We tossed off the mooring lines at Crater Bay this morning around 0900. The winds were very light, which is typical for the early parts of the morning here. The winds are dominated by land and sea breezes so close to the island of Madagascar. A land breeze is a wind that blows from the land out to the sea while a sea breeze is just the opposite. They are a daily response to the preferential heating and cooling of the land. The water temperature stays about the same while the land heats up during the day and cools off at night. When the land heats up, the air rises over the land and the air over the ocean gets sucked into replace it. Thus, in the later part of the morning and especially in the afternoon, the sea breeze kicks in. As the land cools at night, the air over the land cools while the air over the warmer water now rises and the air from the land gets sucked out to sea forming the land breeze. I mention this only because at this time of year, especially along the western side of Madagascar, the land and sea breezes are what we will be sailing to as we make our way down the coast. We have found the land breeze to be very weak while the sea breeze kicks up more as the day wears on and the land gets hotter.

We left Crater Bay with only 5 knots of wind and it started out just off our starboard bow so we motored for the first hour. However, Mary Margaret noticed that it was shifting a bit and slowly building so when it hit 7 knots and was 30 degrees off our bow we unfurled the head sail and motor sailed. It increased our speed about a knot.

It took us 3 hours before we were inside Russian Bay and it was noon when we anchored. It is simply lovely here. While one other boat is anchored here, and there is a small village on shore here it really feels like we have the whole place to ourselves. The vista is one of hills and mountains, all covered in green vegetation. There are only a few small fishing villages around this nice large bay and when it got dark, we could only see three small points of light marking where oil lamps were lit in someone’s thatched roof hut, miles away.

After lunch and a game of cards, we spent an hour cleaning the hulls. They were especially dirty after spending almost three weeks sitting in Crater Bay. I cannot remember the last time we cleaned the hulls but they sure needed it. Tomorrow, after we get to our next anchorage, I will take the hookah out so I can clean the keels. I was just too tired to do that today.

We wish we could spend more time here and explore a bit but it looks like a weather window may be opening up starting October 3rd. I am anxious to get a bit more south before we start our run across the Mozambique Channel so we will press on tomorrow. Our next anchor is only 20 miles down the coast so I should have time to finish cleaning the hulls.

We anchored here in Russian Bay in sand mixed with weeds in 44 feet of water, our position is 13 32.146’S: 47 49.893’E.