Articles

Five years ago, a teenage girl died in the small Malagasy village of Antanambe. She was buried, as is her family custom, with all of her relatives, in a small plot cleared from the rain-forest in Verezanantsoro National Park. Here she awaits the decay of her corporeal form, so that she may finally join the spirit world. In the meantime though, she becomes lonely. The song and dance, the strong tradition of love and support that her village offered in life, is absent in death. ...

Cruising is a social experience. We hang out with our sailing friends almost every day out here, sometimes it’s for an hour at sunset, or a beach bonfire or potluck, and occasionally—if we get lucky—we strike up a friendship with a local, and get to see a different perspective on our current locale. This past week has been bomber. We had a birthday bash on Wunjo for Jean-Michel, an authentic Swiss Fondue with our good friends on Mares, and topped it off with an amazing BBQ with our new friends Herman and Jane. ...

We have been here, in Mauritius, for a few weeks and haven’t really ventured out of the incredibly comfortable anchorage of Grande Baie. We see the impressive spires, off in the distance and remark that we should probably go check those out before we leave. On Friday night we ran into Herman again, and she invited us to join a group of her friends for a hike up Le Morne Brabant. We couldn’t turn down such a great offer, even when it came with a 5am wake up call. ...

Alicia, from the boat On Verra, has been organizing hikes for the cruisers nearly every day that we’ve been here. It’s one of the best cruiser services I’ve ever experienced because it helps us to see the natural beauty of the island, and gives us a much needed endorphin hit and kick in the pants to get moving in the morning. Today she took us by bus to the trail-head at St Gabriel crossing. From there we walked past the largest church in the Indian Ocean (also conveniently, the pit stop). The trail started just below the church and wound through lush forest, rock strewn pasture, and down a long slope with a stunning view of the lagoon and sea beyond. ...

A few days ago I was told that my dorades were dusty. The next day another person mentioned how dirty my decks were. And yet another person asked me why I had so much crap in my cockpit. All of these criticisms hit me deeply and personally and brought back every single boat insult ever slung my way. I emotionally fled to a perfectly polished tiny cottage where I could live alone in shiny silence with a hand blown glass vase full of pink peonies on the table and not a single crumb on the floor. ...

There are places in the world that feel like home from the outset. These are the places where you feel yourself exhaling in long comforting sighs; where you recognize people whom you’ve never met, and they greet you as friend; where there is a familiar smell (chill in this case) to the air, and a landscape that seems ancestral, though your predecessors may never have come within 10,000 miles of the place. ...

Imagine you are sitting down, enjoying dinner. It’s Taco Tuesday® (but on Thursday, because you have no sense of time). Suddenly the salsa jar becomes a projectile, it jumps straight up, then banks hard to the left and hurls itself at you, missing by inches. The jar (which you forgot to put the lid on between scoops) explodes, covering your last clean shirt in a delicious yet inevitably perishable blaze. You sigh. ...

There are places that you hear about from other cruisers, special places. Perhaps the first time will be over sundowners in someone’s cockpit, and then again online, or through the coconut telegraph. After a while, a few of these places rise to the top, they become legendary. We have had the incredible good fortune of having visited many of them, but this one, we almost missed. We had originally planned to take the North Indian Ocean route, which would have shown us Sri Lanka, Maldives, Chagos (another storied cruiser destination) and possibly Seychelles. The wind died early for that route, this year, and we missed our chance. Then we decided to go from Padang, Sumatra, directly to Madagascar, but the winds weren’t really blowing that way and we didn’t have the fuel to motor to the wind. So we lucked out. ...

We have an odd tradition on Convivia. I would like to believe that it was modeled after a trait I picked up in my wilderness canoeing days, but really , it is probably more just good fortune. We tend to set a day for departure, work our butts off to make that schedule, and then we realize that we have no real imperative to leave. So we postpone a day. This day, is a special kind of day because unlike other chilled out days, we really didn’t expect it (even after many many iterations). So we end up swimming around the boat (because Fatty is often either on deck or hipped and ready) eating popcorn, and generally being a family of extreme leisure. This photo pretty well captures that spirit.

Back when I was a dirt dweller, I used to buy coffee beans from this little warehouse in Oakland. The company, Sweet Maria’s, was owned and operated by a guy who personally flew around the world, visiting plantations, sampling coffee beans at the source, and then buying small batches from the best of them. I have wanted his job ever since. When I imagined this sailing adventure, I pictured myself, sailing through the world’s finest coffee growing regions, making dozens (if not hundreds) of forays into the mountains to restock my ever dwindling supplies of green beans. As the journey wore on, it became apparent to me that this dream was (perhaps) a bit unrealistic. The resources and local knowledge needed to find and visit the farms change with every locale, and the time and money needed to make the trips is not insignificant on our modest budget. ...

Today we joined No Regrets, for a trip into town for fuel, groceries and a visit to a traditional, mountain top village. When we arrived a local kid came up and offered to do a high jump demonstration. In this village, young men must jump over this stone structure in order to win the right to marry (I guess they were breeding for height). The jump was over so quickly that I am really glad I recorded it. You can enjoy it below the photos. ...

Our last anchorage was so beautiful and relaxing that we didn’t want to leave. The thunder and lightning almost gave us the excuse we were looking for but, time and international clearance rules wait for no one. On to Nias and Telo for the last (fun) bits of our Southeast Asia adventure!