Saturday, December 31, 2011

http://picasaweb.google.com/krautholg/Hluhluwe# National Park Pictures

 
Uploaded new pictures from our visit to the Hluhluwe and iMfolozi National Parks on Aurora Ulani's 8th birthday on 30 December 2011. 
 
Neue Bilder von unserem Besuch bei den Hluhluwe und iMfolzoi Nationalparks an Aurora Ulanis 8. Geburtstag am 30. Dezember 2011. 
 
 

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
 
Hope you are faring well and that 2012 will be a good year for you!
 
DHARMA BUM III is now in Richards Bay, South Africa after we almost lost our rig just three days before we got here.  When a strong wind blows against  the Mozambique Current, the waves build quickly to a considerable height.  Our port shroud parted, Aurora Ulani was talking about wires and cables, pointed - and I almost got a heart attack when I realized what was going on.  Three times lucky now:  First the toggle in Kiribati, then the chainplate in Singapore and now the shroud itself.  All on the port side.  And this after we had completely changed our standing rigging in Chaguaramas, Trinidad in 2006. 
 
Well, here we are now and people are going out of their way to be friendly and helpful.  Here at the "wall" in Tuzi Gazi at the "International Moorings" (where you clear in) we don't even have to pay a cent!  And since we got access to shorepower and tap-water, Liping has been washing all our stuff in the cheapo washing machine we bought in Thailand.  We are looking forward to a visit in the game park which isn't far from here.  Lions, leopards, cheetahs, rhinos, elephants, gnu, warthogs and many other animals can be seen there.  And, this is the first time I am eligible to a senior citizen discount.  I haven't quite decided whether I should be pleased about that or not. 
 
The sail from Madagascar was pleasant all the way to Bazaruto Island in Mozambique.  After that the weather turned capricious and the weather forecasts as well.  Madagascar itself was a bit of a culture shock with us, but since I wrote about that in my blog, I am not going to go into details here.  Mauritius was good & we made quite a few new friends there.  We spent a lot of time with Elie, Marie-Laure & Jules of OBERON from New Caledonia and feel sad that we can't spend any more time with them.  Our plans are just too different.  
 
As far as Asia is concerned:  We prefer to be on land there instead of living on a boat.  As there is almost no wind at all, most people use the engine all the time.  I really hate doing that for various reasons.  Also, I want to sail around the world instead of motoring!  But still, Asia felt very much like home.  You can eat out as often as you like, things are comparatively inexpensive and you can buy all the essentials.  
 
After our numerous repairs, we will slowly inch our way around the coast of South Africa to Cape Town.  Weather permitting of course.  The next step will be Brazil (if we get the visa for Liping) and then Bequia in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, where we will have completed our circumnavigation.  We'll put DHARMA BUM III up for sale and fly to Germany to put Ulani to school there.  Our intention is to give it two years.  If we have settled in, have found work and all that, fine.  If not, we'll move back to Taiwan and stay there. 
 
We have noticed that Aurora's English is way better than her German or Chinese.  A lot of the credit goes to Calvert School, a truly excellent homeschooling program.  It is also a fact, that we meet a lot more English-speaking children than any others.  So she lacks practice in both languages, although we do reading & writing in both of them every day before we even start with Calvert.  So it goes...  :-/
 
The highlights this year were of two different kinds.  Chagos was a place that I would rank at the top anywhere, even including the Pacific.  Truly wonderful!  Hopefully it will be accessible in the future.  And for me personally, it was so great to finally see my novel "Double Trouble at Sea" at "Barnes & Noble" and similar outfits.   I had started it 14 years, 3 months and 15 days before it finally got published.  Kind of daunting, but I have every intention to go for another book, hopefully a novel again.  Should have enough material <grin>. 
 
Right, that's all for now.  Have to go on with repairs!
 
Cheers!
 
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
Richards Bay, South Africa
28°47.69'S 032°04.71'E
Phone 1: +27719284443 Voice
Phone 2: +27748375470 Data/Voice

Friday, November 04, 2011

New pix uploaded! Neue Bilder hochgeladen! http://picasaweb.google.com/krautholg/Madagascar#

New pix uploaded!  Neue Bilder hochgeladen!
 
