Mauritius Madagascar Seychelles Reunion Island Jan 20

[buck3647]

The real David Pressler

Took Costa out of Bombay stayed 3 days Maldives just returned Galapagos next Costa out of Mauritius for 14 days. We will be booking dives at each port if anyone jumps aboard.

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• buck3647
• Apr 17, 2015
• 1

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In...

 

[Wingy]

Not sure I'm reading your post right - are you looking for crew on that leg or are you just trying to make contact with divers in the POCs you mention.

I dived Mauritius Reunion and Madagascar last year in February - it had still not stopped raining in Madagascar after 6 weeks solid. Swell in Reunion at that time of the year is a PITA. Madagascar had Jan and feb totally blacked out with storm clouds on every weather source I could find and 99% of dive shops in Madagascar are closed down until end of march. Having said that, other than being humid as hell with light showers daily we only had one epic true storm in two weeks in Madagascar. Do you have a compressor and surface support gear onboard?.

I was looking at hitching a lift to Mayotte from Nosy Be which apparently at that time of the year could take 5 hours or 5 days from the expat yachties we met up with. Amboatalaka has a pretty steady contingent of long term sea dwellers from around the world if you're looking at dropping anchor for a few days/weeks - good people.

Just trying to work out your route...are you staying on the Diana and Isle St Marie east side of Madagascar after taking a bead from the seychellles in which case you'd avoid the Mozambique eddy which is often pretty strong in Dec - Feb?

What are the dimensions and rigging of the yacht? I may be interested

 

[buck3647]

WOW we were told that early Jan was a good time to dive and have been in contact with shops on each island. Plan was to do what we did in the Galapagos dive and land trips. Weather worldwide has changed so will reconnect with Mauritius and Seychelles to get updated on our dates. Costa Jan 6 the original date got sold out and soon this one will be also.

 

[Wingy]

I would suggest contacting someone like Nosy Sakatia or Menagabe Plongee and Nosy Be Plongee for more information on the weather - Mauritius dive shops are open, Reunion they say they are open but we had operators cancel on us due to sea conditions without being contacted at all - great way to lose precious dive days. We walked around St Gilles knocking on other dive shops even though months of email contact before with an op who said they went out everyday after finding the reliable ccntact had gone to the pub without bothering to contact us and found they had all cancelled that day. I would not assume a massive swing in weather in such a short time - perhaps more an economics response. The Indian Ocean monsoon hits the same general time every year - as evident by the number of people who are born 9 months after wet season.

If I were you I would also contact yacht clubs and ask about currents and crossings at that time of the year. You may get lucky with weather - we had a totally private lux Eco resort all to ourselves (just 2 buddies) because all the other guests had cancelled and air Madagascar wasn't flying anywhere due to a dispute with the president with only that one storm in Madagascar - Reunion was flooded in some areas and Mauritius really couldn't make its mind up. Personally, I'd get the sea charts and make contact with some of the regular sailors in the region if you want an honest non commercially skewed run down of Nav & conditions in the area to set your plans in stone. Try a South African yacht club for info - the people I asked about hitching to Mayotte were South Africans and had been sailing those East African waters for years, particularly if people are paying.

 

[champacs]

December, January and February are the cyclone & rainy season in the Indian Ocean (nothing to do with the weather changing - it's been like that for thousands of years ;-) ), so while the weather can be pleasant there can also be changes in the weather and torrential downpours. Reunion and the east coast of Madagascar are particularly subject to cyclones, Mauritius, western Madagascar and the Comoros somewhat less so.

When travelling in the region it is up to the traveller to keep updated on weather conditions, and dive shops in Reunion will probably have assumed that anybody present on the island would be aware of the conditions (which might explain cancelling with no notice, although it's not very nice of them not to let you know).

A useful website for IO sea conditions is: Meteolamer - Prévisions Marines Ile de la Réunion.

 

[Wingy]

With our comical attempts at French Champacs I'd spent months emailing to lock in as I only had two possible dive days before leaving for two weeks then coming back from Madagascar so the guys who ran the Op knew my schedule was tight. I did get a text message from the Australian Embassy that morning saying the embassy was closed due to flooding in Le Tampon so our phones were working as was FB - so excuses of "I tried to call you" really didn't wash. Miraculously the next day the ocean was compliant but I also noticed they had a full 6 divers so I can only assume the others may have checked your link and understood enough to reschedule the next day. Anyway, I did get to dive Reunion even though the surge was quite noticeable. Living in WA where we also get Cyclone season I understand cancelling - just would have been nice to have been informed!!

While we didn't get to dive that day we got to discover a cool little place in St Leu, visited a hardware store in search of more food (nice cushions, no croque Monsieur!) went for a very wet but beautiful drive thru Le Tampon and discovered gorgeous St Pierre. Beautiful island you live on.