about 350 nm and we wish to arrive at Cosmoledo Atoll around 1000 on the 31st, we are trying hard to keep our speed to around 7.5 knots. We are sailing with a reef in the main and when our speeds jump above 8.5 knots we throw in another reef in the head sail. So far that strategy is working because after 10 hours of sailing, we are averaging 7.4 knots.

The winds have been favorable coming from the ESE (about 120 degrees T) so the apparent wind is just off our beam. I had been worried that it would be more southerly which would bring the apparent wind forward toward our bow making it a more uncomfortable sail. However, that has not happened so far and I have my fingers crossed that it holds. The Indian Ocean seas have been their typical bouncy selves with swells coming from the SE and the S with heights up to 3 to 3.5 meters. However, the ride has not been too bad: certainly much nicer that what I had expected. Apparently sitting out yesterday at Alphones was a good thing to do as the front that passed over us yesterday is gone and we have had sunny skies, reasonable seas and nice winds.

We fished today but did not have any luck. We hope for better things tomorrow. With no fish for dinner, Mary Margaret made pasta with her killer spaghetti sauce for dinner, which we all slurped down with big smiles on our faces.

As of 1920 our position is 07 33.29'S:051 42.24'E, our course is 242 degrees T, our speed is 7.2 knots, the winds are 16 knots for the ESE and the seas are 2 to 3 meters from the SE and S. We have made 74 nm and have 277 nm to go. Our average speed has been 7.4 knots.