Soul Sailing 2007 - Mozambique
It's that time of year again, and after last year's almost windless week, we went to Mozambique instead. Here's how it went down:
Thursday Afternoon - around tea time
9 people in all, we set off in 3 cars with Andre's large speed boat and headed for the border at the breakneck speed of 90kph getting 3km per litre of petrol. On the right is the 4.8L land cruiser that sounded very much like a WWII plane towing the boat. Gabi spent most of the drive fiddling with the dials and buttons on his new tourag while Malcolm played short samples of 80s music on his iPod before skipping to the next song. After visiting most of the petrol stations along the way, we arrived at the border just before 12 midnight. After employing a local to negotiate our way through the border, and making sure the right people got their back-handers, we made it into Mozambique. Just inside the border we stayed the night at Casa-de-something-or-other in what seemed to be an old farmhouse. The seemed quite happy to open the bar at 1am for us so we sampled some of the local beer before hitting the sack.
Friday morning we were on the road to Maputo, which has quite different scenery to the South African side of the border: grass and bushes as far as you can see, with the occasional small huts, at least the road is in good condition. More dial twiddling, ipod skipping, daft photos etc.
Arriving in Maputo, we launched the boat at the School-de-Nautica after some more back-handed negotiations with the authorities about the number of life-jackets on board and although there actually are 9 life jackets, only 6 were written down. There's always time to find the pub and for Malcolm to assault the local wildlife.
A 2 hour crawl across the bay because we packed enough food and drink for about 30 people and a full load of fuel which made the boat was too heavy to get on the plane. Inhaca island never seemed to get any closer.
Between the island and the mainland there are large tidal sand flats, and we luckily timed the tides just right to get in, otherwise we could have been stuck on the sand for a few hours more. It also took a bit of walking to find Ponta Torres Camp, so by then it was too shallow to get the boat close to the shore. All the gear had to be waded in knee-deep water, that's when we realized how much crap we had brought along.
Ponta Torres is a tented camp with wooden decking to walk around the main camp, electricity, hot running water, excellent cooking facilities. Malcolm, Gabi and I (the 3 windsurfers) chose a tent overlooking the beach so we wouldn't have to carry the windsurfing gear too far.
Saturday morning was raining so we sms'd Julian to let him know what a terrible time we were having (muchly exaggerated of course!). What we didn't tell him was that it cleared up in the afternoon and we had enough wind for a short sail. In addition to getting the timing right for the tides to arrive, it seems that we got lucky with the timing for the wind as well, because the high tide was in the afternoons while we were there, which made for good sailing. At low tide the entire area empties out so it looks like you could walk back to Maputo, and when the tide comes in there is a completely protected area with very little tidal current. It also means that you can sail about 4+ km and still waist deep water all the way. The gap between the mainland and Inhaca island is called Hell's Gate and has a current flowing at the change of the tides but as long as you stay clear of that it's very safe. For windsurfing there is approximately 4 hours of sailable time at high tide before it gets too shallow. Malcolm and Gabi managed to find some rocks to injure themselves on. That evening we dined on that crabs that Gabi bought from the locals and sashimi that Andre and his fishing crew had caught.
Sunday was a lot clearer than the other days and was the best day we had for sailing. The wind blew a constant 15 knots at high tide and we spent a couple of hours blasting up and down. Malcolm also brought his camera out (about 2km from the shore) and we took turns standing in the waist deep water while the other 2 sailed up and down posing for pictures. With the wind blowing NE we had very clean wind coming through Hell's Gate, we just had sail about 1km out to get clear of the land.
Eventually we ran out of water and after the first catapults on the sand-banks, we half-waded, half-sailed back to the beach.
Monday had plenty of wind but we had to wait for the tide to come in before we could sail. We spent the morning walking along the beach waiting for the tide to come in. Unfortunately with the wind blowing from the SE we chose a bad spot to sail and had very gusty wind coming over the hills, I suppose this is how we learn. If we had moved to the other side of the lagoon we would have had very clean wind again.
Tuesday morning we packed up the boat before high tide (moored about 1km down the beach) and headed back to Maputo. Without the grub and booze, the boat had no problem getting on the plane even though we had an extra person, so the trip back across the bay was much faster. The trip back to the border was fairly uneventful, although once through the border then the problems began. A puncture on the land cruiser towing the boat forced us to stop to change it. A little while later the spare suffered the same fate. By this time it was dark, so we put the 2 spare wheels from the boat on the land cruiser so that they were the same size. After hitching the boat onto Gabi's tourag we got another phone call, nobody tightened the wheel nuts on the one side, so the wheel came off and bounced a few 100m into a nearby field. Luckily nobody got hurt and the wheel could be put back on. Eventually at about 2:30am I got home after the boat was unhitched and people dropped off at homes. Up for work 4 hours later was not pleasant.
Travel Notes
- In early October there were very few mosquitos around so I imagine malaria risk is very much reduced (although you should still take precautions)
- Take a lot of small notes of currency because R100 notes are difficult to change once out of the city. R10 and R20 notes are needed for tips etc for the locals. It also means you don't have to get any of the local currency as change which feels like it's been in someone's sweaty armpit all day. Soggy paper that feels like it will come apart in your hands.
- The water at Ponta Torres was perfectly drinkable, however I wouldn't trust the water in Maputo, drink bottled water there.
All in all, a very successful soul sailing tour and I'm sure it will be high on the list as a candidate for next year's soul sailing trip.
Labels: Windsurfing
