News from an atoll in the Indian ocean

As I write to you, dear friends, three sharks are circling around our boat. Frank is out there kayaking and for now, I choose to stay down below, listen to a violin concerto, drink coffee and write. My head has been filled with poetry ever since we got here. Where? Not so sure. Technically, we are at Bassas da India, an atoll in the middle of the Mozambique channel, but truly, with the senses of a simple mortal human being, it feels like another world, in the middle of nowhere. It feels like a place where anything could be possible.

I feel like being in a dream and being given a pen, and told, "now, write something beautiful." I don't even know where to start. My senses are overwhelmed. It feels like touching the bottom of the ocean or reaching the top of the sky, a breathless moment with no more relativity, nothing to measure things against, only our memories and the surrounding objects. We have started taking malaria pills since we'll soon be in Madagascar. I don't think I've had hallucinations yet, as one of the side effects of the pill along with other types of mental disorder, nonetheless, I find it hard to wrap my mind around our current experience. I keep on imagining the planet Earth and seeing us, like a little dot in the big blue somewhere on the southwestern hemisphere, but to be sincere, geography, physics and most hard sciences partially escape me in this situation and somehow I trust more my senses or my imagination that make me think of the starry night as a warm blanket enveloping us and making us feel safe in the darkness and our smallness floating on these waters.

Our time in Durban was well spent. The city has slowly filled up with meaning. It didn't mean anything more than a big South African city, a place we would go to and look forward to receiving mail. I am so glad we made this last stop in Africa and through new friends, my appreciation for and understanding of the continent grew in a way I can hardly describe with words. We saw markets with half-dried bones and skeletons and once used-to-be animals and bark and rocks and exotic flora and fauna we've never encountered before. The people in this market wore white or dark terracotta face paint derived from a wetted soft stone. It all looked magical but smelled quite scary. We did not buy our fruits and vegetables there. We got the chance to have many great conversations with our new friends from this part of the world and gained a more real image of life here, and finally, I think for some moments, we crossed over the borders of being just tourists and we became a little more. After all, we spent over a month in South Africa. My heart is full of unforgettable moments: my first rowing lesson in a double scull in the harbour is one of them as are the many images, sounds and smells now carved into my memory that will always remind me of "Africa in the summer" as a friend of ours said one night with a smile that is impossible to forget. Needless to say, standing in the bow, I cried as we sailed out of Durban, a little like when we left Lunenburg harbour on March 28th. But isn't life about being in the moment?

Still, I just can't forget so many things and here and now, everything is possible. Maybe time travel? Certainly a place from which to reflect, to linger in moments that have moved us, moments that emerge from dreams made in the middle of the ocean. Maybe in five or six days we will be in Nosy Be, an island off the northwestern coast of Madagascar. I am learning Malagasy and can't wait to see the nature there and meet people. I'll be in touch and will write more if I can focus my mind that is now overflowing. I hope these words still make sense to you. This is how I am living this experience. At night I watch the shooting stars.

Location: 21° 31.7 S, 39° 40 E
Monday 12:00, 10.30.2006

Well we moved today, but not far. We are on the other side of the atoll, at 21° 31.7S, 39° 40.0E. When we woke up this morning we found that the wind had picked up to about 15 knots from the NE and was kicking up a bit of a sea and pushing us uncomfortably close to the reef, where the 2-3 meter waves were breaking with much ado.

As seems to happen sometimes, we made a bit of a thrash of it. I always anchor with a float attached to the front of the anchor to mark the anchor's position, and to aid in its retrieval if it gets stuck under coral or whatever. The tide had come in and the anchor buoy was hidden underwater. As the anchor came up, we searched for the buoy. The prop found it first, immobilizing the engine just as we needed it most to avoid going ashore. The anchor, of course, was also immobilized by the retrieval line tightly attached to the prop. Willis immediately jumped in, knife in teeth and cut the line free of the anchor. I rushed up to set the anchor before we went ashore. As I was about to drop it, I notice that Willis was attempting to reboard the Maggie B by climbing the anchor chain. I believe that I said something relatively emphatically impolite, to suggest that he use the midships ladder as I had something else to use the chain for.

We re-anchored promptly and then Willis and I took turns pulling and cutting the turns off the prop, which was accomplished with some difficulty due to Maggie's stern working hard to bash our heads in when we came up for air.

After all that excitement, we had a peaceful motor around the island to rejoin the shark researchers in their catamaran, Aerandir, on the peaceful leeward side of the island. This is a lovely spot with the breeze off the atoll. The anchor is in 35 feet of water and we are only 200 feet of chain away in 70 feet of water. We do have the sound and fury of 3-4 meter Southerly swells lifting us up and breaking on the reef which is only about 500-600 feet away. We are going to stand anchor watches tonight because a wind shift could have us in the surf zone, which would be a bad idea.

Once we set the anchor, I jumped in to check it. I have never jumped out of the water faster as a 10-12 foot White Tip shark cruised by just beneath me. We then had a peaceful lunch (Salad Nicoise) and Hannah decided to go for a swim afterwards. She had a religious experience -- Walking on Water -- as three sharks showed up to check her out (Father, Son and Holy Ghost?). So no more swimming. I then decided to try out the new surf kayak "Strika." I felt perfectly confident. Then I dumped. Then Hannah's sharks came to see what the fuss was about. I got back in, but was pretty shaky, which I'm sure was the Malaria medicine. I decided to paddle over to the other boat, with the three sharks as escort. As I was about half way over I noticed that they were actively chumming their sharks, and it just seemed to be a better idea to go back to the Maggie B and curl up in the cabin with a good book.

Off to Nose Be tomorrow.

All is well.