Jocara Newsletter
Dec 20, 2004

Plans and schedules are always changing when living the cruising life. We 
never made it to Geyser Reef where we planned to stop on the way to 
Mayotte. Not even close!  When we set off from Madagascar there was so 
little wind, and that on the nose, with a counter-current thrown in for 
good measure that all we could do was head in the wrong direction. At one 
point we struggled all day, only to recede from our target by 1 n.m.  
These days were not without their excitement; we caught a big bull Mahi 
Mahi (1.4m long and maybe 14 kg) - the largest Dorado we've ever landed.  
Still, we were starting to wonder how we were going to make it to Mayotte 
without wind and with only our last dregs of diesel when suddenly a good 
breeze picked up one night and brought us within sight of land early on 
11th December. We ended up sailing in right through the reef pass and 
threading our way up the lagoon almost to our destination at Dzaoudzi.  
Mayotte is a beautiful green volcanic island surrounded by a reef and 
inner lagoon. It's administered by the French, so we pay for our baguettes 
with Euros - lots of them.  This is not a cheap place to buy things! As 
always we have an enormous list of things to repair and are once again 
waiting for a package with equipment and spares from the US. John spent 
days working on the outboard (to little effect...) and Caroline washed a 
mountain of dirty laundry whilst the kids had some fun playing in the 
water by the little yacht club with a new-found friend. After a week of 
chores we are now taking a few days to explore the island. We visited a 
refuge for lemurs and finally met these cute orange-eyed, long-tailed 
creatures. Whilst still being wild and independent they are also used to 
people and came to sit on Casper and Alex's shoulder to be fed bananas. We 
are now in a marine park, tied up to a mooring buoy (12 deg. 59' S, 45 
deg. 10' E)near some pretty coral patches where Alex had his first dive 
lesson as a candidate Junior Open Water Diver. We were very lucky to see 
an octopus having crab for dinner by his lair. Tomorrow we'll go back with 
the underwater video to try get some footage of the octopus and a few 
other reef inhabitants like lionfishes and cleaning shrimps. Then it will 
be time to prepare for the passage to Zanzibar where Caroline's parents 
will arrive on 30 December.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas: have a wonderful day.  If you 
don't, have a great day anyway.

P.S. Don't forget to check out our website at http://www.jocara.net for 
updates, pics and short movies, also archived newsletters.  Anyone can 
join the list or unsubscribe by sending an email to mandar@arl.nus.edu.sg 
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