Mabaï, Day 1

After 20+ hours in transit and a less than 3 of sleep I was eager to settle in for the night.

By the light of a beautiful moon we loaded my few things and a case of beer into the tiny tender and puttered through the almost-calm water towards home, for the next few weeks.

Mabaï means (among many things) "No Worries" in Wolof (Senegal/Gambia/Mauritania). She is a 12m fiberglass Maray built in 1976. Curiously, her captain (Olivier) and I are both just a few years older and were born a week apart! We both enjoyed that coincidence.

Immediately I felt right at home.

After a quick, light supper we turned in for the night and as the swell built I was rocked gently to a deep and restful sleep.

Morning breaks around 6AM here and I was eager to watch my first sunrise in East Africa. As the mists coalesced amongst the palm trees and the small wavelets lapped on our hull, a molten copper disk lifted out of the trees, glowing blue-orange on the water until it slid into a cloud bank above.

I sat, contemplated my good fortune at being able to be here and stumbling into what is shaping up to be an amazing opportunity. Eventually we made delicious Zanzibarian coffee and shared a few stories as the sun climbed higher into a sky full of patchy clouds.

I spent some time under water, exploring the sandy bottom and finding sand anemones, hermit crabs, long-spined urchin (some with fishes hiding within the protection of their spines) a cuttlefish, some sea stars, and a few burrowing gobies. Viz is a murky-for-here ~4m (15ft) due to massive supermoon tides cleaning out the mangroves.

The idea to scuba has occurred to me but suspect it would prove expensive and disappointing here, today due to murky water snd overcast conditions.

Eventually we will bop into town to provision and prep for tomorrow's departure. Until then I'm relishing the gentle breeze and opportunity to rest.Read more