Canalblog
Editer l'article Suivre ce blog Administration + Créer mon blog
Publicité
Tales of Tyre-racing, Makis and M'zungus.
3 juin 2013

Mahoraid

         

IMGP1519

         

On Pentecost week-end, like last year, all of the sailing boats in Mayotte who wished could embark on a tour of the island. My musician friend Franck, who owns and lives on a sailing boat, wished. He took a few of his friends and me on his boat with him, and we spent three nice days trying to get enough wind into our sails to actually go forward instead of nowhere. Good fun.

         

IMGP1523

           

We started off from Dzaoudzi on the small island, where Franck lives with his boat. On the first day, we went down to Mzouazia in the extreme south of Mayotte. Quite a bit of wind, ten boats. On the second day, we went up the other side to Handréma in the extreme north, crunched up a bit of coral without meaning to, got stuck a couple of times because there wasn't enough wind to go forward. On the third day, we played a bit of music in the bay and set off back to Dzaoudzi. 

            

IMGP1518

IMGP1520 IMGP1526

IMGP1541 IMGP1539

IMGP1517

IMGP1522 IMGP1534

     

Pretty scenery as always in Mayotte. That's what's nice about living here: you don't have to go far to get nice landscapes. When you stay on the land, there's quite a lot of rubbish lying around, people spit on the ground in front of you, it's mayhem on the roads and it doesn't always smell very nice. However, whenever you can get away from the land and look at it from a distance, it's postcard-pretty and suddenly smells much better. There's rather a lot of rubbish in the lagoon as well, various cans and bottles, the odd floating fridge or washing machine, but it's not half as unsightly as on the land.

       

IMGP1538

        

There were ten sailing boats going clockwise round the island. There were also ten to fifteen catamarans and hobbycats going round anticlockwise. It wasn't a race, nobody was timing arrivals, but as the saying goes, "two boats going in the same direction on the same track are racing", so everyone was quietly competing against each other anyway.

      

mahoraid 2013

mahoraid2 mahoraid3

IMGP1532

          

On the first evening, we got off the boats to have something to drink together on the beach. As it happened, that day and time was also the arrival of the Mahoraid. The Mahoraid is a 70-kilometre race from the extreme north to the extreme south of the island in one day. The first runners did it in eight hours, the slowest in about seventeen hours. During this race, the runners climb two mountains and run across a variety of terrains. This race contributes to the "Crazy Diagonal" in Reunion Island, a three-day race which goes diagonally through the country. To take part in the Reunion race, runners need to accumulate a certain number of points. This can be done by taking part in other races in the Indian Ocean, and participation in the Mahoraid gives them 85 points, which is what they need to compete in Reunion Island.

        

During the second day, we had a fishing line out just in case something interesting would latch on. We caught a small barracuda - my first ever freshly-caught fish, so for me it was a huge barracuda, even if it was only about a foot long - which Franck killed, descaled, emptied and gave to me.

            

IMGP1544

           

Publicité
Publicité
Commentaires
Publicité
Newsletter
Visiteurs
Depuis la création 39 591
Publicité