MMMMadagascar!

St. Pierre is a windy place for sure. It just seems to funnel down from the hills and we left with a good 25 knots behind us. We headed offshore a little while and then jibed around to head north but still later that day we ended up in the lee of the island and had to motor for 20nm until we found enough breeze to sail in again. The course for Saint Marie Madagascar was set and the wind was straight behind us so we decided to not sail directly but have the breeze on our quarter which made for faster more comfortable sailing with less rolling. We probably sailed an extra 100 miles with all our zigzagging but it was a really  fun and enjoyable passage and we were back on a palm tree island in just under 4 days.

We dropped the anchor at 3am off Isle Nattes at the bottom of Saint Marie and then woke up at dawn to what looked like a postcard. A few casual fisherman rowing around in dugouts on the back of the reef and white sandy beaches ashore. Is always a great surprise after arriving in the dark!

Our Finnish friends on "Ever After" and "KasteHelmi" arrived also and the champagne was cracked just after noon and that set the scene for a fun afternoon!

The next few days were just about exploring and doing a bit of fishing. Didn't have much luck in the fishing department, we did catch 1 big Kingfish but let it go. The locals seem to be pretty fond of their nets here and I think there isn't a lot left close to the island. We walked around the island stopping at a couple of places for a beer in the way. We went past 1 very nice bungalow and after saying g'day to the people got invited in for a beer. They were South Africans and live out here for 6 months at a time and also another young South African couple there that are building a resort. Very interesting people that have found this little slice of paradise and don't want to leave.

 There are a few nice places to stay for tourists but it is very quiet with hardly any around, which is nice.

The locals are super friendly happy bunch all smiling and saying Bonjour and going about their things. We have heard quite a few stories of other yachts getting stuff stolen here in Madagascar, mainly in the bigger towns but we are told there is absolutely no theft going on from this island which was very nice to hear!

Saint Marie was a real life pirate hang out back in the day and they used to hang there and rob the spice ships that went passed. We went and checked out the pirate cemetery which had a few dodgey old graves from the early 1800s.

We also went to town to get some  supplies including a couple of samples of the local rums. The good bottles are between $3-4. We invited Vincent the fella building the resort over and got pretty carried away testing the samples but they all passed!  Was a great fun night but had a cracker of a hangover 

the next day.

The weather forecast was looking good for rounding the north Cape Ambre later that week which is just over 300nm away so we struggled on with the mighty hangover and got the anchor up and were out of there! 

A very special place to visit and we would highly recommend to anyone looking for a bit of a different chilled out holiday!