Friday 25 July, the day of our planned departure from Salamon, started off windless and overcast, so we didn't leave until mid-day when a light SE wind started to blow. After hoisting the anchor I sailed Senta backwards and forwards near Deja Vu as Pierre tied down the dinghy and packed the anchor away near the shrouds. We always like to keep the ends of the boat light on a sea passage, to help Senta handle the seas better. As we said goodbye, the Deja Vu crew, who were getting ready to leave the following day, took photos of Senta in her 'Go to Sea' dress. We ran towards the pass with reefed main sheeted hard in to slow down. Even so, because of the poor light, we passed close to a bommie and had to do a rapid turn to starboard.
Once outside the pass we found a 15 to 18 knot SE wind and reached towards Blenheim Reef, passing it to starboard. As night fell the wind strengthened to 25 knots and we put another reef in the main and reduced the furling sail to working jib size.
By morning the wind had abated to 12 to 15 knots and we were back to full sail which we needed to drive us through the rough seas. By mid day our first 24 hours at sea had contributed 125 miles to our planned 1830 mile voyage. Rain squalls and long calms bedeviled our afternoon and night and we only progressed 16 miles in the twelve hours from 1800 to 0600.
We were both feeling well: no sea sickness in spite of the violent motion and we were eating a little. Not much sleep though as sail handling in the squalls and calms whittled away the time available for rest. The morning 15 knot SE wind slowly died until at lunch time we were bouncing around in the calm between three minor rain squalls like a ball in a pin ball machine. Our second day's NTNR (Noon to Noon Run) was a disappointing 65 miles.
In the early afternoon an enormous black cloud developed astern and we were soon running with our single deep mainsail reef and no jib before a NW wind which at times exceeded 40 knots, but whose general speed was about 35, slowly abating to 20. In the gusts the sea was crowded with white horses and streaked with spume and spindrift. Later as the wind decreased we set the working jib on the cutter stay. The wind backed to the SSE and remained there through the night, increasing slowly from 6 to 18 knots by the next morning. The seas were now much calmer. probably flattened by the NW squall. This was the first starry night of the passage and was also notable for the lack of sail changes needed and hence an increase in our sleep ration.
Colin of Deja Vu was sending us a radio message each morning, telling us where they were and giving us a weather report. We do not have a high frequency transmitter but can pick up SSB, USB and high frequency on our small Sony World Band receiver. Every day after hearing from Deja Vu, I would shout out through the main hatch, 'Thank you, Colin!'. I wonder if he ever heard me. This morning's message showed them to be about 30 miles away, the extreme limit of our VHF radio range. We tried calling them, but had no luck.
On our fourth day out the wind blew SSE in the morning and SE in the afternoon at about 15 knots with moderate seas. At sunset the wind speed increased, so we set the jib on the cutter stay and took a reef in the main. By 2100 the wind had moderated, so we shook out the reef and continued under full main and working jib throughout the welcome starry, no-squall night.
The next morning the wind had backed further to the ESE and we beat northwards at 40 degrees. Our desired course was 80 degrees, so we were a bit miffed, but the wind had worse in store for us. Our noon sight showed us to be 376 miles from Salamon, with an average day's run of 94 miles. The individual figures were 125, 65, 87 and 99. Progress was exhaustingly, painfully slow. On our previous voyage from Salamon to Langkawi at the same time of the year, our average daily mileage after four days out was 132.
The dolphins must have got news that we were down in the dumps, as they visited several times that day, to cheer us up with their antics and high pitched squeaks. We wished that our grand daughter, Angela, could have been with us to share the fun and watch them gracefully playing around Senta. The afternoon and evening gave us ESE winds of 12 knots as we continued to beat to the NE.
Pierre's comment in the log at mid night was 'Perfect weather' And it was. Reaching along in SE winds at 5 to 6 knots in moderate seas. But not for long. By 0700 the wind was gone and we motored for an hour. By mid day we were 10 miles further on heading at 30 degrees, doing 3 knots in a 5 knot easterly breeze, with sunny skies and no squalls.
Our NTNR was 94 miles, leaving the average unaltered. As the sun set the wind died completely. The new crescent moon shone brightly in the peach colored evening sky. We furled the genoa and drifted around under slatting mainsail until 2000, when we dropped the main. We drifted slowly all night doing 1 knot almost directly southwards, while we got lots of sleep. I made up a bed in the cockpit where I slept and occasionally looked out for ships and felt for wind. Nothing!
There was still no wind at dawn. Colin's radio message showed that they had also stopped to sleep, but had picked up wind at 0300. They were now 150 miles ahead of us and 113 miles further to the north.
A light 5 knot SW wind joined us for an hour at 0730. Then it was sails down again. It was very hot, but the solar panel gave us plenty of power to run fans and the inside of the cabin remained reasonably comfortable.
