Tanga, its time to leave!

Back in Tanga after a wonderfull week with my big family in Zeeland at the North sea. Its September again…That was the time I arrived last year in Tanga from Madagascar, its now time to leave. I agreed last time with a sailfriend from Tanga that we would go with 2 ships from Tanga to Madagascar. And so glad my other sailfriend comes again! Our route will pass Dar Es Salaam so I pick her up and get new batteries at the same time.

OK,lets get going, provisioning and fuel first. Tanga is Africa so no such thing as a delivery service… So we hire a taxi and make several trips to the gas station with our fuel canisters, the supermarket and the vegetable markets in town. We pick up more crew for the other ship from Tanga airport at the same time.

Next day with our crew to the Tanga port autority for a permit to travel from port to port called a transire to Mtwara, our last port of call. In Mtwara we will leave Tanzania for Madagascar.

Then the hard part….we celebrate in style with a South African braai.

We leave the next day for Pemba Island Njao gap, Tanga. until we meet again…

While at anchor in Njao gap the navy comes to check our paperwork. Always interesting when you meet new people but in this case it is very special…… one of the navy guys works also for psychiatric hospitals in Pemba and Zanzibar. I offer my cooperation in the field of epilepsy as this could be interesting for the future for all of us. We promise to stay in contact. I will follow up as they intend to start a new clinic in Pemba Island next year.

The next day we sail to Mesali island, west of Pemba.

Best snorkling in Tanzania for me at Mesali Island, the coral is still alive and there is plenty of fish. Really sad that in most places 75 percent of the coral in Tanzania died due to seawater temperatures above 30 degrees for more than 3 weeks time.The climate is changing with dramatic results, wish the Western people came to look here what they do to the world!