This is it !

Those last two days in Reunion have been hectic, as expected. Laundry
(which took three trips), shopping, oil change, surrendering the mobile
broadband 3G USB key that I had borrowed, taking the car back to the
rental car place in St Denis, 32 kms from the boat and get a ride back,
preparing the boat for the big trip, rechecking all the leaks. And a
wonderful dinner party on Monday night at Jean-Louis's house.
We had an appointment with customs at 7:00 on Wednesday to get the
outgoing clearance. This was the only purpose of their coming to the
boat. They came at 6:30, which is good, but they did not bring any
clearance form with them, which is not so good. They had to use my
clearance from Maurice and make corrections to it to show that it was
clearance from Reunion ! I hope the South African customs will accept that.
After topping up the water tank, we were ready to go and we exited the
harbour at 8:25, on our way to the danger zone between Madagascar and
Durban, 625 miles away. Not a glorious start as we had to motor in the
lee of the island for three and a half hours, but at noon sharp, the
wind showed up, strong, and we finally got going. If all goes well, we
should reach the southern tip of Madagascar on Sunday and start crossing
the Mozambique channel. The current forecast calls for a strong system
to form around the end of the month, when we will already be in the
channel, but we should be able to dodge it by aiming for Richards Bay at
first.
We shall see.