Off to Mauritius

It is Saturday morning here and today the weather looks ok for our sail over to Mauritius, about 350 miles away. We have winds from the east south east in the 25k range with the swells around three to four meters. With the winds behind us more or less it should be a comfortable ride.

 The last week here has been most enjoyable with a few dinners out and some good eating in with lobster thermadore that Marian has cooked up last night. The island is small but has a very rugged coastline being a volcanic island with ridges and deep valleys. We have done a number of walks with the scenery amazing with the different blues of the lagoon and ocean. Some of the walks have been good workouts which we and our bodies have enjoyed after all the sitting on the boat. We have hiked up to the top of the island and done a long walk along the eastern shore that has some beautiful views with lots of coves with pure white beaches. On top of the nice scenery hear the thing that makes it special are the people. It is like going back in time when nobody is in a rush and everyone wants to talk to you and inquire how you like Rodrigues. We hope it doesn't change.

on one tooth's boat negotiating for fuel in Indonesia

Tortoise in Rodrigues

Rodrigues lady in Saturday market

Cocos Keeling anchorage our own private island

black tip shark that surround to boat when anchoring in Cocos

 

Rodrigues

We departed Cocos Keeling on Saturday afternoon and made our way through the lagoon with its shallows and coral heads with no problems. We ran the engine for the first hour to clear the land and then set the sails or at least two of them with the mizzen being destroyed, and set our course of 260 degrees magnetic for the 2000 miles trip to Rodrigues. The first day the winds were very light and we just managed to keep the boat moving in the right direction. This caused us to wish for more winds, and if you do that sometimes you get more wind than you want. So the next day we got winds up in the 30k range with fifteen plus foot seas from all over the place along with some rain squalls. This was not much fun but it only lasted for a day until the weather settled down with the wind at twenty plus knots from the South East. This is the normal trade winds in this part of the world and we had them for the next seven days so wonderful sailing doing around eight knots per hour. One day was much like the last with us doing our five hour watches at night and having a nap during the day and just reading books and enjoying the endless view of the ocean. Here it is a very dark, almost inky blue and we did not see much in the way of animal life just a couple of freighters going by in the night. The last couple of days the winds dropped and we just slowly sailed along and decided that we would just go slow and arrive on Thursday morning. We did run the engine for a few hours on the last evening so that we would be here in the morning. We did 2002 miles in just under twelve days so not too bad. That is about the straight line distance from Vancouver to Montreal.

The first morning was taken up with the officials from Customs, Immigration, Health, and Coast guard all arriving with lots of forms to be filled out. No no one died on the voyage and we do not have rats onboard. This took about three hours with all the officials being very friendly giving us lots of ideas for things to do and places to go. Then it was time for a sleep for the afternoon. Up and out for dinner with Guy and Christine to Le Marlin Blue restaurant which our daughter in law, Sarah, told us about. It was a great little place and the food was wonderful. After a good nights sleep, with no bed gyrating on all three axis, we shared a car and went for a drive around the island. It is about 20 miles long and 5 miles wide but with 1000 foot elevation in the middle, check google earth. We stopped at the tortoise conservation center and spent the afternoon patting these almost extinct animals and then went in a cave with the stalagmites and stalactites so along with a good lunch and a nice drive around the island with wonderful views of the ocean and the lagoon that surrounds Rodrigues we made it back to the boats just before dark.  Out for a quick dinner and to bed.

Today is Saturday and is market day. Lots of fresh vegetables and lots of colour with people all about dressed in very bright clothing. Very exotic. The big deal today was to get connected to the internet again which Marian did and it only took a couple of hours. So now we are back online and can see what we missed in the world for the last two weeks. Probably not much. Tonight we are going back to Le Marlin Blue for dinner. We will at least be more awake tonight than we were the first time there.

Cocos Keeling

It has been a week today that we arrived in Cocos. In that week we have been busy as usual doing a lot of nothing but somehow not having enough hours in the day to get everything done. Being online has been great as we now have ordered a new mizzen sail that will be delivered to Mauritius by the end of the month so that is the biggest problem we have at least sorted out. Also talking to the kids on Skype has been fun. There are now seven boats here with a big cat arriving this morning.

Yesterday we did all the measurements for the mizzen with the help of another yachty named Guy who has made sails for the Ausi Americas Cup boats so he really knows what to measure and how to present it. That was the morning and in the afternoon we went out a ways to where we did some snorkeling with the manta rays. Great fun as these rays were six plus feet across and kept going over a coral outcropping to allow the little fish swim into their gills to clean them. The water is very clear so we got a good show. In the evening we along with Guy and wife Christine went over to Home island where the restaurant is open on Wednesday evening. Yes just one day a week. The dinner was buffet style and was real good with everything from prawns, mussels, octopus, to chicken, fish, and lamb with pavlova, cake and ice cream for desert. It was really good and unexpected being out in the middle of the Indian Ocean with such a small community of people.

We hope to be away on Saturday as we should be starting to get some winds by then. The trade winds have not sorted themselves out as of yet but we must be on our way. We would like to have 20k winds all the way but it looks like we will run into areas of no wind so will have to motor through these calms and hope to make it to Rodrigues in twelve days.?

Other than that we have been swimming and playing with the computer and reading books so not too tough.