My catamaran virginity
09 September 2015 | Crater Bay, Madagascar
Bill/ Sunny and hot
It's been a busy last two days. Yesterday was Maria from Night Flys birthday and we planned a get together on board Zephyr. So Tracy spent much of the day baking while I cleaned and picked up around the boat. In the end, we had a total of 10 people sitting in our cockpit. More than we have ever had. It was a great party lasting well into the evening. Everyone brought snack and other dishes of food or deserts so with a glass or two of wine, it all went down easily.
Today, we all loaded onto Steve and Rose Marie's boat Emerald Sea for a scuba diving trip. Tom and Barb off Gosi, Warren and Maria from Night Fly, Arthur from Morning Glory(Amy stayed behind to be teacher to their two kids that just returned from the US), and Tracy and myself. Add in Steve and Rose Marie and it was a packed boat. Well it would have been if it was a monohull but Emerald Sea is a Lagoon 450 catamaran. It was like being of two Zephyrs. Big and roomy and very well built. While it took two hours to get to the dive site, it was a fun time being on someone elses beautiful boat. While I've been on a catamaran or two in our travels, we've never sail on one but more on that later. We left Crater Bay right at 0800 and were on site by 1000. Now getting two people ready to go diving is a chore, just imagine getting 9 people ready. In the end, five went in the first dive while four of us stayed behind for the next trip. Tracy and I were in the second group as were Steve and Rose Marie. Rose Marie decided not to go as she was feeling unwell so there was just the three of us in the second group.
Once the first group was back up, it was already lunch time so when they came back on board, we all had a nice lunch and then we took off on our dive with Tom and Warren escorting us out to help us get in the water and put on all our equipment. Where we were was along a coral wall that goes along a flat bottom at about 70 feet and then drops off into blackness. We stayed right along the top of the "wall" and made our way along it with the dive lasting about 38 minutes. We stopped along the way to the surface to decompress having been at over 70 feet deep for so long. Well, Steve and I did but Tracy couldn't stop her assent. Luckily, she hasn't suffered any problems from coming up with out stopping. We returned to Emerald Sea about 1400 and got underway by 1500. Now as I wrote earlier, we've been on a catamaran or two in our travels but not sailed. Well today, the winds were out of the west so Steve rolled out his Genaker(great big head sail) and his Genoa sail each on different sides of the bow. We had two very big sails pushing Emerald Sea along at a nice 5.5 knot pace dead down wind with the autopilot doing the steering. I was on a "sailing" catamaran. Now if we had done the same thing on Zephyr, we would have rolled back and forth from side to side repeatedly as we came back but with a catamaran and it's two hulls, we glided along nice and quietly on a flat plane. Amazing!!! I can easily understand why catamaran have been taking over as the boat of choice for people to buy. Positives--lots of room and much of the sailing is on the flat instead of on an angle as most monuhulls are. On the negative, well, there are two of everything, especially two engines and transmissions though there can be a plus to that since if one breaks,you have a second. It was a lovely sail back to Crater Bay. When we got back, we found that Gosi's dinghy was missing. We'd tied up our dinghies to a float right beside where Emerald Sea was moored and one was now gone. We heard shouting from shore with a gentleman pointing toward the main dock for the "yacht club". According to the "story", some one had found it floating free of the float and had taken it to the main dock just to keep it safe. They had also taken the gas tank, oars, and shoes from the boat and put them in storage. Every thing was returned to Gosi when they arrived at the dock. As to how the boat had come untied, well we will never know but in the end, everything turned out just fine. Loosing a dinghy out here is worse than loosing your car back home. Cars are much easier to replace than a dinghy is out here.
It was a great day that we will remember for a long time. It's what cruising with friends is all about.