We left Madagascar heading towards South Africa and once again had to alter course for weather. There are a lot of revolving tropical storms in this part of the world (not sure why they are called that as we are officially out of the tropics, but they are), and the Agulhas Current, which can be up to 5kts, makes wind against current situations suicidal as one South African weather router likes to say.

This time we went to Mozambique for shelter. On Thanksgiving evening we dropped anchor at Portuguese Island and the next morning we sailed up the channel to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. We anchored right outside the city, (top pic) the only boat of any kind at anchor outside Maputo. The second pic is the marina where we brought the dinghy when we went ashore. It was pure mud half the tide cycle-12 hours a day, so timing to go ashore was key. We brought the dinghy in for provisioning and had to wait for the tide to come in to go back to the boat. You can see Painkiller in the pic out in the channel.

After a couple of nights anchored outside Maputo we left in the rain for Inhaca Island, about 25nm from Maputo, where we waited for a weather window to sail down the coast to South Africa.