Location: 4° 37.5 S, 55° 27.5 E
Wednesday 12:00, 12.13.2006

The Schooner Maggie B is safely moored in the inner harbor in Port Victoria at 4° 37.5 S 55° 27.5 E. We have borrowed a mooring from a local sport fisherman. It has a good reputation, but I am going to dive on it (at high tide when the wind is blowing away from the fish factory) to make sure of the ropes and the base. We have also hired a local guy to check the boat daily and run the generator from time to time. The winds have finally shifted to the NW and this should be a very protected spot for the three weeks we’ll be away over Christmas and New Years.

La Digue is now our favorite island.

It has a nice protected inner harbor (see the web site for some photos). We were wedged in the first night with seven white plastic catamarans on our port and four on our starboard. Our anchor was out in the middle of the harbor and our stern line tied to a tree. On La Digue one rents bicycles to go anywhere. The beaches are just stunning. Fun surf and great snorkeling. Saturday night at the one bar/disco went on until the wee hours of the morning.

In with a vengence!

On Sunday all the rented catamarans disappeared for whatever was the next stop in the one or two week tours. It was just as well because on Monday morning the NW’erly came in with a vengeance and we dragged all across the harbor. Off at 5 AM with a “Maggie B — All Hands!” routing out the sleepers. At first the dragging was a mystery for we had about seven to one out with 1/2 inch chain on a big plow, but the anchor came up without even a grain of sand on it and we found later that there is only light silt on the bottom that any anchor would just coast through.

Planning and looking ahead

Back in Port Victoria we are going through supplies, planning for what we will need on the trip to Australia this January and doing some of the endless boat tasks such as chipping the hidden rust off the windlass and putting hard plastic protection up to give the fore gaff saddle something to chew on other than our expensive fore mast.

We are looking forward to having Owen Baker join us (Frank, Hannah and Bori) in January for the trip to Australia and beyond. His photo and sailing resume should be up on the web site soon. One of his many accomplishments was designing and building a mechanical amphibious vehicle that looked like an elephant. We just have to get photos.

A sad loss

We all were saddened to hear of the loss of Laura Gainey, a student on board the Picton Castle, a sail training ship home ported in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where the Maggie B was built and launched. It hit Hannah particularly hard as she had also been a student on the Picton Castle. Laura was washed over during a gale near the Gulf Stream when the boat was five days out of Lunenburg for Grenada. She was lost in waters that we passed through last March on our way to Antigua from Lunenburg.

Friends and family that might hear of Laura’s death and worry for our safety should know that while we accept the traditional dangers of the sea, we have a strict rule that our integrated harnesses and lifejackets with strobes are worn at all times on deck at night or in strong weather, and we must be tied into to the ship’s jack lines when out of the cockpit. Laura had neither harness nor lifejacket on when she was washed over, unnoticed, at night.

For Laura, by Emily Dickinson:

Exaltation in the going
Of an inland soul to sea
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep Eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from the land?

All is well.