Year 7 Day 291 Castela Del Mar
19 October 2014 | At Linga Linga, Near Inhambane, Mozambique
Dave/Sunny and Breezy
Michael and Cornella of S/V Grommet came by today to discussed some ideas they had. They suggested that tomorrow we all dinghy up river about 4 miles to a small village to explore a bit and see if we can buy some fresh vegetable. They had gone over to the little resort near us, Castela Del Mar, and talked with the caretaker and he told them about the village. The caretaker also said that if enough of us came in, he would open up the kitchen and we could all have either lunch for $7 US a person or dinner at $15 a person. Both exploring the village and lunch sounded like wonderful things to do so we quickly told them to count us in.
Later I talked with David of S/V Rhythm about all this and discovered that he and Peggy loved the ideas also. In fact, with the Sim card he had bought while up at Ilha Bazarut he had just called the caretaker and he was willing to open the bar for us this afternoon. Thus, we agreed that we would go in around 1630 for a beer. After being cooped up on the boat for a week, sitting these storms out, I was ready for a beer on shore.
Mary Margaret invited Peggy to come over while we boys were having our beer so around 1600 Peggy paddled her kayak over. This was no small feat since the winds had really piped up again and were now blowing 25 knots after a day of blowing just 15 to 20 knots. The winds were still coming up from the south and look to be doing this for the next few days, trapping us in this anchorage.
I picked David up at 1630 and together we slowly made our way down river to the resort. The tide was running out at 3 knots and the wind was blowing against the tide at 25 knots making large, steep swells that broke every now and again. To avoid these nasty swells, we hugged the shoreline most of the way. We finally arrived at the beach in front of the resort and with the dinghy wheels in place, ran the dinghy up onto the beach and then hauled it up a short distance. With the tide still falling, I did not have to worry about the tide sweeping the dinghy away.
The two fellows manning the bar greeted us and immediately took us to their cooler where the ice cold beers were waiting for us. In no time we were slurping this golden nectar down with big grins on our faces. Ahhh, it was good!
Shortly thereafter the rest of the fleet came in and the bottle tops were flying off the bottles. Everyone was so happy to be off their respective boats after being cooped up for so long.
I talked a bit with the two young men manning the bar, Louis and Manuel. They said that every now and again they get a group in for a few days. They actually just had a group of 17 people from Belgium here a few days ago. While their busy months are December, April and July, they get small groups in throughout the year. When they do, they open everything up, when no one is there, they close down. Since we wanted to come in for beers and in a couple of days for lunch, they would open up for us.
After the sun set I told David that I wanted to head back before it got dark. I did not wish to navigate through the swells and over the sand bars in the dark. He agreed and off we went. This time we rode the backs of the swells returning to our boat. It was a much drier ride than coming into shore.
We all had a great time and tomorrow looks like it could be even more fun!