Monday 19 November 2018

The place is filling up. Four more boats have straggled in. You find a nice, quite neighborhood and then the riff-raff move in - cruising trash. What's a respectable couple to do? Lucky for them they're somewhere else. As soon as we all recover from crossing over to Africa it's party time.

Spent much of day attempting to sort three shipments, delivery of which is made difficult by various rules, regulations and laws that are sometimes, but not always, promulgated to squeeze as much money as possible out of anybody who can't get around them. Sometimes it's just caused by the cancerous encroachment of mindless bureaucracy or the entropic lethargy of civil "servants". Was that a little harsh? Guess so as most people apparently don't care very much or at least enough.

Colin in Cape Town whose ham station we're using had a wonderful description of trying to get the 35% duty and VAT back when leaving S. Africa.

"In theory you can claim it all back when you leave the country and seeing as you are such good divers may actually be able to hold your breath long enough, but don't count on it. We have the Eish factor here (pronounces like maybe ash with a long "a" sound and a "I" added after the aaaa .....to make aaaaiish with a definitive head shake at the same time to indicate a large, unsolvable problem) for use in circumstances like when you submit a claim that means they need to actually work and not just be present in body."

Tuesday

A bit early for the SSB, so haven't gotten latest GRIB (Guessing Really Is Bogus), but appears possible to depart around 1200 tomorrow to clear south pass an hour before high tide at 1501 and continue out and on to Richard's Bay for arrival Saturday night. This is another example of our tendency to make landfalls in the dark - have to work on that. Also shows a regrettable penchant to cherish hope over experience.

Four more boats came in who probably had a smoother arrival than us as wind was much lighter and at a better angle. They were out for nearly a day and a half longer, however, while we were abusing South African grape juice two nights running.

Well into morning before acquiring weather and enough perkiness for lowering dink from davits to go visiting and exploring. Wind had picked up from the north giving several miles of fetch from a minimally helpful reef at the entrance. With Jan and Patricia from Liberte we had to dinghy quite a way downwind from their boat to get around a sandspit for enough protection to land. Trip back was slow and wet. Libertes have invited us for pizza at 1700. They anchored a considerable distance downwind of us. Trip back will be slow and wet.

Bazaruto is an 18 mile sand dune with some scrub bushes and vines barely eking out a living. There are a few friendly people scattered about including a number of kids (many of whom speak English and have a handshake that took me a few times to figure out - shake, hook and grasp base of thumb then slide your thumb off theirs like a high five with one), some rough huts (also scattered about) and a store (apparently made from flotsam that washed up), which had a few cans of pop, gin in cardboard cartons and not much else. Welcome to Mozambique.

Jack