MAYOTTE
AUGUST 27 TO SEPTEMBER 4, 2016
We arrived
in Dzaoudzi, the capital of Petite Terre, at 1230 hrs on 27 August 2016 and
picked up a mooring buoy on the northern side of the Mayotte Yacht Club: 12-46.902’ S; 45-15.651’ E. The mooring buoys are private but are
available if the owner’s yacht is away or on the hard. After picking one up, inquiries should be
made about the feasibility of staying there.
If one has to anchor it will be in about 50’+ water depth and be quite
far out because most yachts are on moorings.
The Mayotte Yacht Club is friendly and welcoming to transient
yachts. There are two showers, a washing
machine, bar and free WiFi that has a strong enough signal to reach out into
the mooring field. The tides are over 10’
so it’s possible to careen a vessel alongside the Yacht Club wall and make
repairs or have it lifted out and put on the hard.
Mayotte is a
rather unremarkable place. Other than
decent French restaurants, good open markets with fresh fruit and veggies, well
stocked supermarkets with a good selection of cheese, wine and meats, decent
internet. It just doesn’t have much more
that would attract tourism. There are
two islands: Petite Terre and Grand
Terre; both are surrounded by a barrier reef enclosing a shallow and sheltered
lagoon. The channel is very well marked
with buoys and ranges. It’s about 16 nm
from the northern entrance to the Dzaoudzi Yacht Club. Of the two, Petite Terre
offers more for the average tourist. It
is made up of three townships: Dzaoudzi,
Labattoir, Pamandzi. The airport is
located here and it was the fortified capital the French chose because of its manageable
size. Grand Terre has Mamoudzou as its
capital and is very much larger than its tiny sister. The population is mostly Moslem but the
administration and police seem to be largely white Christians.
Geographically,
Mayotte is part of the Comoros. In 1974
and again in 1976, the general population voted to stay French and free. The Comoros voted for independence and laid
claim to Mayotte. In 1985, all members
of the UN General Assembly supported the Comorian republic’s claim to Mayotte. Since Mayotte is French, its citizens are
members of the EC and are entitled to the same benefits they would receive in
France. Almost everything is imported
from France or South Africa and mark-ups vary from next to nothing to many
times the original price. Medical and
dental care is free and prescription medicine is very cheap. This has attracted illegal immigrants from
the other Comorian islands and become a very big problem for the French
administration. There is little the Maore
can do to control this. If they round up
any illegal Comorians, they have to pay the Comoros government to take them
back and the same illegals will be on the next available boat back to Mayotte. It is unclear why France wishes to hang on to
this drain of its resources.
Visiting
boats do not have to have visas for stays up to three months. Upon arrival, one goes to Customs and then
Immigration. No stamps are placed in the
passports and no “Clearance” is given for the next port. One could arrive and depart without ever
checking in! The currency is the Euro
and ATM are widely available. Coming
from the Seychelles, the attractive aspect of Mayotte is that the wind can be
put on the beam or a little abaft rather that forward of the beam in big
seas. The enhanced wind corridor coming
over the top of Cape d’ambre, Madagascar is hard to negotiate. Mayotte offers a kinder solution. After that, it’s only 200 nm to Nosy Be,
Madagascar.
We departed
Mayotte at 1200 hrs local on September 4th for Nosy Be,
Madagascar: 210nm. After the windy conditions we experienced
coming from the Seychelles, there was very little wind on this passage but the
NE’ly swells were coming in at 7’ and very uncomfortable. We had to motor most of the way with just a
few hours of sailing: feast or
famine. It took 46 hrs to make this
passage of 210 nm. We dropped anchor in
Hellville, Madagascar at 1000 hrs on September 6th.
No comments:
Post a Comment