Someone had said to us that they didn't mind calms at sea. They just dropped sails and pretended that they were at some anchorage. We had no timetable or commitments, so might as well sit where we were as anywhere else, doing nothing. But it was a pretty boring anchorage, no ships or birds to see and no cat's paws of wind on the water, but lots and lots of stars at night, all perfectly reflected in the calm sea. The bad news was that our NTNR was only 14 miles. A record!. And it dropped our average day's run to 81 miles.
But we should not have been surprised. We were deep into the doldrums, Ancient Mariner territory. A thousand, thousand slimy things lived on and so did we.
At 1000 a breath of wind let us set the genoa and drift eastwards at 1,7 knots. It was only at noon that there was enough wind strength to set the main.
Just after lunch the NW wind brought a wide, deep squall front with 25 knot winds. The log entry says, 'Wind at last. Hurrah!' We had a super afternoon sail, surfing at 7,5 knots, but the wind died as evening and night drew on.
In the early hours of Friday 1 August the wind dropped out almost completely and what was left veered so that we had to gybe onto starboard at 0330 (the normal time for such night time activities). It was a night of countering the slatting and banging of the sails and rigging till dawn when the SW strengthened to 10 knots, allowing us to comfortably reach along with little or no slamming. But the seas were still confused from the previous day's squall and we had swell from several directions to cope with.
The morning radio schedule told us that MC Duck and Maloya had left Addu bound for Phuket and that Tramontana and Papagena were to leave Chagos in a few days. So Salamon was slowly emptying and the boats moving eastwards. There was much studying of weather forecasts, faxes and GRIP files, whatever they may be. But as Colin commented they have little meaning near the equator and he encouraged the boats to pick a day and leave. The actual weather is never like that forecast. And that seems to be the case, as the general gripe of the weather forecast addicts goes something like this, 'The forecast said 12 knots SE and we got 25 knots NE' I believe that some people use these modern electronic weather facilities as some sort of a crutch - an excuse not to leave, or a false encouragement to do so and something to blame if things go wrong. We prefer to look out of the hatch and study the skies and horizon.
Our NTNR was 106 miles, the second best of this voyage. Afternoon rain squalls played havoc with the wind and we motored for 1,5 hours to try to get away from the system. By early evening a moderate SE came through and by mid night we were 4 miles south of the equator and 9 miles west of 82 degrees east, the recommended meridian before which you should not cross northwards over the equator on your way eastwards. 82 degrees marks the east side of Sri Lanka and can be regarded as the gateway to the Bay of Bengal and the start of the SW trades.
After mid night we set full main, and after Pierre had set and tweaked the sails we had a wonderful six hour run at 7 knots. The wind became lighter at dawn and our speed dropped to 5 knots. The sun was rising earlier and earlier and night time was coming too fast, so we put our clocks one hour forward to be more in tune with the actual sun time.
We were glad to be away from squalls and calms for a while and our NTNR was an encouraging 119 miles. But squalls weren't far away. At lunch time the wind died and we motored for half an hour before a SE squall of 18 knots arrived to amuse us. Squalls came and went all afternoon. They were a wretched nuisance as we had to reef before each one arrived and shake out the reefs once they passed over, leaving us with little wind and lumpy seas for a while, until the ambient 12 knot SE wind came back. Another beautiful starry night and a waxing moon watched over our eastwards progress.
The 15 knot SE blew all night and the following day giving an NTNR of 141 miles, the highest for the passage. During the night the wind slowly veered from SE through SSE, S, SSW to SW and Senta's course moved from NNE to E. With the wind far behind us the wind pressure decreased and became too light to stop the sails slatting. We tried to reduce the effect by inserting bungee cord shock absorbers into the main boom preventers. This worked reasonably well as we jogged to leeward at 5 knots with a SE swell on the beam.
Early next morning we poled out the genoa to starboard and ran off goose winged before the SW wind steering 60 degrees on our desired course of 57 degrees to the Nicobar islands, now just over 500 miles away.
Deja Vu reported having been buzzed by an Australian air force plane and asked to identify herself and state her previous and next ports of call. So it looked as if we were entering an area of military activity.
We had been warned not to pass between the top of Sumatra and Rondo Island. Civil unrest in the Aceh province of Indonesia had led authorities to place a twelve mile no go zone around the coast. This meant that we would have to give Sumatra a very wide berth, because from Rondo northwards for forty miles or so there are dangerous tide rips which we had unwittingly encountered on our passage through the area in 1997. We would need to go very close around the southern end of the Nicobars, or perhaps even through the Sombrero channel, between Great and Little Nicobar Islands.
Maloya, off the south coast of Sri Lanka reported that they had been surrounded by fishing boats and were very anxious until the crews of the boats offered them fresh bananas, pineapples, paw paws and juice for their two young daughters, Lucy aged five and three year old Chloe. So, you see BBC, there is some good news in the world. You just have to look for it.