 
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
+261334078800 Airtel/Zain
+261348172664 Telma/Internet
Crater Bay, Nosy Be, Madagascar
13°24.04'S 048°13.11'E

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Madagascar- All is not well in paradise

Thursday, October 20, 2011
 
We have now been here in Madagascar for 53 days.  On the last possible day of our visas we cleared out of Mauritius.  The sail from Mauritius was pleasant, slow and uneventful - just the way we like it.  After one week at see, we saw the island of Ile Sainte-Marie on the east coast of Madagascar ahead and at the same time we noticed humpback whales around us.  For the first time ever, we saw a whale diving and the fluke out of the water, the way it is depicted in numerous photos.  We were pretty excited, I tell you. 
 
A dark red boat overtook us under engine while we sailed slowly under genoa and we had a little chat with Henry on PARPAR on the VHF radio.  We had met him in Mauritius.  Clearing-in lived up to expectations.  Most of the officials wanted a little "gift" either in the form of money or a small bottle of whisky.  While this  process was not exactly inexpensive, it did not present the biggest problem.  That was  reserved for the bank.  There was no CIRRUS or MAESTRO ATM machine, only VISA was accepted.  Cool, I thought, as I had just obtained a German Postbank VISA ATM card in Mauritius.  Unfortunately that one didn't work either and we didn't have enough dollars in cash to even pay the officials.  In the end we had no other option but to use the VISA Gold Card for a cash advance, probably the most expensive way to get at your money while abroad.  Still, it had already proved its worth when paying the fees for the Panama Canal in 2006. 
 
A little while later we had our 90-day visas and met our friends in a kind of tourist bar, where we  celebrated our safe passage and arrival in Africa.  The next few days we were kind of busy.  There is always something to do on a boat and we had to find out what to do about  Liping's visa for South Africa.  This didn't work out by eMail.  After I phoned the South African embassy in the capital Antananarivo, they only told me that they would read the eMail one of these days and in the end we never really got a useful answer.  They did tell us, however, that we would have to travel to the capital in person, which is a trip of several days, mostly in a four-wheel-drive truck without shock absorbers on very bad roads. 
 
So we tried a different tack.  An eMail to the South Africa office in Taipei was answered immediately and Ms. Natalie Ng informed us that it would be no problem to do the paperwork over there.  Moreover, there would  be no fees.  Since Ile Sainte-Marie is mainly a tourist place, it would be better to try and do this in Nosy Be.  As our friend Arne from IEMANJA had  warned us that there would be no rain on the west coast, we spent one day in pouring rain to fill our water tanks.  And since our friends Elie, Marie-Laure & Jules of OBERON were just half day's sail away, we decided to visit them in Manumpana.  
 
First I had to clean the bottom, though.  I had noticed whales right at the anchorage of Ambodifototra and when I went into the water, I was delighted to hear the whales singing.  I had never thought that I would ever hear this amazing sound by myself in the wild.  Wonderful!  When I think about all these experiences that make our lives so rich and interesting, I sometimes contemplate to make this yachtie-lifestyle permanent. 
 
When heading towards the  entrance of Manumpana, my thoughts were completely different.  Reefs  everywhere, charts all wrong, anxiety of the highest order.  If we had followed the charts, we would have lost the boat, as there was quite a strong wind blowing with the resultant heavy swells.  When right next to us a gigantic coral head surfaced, I cursed our way of life with all my heart.  Fortunately we were forewarned and so we followed Arne's waypoints instead of the charts.  Once past the reef, everything was idyllic.  Later we heard that one of our friends had almost lost his boat there and finally had to give up on Manumpana. 
 
