Location: 4° 37.5 S, 55 ° 27.5 E
Sunday 12:00, 12.03.2006

The Schooner Maggie B is back safely moored in the inner harbor in Port Victoria, Mahe, the Seychelles at 4° 37.5 S 55° 27.5 E. We are sitting on a mooring which apparently belongs to a big fish game boat, which usually sits in at the commercial dock. How long we can use it is up for question. Possibly a few hundred Seychelles Rupees will solve the question.

One piece of exciting news is apparently there is an article in this month’s “Cruising World.” I haven’t seen it, but then there aren’t any magazines less than three months old in the Seychelles. Will advise as I hear more.

We have spent the last few days on the relatively unfun but necessary process of going through all our stores. Food and boat supplies. How much rice, how many water filters. All to get better prepared for the long leg to Australia.

Go get’em Nigel!

We are blessed with having people supporting the Maggie B all over the planet. This week Nigel Irens is fighting for us. Literally. He is in Paris at the Paris Boat Show, and certainly is cutting a heroic figure with his Royal Appointment and marvelously successful designs. But he is also taking our fight with Lewmar and Profurl to their home court. He has promised to burn his program (programs?) outside their booths in protest for the terrible designs that have caused the failure of four Lewmar blocks on the Maggie B and the endless spitting out of grub screws from the Profurl. I’m sure that both organizations will apologize profusely and show off more expensive new designs which will solve all our problems for only a few dozen extra thousand dollars, payable in advance. You go get ‘em, Nigel!

There are two fascinating Seychelloise specialities. Uniforms and horribly dangerous roads. Uniforms are universal. Every school, not just the Catholic ones, has their uniform and as the schools let out, different patterns sweep by, probably like the Montagues and Capulets in Shakespeare’s play. But it doesn’t stop there. Every woman clerk, assistant or secretary dresses rigorously like her colleagues. All rather like coveys of airline stewardesses. The same is true of the men in boat yards or automobile parts stores. It is all a great leveler, but seeing a cop or soldier is unremarkable because the hotel doorman has a more precise uniform than a Colonel of the Marines.

The roads are worth a whole letter by themselves. The essential scary part is not that they are in bad shape, quite the opposite — most all are well paved and clear. The scary part is that because it rains hard from time to time, they have deep ditches at the edges. Like four feet deep in many places, a foot or two wide, and right at the edge of the road. Besides making for a perfect way to break an axle immediately, it also causes dogs, cats and people to walk in the relatively narrow paved part due to lack of sidewalks. At the same time, whoever purchased the busses somehow thought that they were in Texas and got the Whopper Size. The bus drivers appear to have gotten exemption from Parliament from following the lanes. And many of the streets were designed with whip lash curves, in the middle of which one finds a car or bus stopped to chat with a pal. Did I mention that as a benefit of English Colonialism, that they drive on the left?

Today, Sunday, was a wonderful day. Our morning was uplifted by a 500 person Christian Evangelical meeting in the park 100 feet from the boat. The service started at 8 AM and really was going full blast when we left the anchorage at 11 AM. Bori, our Recruiting Officer, had made pals with some of the young people in the French Embassy and the Alliance Franciase. We put on a Sunday Picnic and gathered a crew. We were 14, which is perhaps a new record for the Maggie B.

We motored (no wind at all) about two hours around the North End of the Mahe, to a wild cove called Anse Jasmin. We all swam ashore to a wonderful wild beach where a Schellois pal climbed a coconut tree and threw down a dozen coconuts, which we then drank and ate. Then more swimming and a lovely “catch as catch can” salad lunch and some sunning and more swimming and then motoring back as the moon came up. It was a lovely day. The Maggie B may be the perfect Blue Water fast cruiser, but today she was an excellent picnic boat.

We are preparing to get hauled on Thursday.

All is well.