Our NTNR was 133 miles continuing the good progress as we goose winged in an 18 knot SW which gradually backed letting us sail further north, which was what we wanted.
Thursday 5 August started with a 30 knot squall followed by a calm. We motored for an hour before the SW wind came back, this time increased in speed to 25 knots. NTNR had again increased, this time to 153 miles.
As evening approached we didn't like the look of the sky, so in the last of the daylight we put a reef in the main. Just as well because at 2300 on Pierre's watch, we were hit by two successive squalls, the first one blew at 30 knots and the second closer to 40. Pierre rolled up the genoa and ran off under reefed mainsail in pouring rain. He was very cold and wet when he came off watch. I took over and continued goose winging, altering the amount of unfurled genoa to match the wind speed which was averaging 20 to 25 knots.
Deja Vu's report the next morning showed that she had crossed into the Andaman sea south of the Nicobars with no problems from rough seas, so we decided to do the same. At this stage we were about two days behind them. As she is a fast racing 50 footer, we were reasonably pleased with our progress.
At sunset our eavesdropping on the evening radio schedule was interrupted by yet another squall, during which the reception became very poor. The SW wind came back and blew all night at 15 to 18 knots, giving us 5,5 knots goose winged under reefed main and furled genoa.
We were now approaching the shipping lanes carrying the heavy traffic between SUEZ and the Far East. We did not want to encounter any shipping until daylight, so spent the early hours of 7 August lifting Senta into the wind on starboard gybe to head more directly eastwards and paralleling the traffic. At 0600 we bore away to engage the enemy and sighted the first ship at 0900. We goose winged on a course of 20 to 30 degrees, easily threading our way through the ships, which were less numerous than we expected. The most we saw at any one time was five and we probably passed about 35 in total. At noon we headed up on starboard to 50 plus degrees, more in line with our desired course to Pygmalion Point at the southern extremity of the Nicobars.
Our NTNR was 135 for the second day running and we had 425 miles left to go to Langkawi. By mid afternoon we were 70% through the shipping channel and shook out the second reef in the main to give us more speed to hurry away from the ships before nightfall.
At 1800 at the extreme north part of the channel we encountered the mother of all squalls, black and menacing. It was my watch and, in full wet weather gear and life harness clipped on I hand steered Senta through some of the strongest winds I have ever seen. Actually our wind steerer, Hilda, was doing most of the work, but I was acting as a damper and assisting her in catching the waves at the correct angle for surfing. We had not thought it necessary to put in a second reef so Senta was running off under single reefed mainsail and a handkerchief of jib rolled out and sheeted hard on both port and starboard sheets to help keep her nose pointed away from the wind.
Senta leapt from crest to crest, sometimes almost airborne in the aerated breaking water. I estimated the sustained wind strength at 40 knots with gusts of 50 or more. But I usually underestimate by 5 to 10 knots, so the wind could have been stronger. Also I was estimating apparent wind speed and our down wind boat speed of 8 to 10 knots could be added to my estimate to arrive at the true wind speed.
Using all my skill to keep her sailing fast, I still had to find time to watch, through the rain and spray, for ships, which could have come from any direction. Luckily there was only one ship, or at least that was all I saw. After two hours I was exhausted and the squall abated. I still had to concentrate on keeping Senta running off fairly down the front of the big waves that had built up. It was very exciting, but an adrenalin rush of the kind I don't want to have too often. You have to forget that your life, that of your spouse and all of your worldly possessions depend on what you do from second to second in response to the stimuli reaching every sense you have, and some you don't even know about.
Pierre was trying to sleep in all of this excitement. He had been having trouble sleeping and had not had any good sleep sessions for 36 hours. Eventually from 2130 onwards the wind abated to 15 to 18 knots and we continued reaching towards Pygmalion Point.
At 0100, back on watch again, I picked up a white light directly astern. It gradually came closer showing the dreaded pattern of port red and starboard green topped by a white steaming light. The bearing was constant, a sure sign of a pending collision. We had been running without lights at night for the duration of the passage for several reasons. Firstly we needed to conserve battery power as our wind generator was no longer operational. Secondly, even if you do have lights the ships never see them, as they do not keep a good look out. And thirdly, curious fishing and other small boats come closer to investigate your light and make a nuisance.