Elie was totally astonished that  we had arrived  that fast, as all our friends know that we are the slowest boat imaginable.  When the wind is strong, however, DHARMA BUM III really gets up and going.  Most other boats start to put in reefs at that time, but our boat likes strong wind.  We had a wonderful week with OBERON, but we noticed that they were just as culture-shocked as we were.  And this after they had sailed pretty much all over the  world in the last 20 years.  Like Elie said, this was the first  truly third world place any of us had ever been.  Even the deepest Papua New Guinea or Kiribati are not quite comparable.  During the dry season people starve and are often forced to give up their land, their zebu or their meager possessions just to survive.  They still use the old slash and burn agriculture methods that were in use for millennia here.  The population was small then, but now it is effectively destroying the environment.  But the people don't want to change what has worked for so long.  And here at the coast they were lucky, as they had access to fish, shrimp, lobster, octopus, squid and other seafood.  Further inland and especially in the high plateaus and mountains, hunger bellies are everywhere. 
 
Unfortunately the time with our good friends  had  to come to an end as they had to wait for French CNED homeschooling materials there, while we had to take care of the visa.  So off we went to round the dreaded Cap D'Ambre.  Over there the wind is usually very strong and so is the current.  The best way to round the cape is just half a mile offshore.  When our boatspeed reached 12 knots, I decided to take in all sail except for about 30% of the genoa.  We still surfed along at 12.8 knots!  No longer dangerous, but rather exhilarating.  We could observe whales again as well as a big turtle.  The white lighthouse with the black top looked very well kept and even beautiful, but later we heard that it rarely functions.  Just like all the other things in Madagascar.    
 
When we arrived in Crater Bay on the tourist island of Nosy Be, we anchored right behind BYAMEE.  Originally they had planned to leave so that Paul could watch the rugby world cup in South Africa, but as Darien and Aurora Ulani were so happy at seeing each other again, Paul & Joyce changed their plans.  Soon they played with Nadine, the eight year old daughter of Graham (UK) and Veronica (South African Indian) on the catamaran NOW NOW.  They have been coming here for 16 years. 
 
In Hellville (what a name!) we had to pay another 100,000 Ariary (US$ 54) to the harbormaster and then we got our cruising permit which is free of charge.  The real shocker came at DHL World Express (Deutsche Post), which charged us US$ 130 to send the passport to Taiwan.  As with the officials, we had to go twice, this time because we didn't carry that much money and you have to pay in cash.  As I write this, the passport is already on its way back. 
 
Here we mostly worked on the boat, which was extremely frustrating.  I had an electric problem with the fan in my cabin, but all the cables were glued behind the headliner.  I had no other option, but to rip it off.  Then I had to cut quite a few cables and at one point nothing in my cabin worked any more.  I was  ready to murder the designers as well as the headliner guys in Thailand which had caused the problem by simply twisting the wires together before gluing the headliner back on.  Then I got sick and was out of commission for a few days.  Soon my girls followed suit.  When I was reasonably okay again, I decided to do less strenuous work for a while and worked on my novel. 
 
Finally, 14 years, 3 months and 15 days after I had begun it, my novel was published by CreateSpace of Amazon.com!  I am so glad that the book is finally available in the printed version and I even made my self-imposed deadline before Christmas.  Unfortunately here I am unable to order a second proof, so that I can only hope that most of the errors, formatting mistakes and typos have been eradicated.   Every change I make from now on will cost money. 
 
Here I MOSTLY spent time with Henry & Tuk of PARPAR, "Palain" and his girlfriend from the purple Swiss boat MERLIN, Norwegian Lars on LUNA, American "Captain" Kirk of SALSA and a few other yachties. 
 
While most people rave about the scenic beauty of the place and the happy people here, Liping and I cannot ignore the suffering and the numerous problems here.  Sure, there seems to be more laughter here than in your average European or American city, but there is so much wrong here, that I hesitate to enumerate it all.  As one guy put it:  "The people have a problem getting old here."  Nothing ever works properly.  There are almost no hospitals or real schools, there is extreme poverty, hunger, corruption, injustice, political instability and the ever present threat of civil war, where law and order breaks down completely in a heartbeat.  The people are so desperate, that they try every which way to get  their hands on some money.  As  Elie put it: "In business here there are no friends."  They steal whenever they have  a chance and even burglarize each other.  Some French development aid agricultural specialists offered one of their more reliable workers  a steady job with a reasonable income and even agreed to pay the  school fee for his children.  The man joyfully took up the offer.  A little while later he was caught burglarizing the home of his benefactors. 
 
