Location: 25° 23.3 S, 34° 12.9 E
Friday 12:00, 10.27.2006

The Schooner Maggie B’s noon position on 27 October was 25° 23.3S 34° 12.9E. The wind is currently 190 degrees at 10 and we are making boat speed of 6.1 knots and 6.7 knots over the ground with a favorable back current.

Bassas d’India is 383 NM, Nose Be is 1110. We ahve come 1203 since Cape Town. We are about 25 miles off the coast at Xai-Xai, Mozambique.

The wind has been up and down, with small rain squalls marching through. As I write this (1500), we are doing hull speed (10 knots) with a half knot of favorable current. Excellent!

Last night we started out towards Bassas d’India, but got about 35 miles off shore and the wind and waves were making up a bit and a big electrical storm we lighting up the sky to the South, so we did the prudent thing and jibed in towards Inhaca and Maputo. Now we are tracking along at full speed towards Bassas d’India. We round the corner near Inhambane in 70 miles, when we will fully enter the Mozambique Channel.

This unsettled weather apparently is typical of the time between the end of the SE Trades and the start of the NE Trades. We will do our best to exploit every change and then anchor in somewhere if it is too tough.

We are getting ready to start on our malaria meds in preparation for Nose Be. Supposedly they produce strange psychiatric effects in some people. I hope that the crew will not have to tie me to the mast like Odysseus’s crew.

Hannah is making apple crisp for us this afternoon! Yum!! It will more than make up for her spilling powder all over the floor of the bathroom, which tracked up the boat worse that a scene from CSI with ultraviolet light.

All is well.