Whereas the previous government was corrupt as well, there were at least schools, hospitals, roads  and so on being built and there were attempts to protect the unique environment here.  Since the DJ strongman came to power, this has all come to en end.  One guy (won't mention any names here) says that there has been no progress whatsoever in the last few decades, the development workers are totally demoralized and one local engineer sadly voiced the thought that they would be better off, if they were a colony again. 
 
For us sailors the talk often concerns the Somali pirates which are in the area.  One of our friends was anchored in Mayotte behind the reef, when they heard a mayday on the VHF.  A container vessel was being attacked by pirates, but because they could go up to 21 knots and take other evasive action, they were successful in thwarting the attack.  This was less than a day's sail from where we are now. 
 
The other topic of conversation are the ferocious storms in the southern part of the Mozambique channel.  When the wind blows right against the strong Mozambique current, the situation can quickly become murderous.  That doesn't make for peaceful sleep at night.  In fact, almost all of us will be very relieved when we have finally made it safely to Cape Town. 
 
Once we have Liping's passport back, we intend to make a short trip to Momoko island where there are tame lemurs and giant turtles.  After that we will leave here,  slowly going down the coast before jumping off around Cape Andre and set course for Bazaruto island in Mozambique and finally down to Richards Bay in South Africa.  ARCTRACER left a while ago, yesterday PARPAR, LUNA, SALSA & QUEST left, today GERONIMO followed suit.  MERLIN is still here, NOW NOW will remain here and it looks very much as if we will be the last boat to leave.  Again. 
 
Anyway, guys, I hope my next update will be a bit more upbeat and I will try to upload a few selected photos to: http://picasaweb.google.com/krautholg/Madagascar#
 
Cheers!
 
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
+261334078800 Airtel/Zain
+261348172664 Telma/Internet
Crater Bay, Nosy Be, Madagascar
13°24.04'S 048°13.11'E
 

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Finally! My novel is available in the shops!

Hi guys!
 
Finally!  My novel is available in the shops.  While the price is unfortunately high everywhere, I get the biggest percentage at CreateSpace:  https://www.createspace.com/3632152
 
 
 
Double Trouble at Sea

List Price: $18.57 

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About the author:
Holger Jacobsen learned sailing with an optimist dinghy as a child. He did a very short stint on a German cargo ship in the Baltic sea and he first stepped aboard an oceangoing yacht in 1987. He has been hooked on the yachtie lifestyle ever since. He is currently sailing around the world together with his wife Gloria Yeh Liping and daughter Aurora Ulani.

Double Trouble at Sea

Authored by Holger Jacobsen 

A novel (tough realistic fiction) playing in the milieu of yachties and cruisers engaged in long term ocean voyaging


Publication Date:
Oct 08 2011
ISBN/EAN13:
1463600291 / 9781463600297
Page Count:
232
Binding Type:
US Trade Paper
Trim Size:
5.25" x 8"
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Related Categories:
Fiction / Sea Stories


 

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Product Description

A novel (tough realistic fiction) playing in the milieu of yachties and cruisers engaged in long term ocean voyaging

About the Author

Holger Jacobsen learned sailing with an optimist dinghy as a child. He did a very short stint on a German cargo ship in the Baltic sea and he first stepped aboard an oceangoing yacht in 1987. He has been hooked on the yachtie lifestyle ever since. He is currently sailing around the world together with his wife Gloria Yeh Liping and daughter Aurora Ulani.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A great read!, September 3, 2011
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pjPonzo (Ontari-ari-ari-O) - See all my reviews
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Although this is fiction, the author (with wife and child) has sailed on a catamaran for years. That makes for excellent reading, even if you're not a yachting enthusiast. 
I found the author on youtube, searching for HolgBig3. A fascinating trio. I suspect that this book is a reflection of their adventures on their catamaran ... with fictional insertions :^) 
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