I nipped down below and switched on our navigation lights. Still the following ship came closer on a course directly aimed at our transom. Back down below again I used the VHF radio to call the pursuer giving his approximate position, our exact position, course and speed, telling him that he was on a collision course and asking him to keep clear, to show me either his red or his green light, but not both. Immediately a voice came back asking me to go to channel 67. Once there the voice said, 'This is an Indian varship, Please identify yourself.' The Nicobars are Indian territory, so I guess the warship was doing his job. He had obviously picked us up on radar and wondered what his mysterious craft was doing approaching without lights. He had probably been calling us on VHF for some time, with no response. I told him our boat name, nationality, last and next ports of call and number of persons on board. The voice spoke in a good educated English accent, except for the V instead of a W. He was very polite, thanked us for our co-operation, didn't chide us for running without lights, told us he would not collide with us, but would pass slowly to starboard and wished us a successful landfall in Langkawi.
We sailed on this time with both radio and lights switched on and were accompanied for several hours by our very own Indian varship. We heard many other calls from this and other naval vessels calling up every ship in the gap between Sumatra and the Nicobars. Most answered promptly but several sleepy ones had to be threatened with 'flashing' and boarding before they responded.
We connected this activity to the earlier buzzing of Deja Vu by the Australian aircraft and commented on the increased military surveillance of this strategic piece of sea.
By daylight all of the ships, naval and otherwise had gone to bed and we continued working our way eastwards to Langkawi, now 330 miles away, as we ate large bowls of oatmeal, our first real meal since starting to cross the shipping channel.
During the night we crept further into the Malacca Straits and into the lee of Sumatra where we began to lose the wind. With 195 miles to go to Langkawi we started the motor. It ran almost continuously until we dropped anchor in Bass harbour next to Deja Vu at 0130 on the 10th of August. A bit of an anti climax to what had been a varied and interesting passage.
We had taken sixteen and a half days compared to our previous time of fourteen and a half days in 2001. Our NTNRs told the story: 125, 65, 87, 99, 14, 106, 119, 141, 133, 153, 135, 135, 131, 115, 116, 63.
After a short but welcome sleep we woke to a visit from Colin and Glynn from Deja Vu when we chatted about our passages and commiserated with each other about the calms and squalls that dogged the earlier part. A long lazy lunch ashore was all that happened that day, apart from lots of loafing and napping.
A few days later we heard about a problem experienced by friends Heinz and Patricia of the St Francis 43 catamaran, Papagena en route from Chagos to Langkawi. With still 600 miles to go one of her twin rudders fell off. 24 hours later the second rudder dropped to the bottom of the ocean. We heard today that there was corrosion in a welded joint between two sections of the rudder shafts. Luckily for Papagena, Tramontana was only 70 miles away to the north of them and Phil diverted to the south to take Papagena in tow. Some days later both boats arrived safely in Phuket. A successful rescue, thank goodness.
We are now well into seeing to our post passage business: re-establishing e-mail contact with friends and family, checking bank accounts, sorting out insurance, filling up with fresh water, diesel and fresh fruit and vegetables and starting to get to grips with the fixing and replacement of equipment that got sick or died while we were away. Also high on the list was getting up to date with the news letters, which has now been done.
For the next six months or so we will be occupied with preparations for travels further east to Singapore, Borneo, Brunei, Papua New Guinea and into the SW Pacific.
More on all of that in future news letters, but don't expect them soon.
Senta Newsletter Chagos February to July 2003
The day to day life in Salamon atoll was livened up by several interesting events:
- The arrival on 4 March of Lamu, a 500 ton converted North Sea oil rig rescue ship. Her skipper Leslie, an Australian, and three New Zealander crew members, Chris, Wayne and Lucy were delivering her to Australia and completing her refit to a luxury motor cruiser en route.
They were doing an excellent job, but hadn't yet decided what to do with the large morgue in the hold. This was connected to the deck by a chute down which filled body bags were dropped, to be stored in the specially designed racks that lined the morgue. This was a useful facility for a rescue ship, but a bit bizarre on a luxury cruiser.
Lamu held a party on board for the crews of the eight boats in the anchorage. At 1700 as invited we all arrived at Lamu in our dinghies, only to find that they were not ready for us. We were all operating on Chagos time and Lamu had not yet switched from Seychelles time, so they thought it was only 1600. We used the extra time to explore the ship, gasping at the walk-in freezers, double beds and lounge suites and especially her sailing dinghy, a genuine Arab dhow from Lamu in north Kenya. Lamu provided fillet steak, calamari, a green salad, cool drinks and wine. Each yacht brought an accompanying dish of salad or a dessert. Charlie, the Maltese poodle we were dog sitting found a large flying fish on deck for his supper and topped off with bits of steak and morsels of puddings. A great time was had by all. Paul of Quarterdeck did some magic tricks and seventy-year old Keith from Lady Guinevere, sang a sea shanty and recited a poem. Several people got pretty drunk on Lamu's excellent wine, and one lady got absolutely motherless. But some quick sobering up happened as the weather deteriorated, blowing fresh from the west, exactly on the nose for our dinghy trips back to our boats. It was quite a mission getting everyone safely back against the choppy sea that had built up. There were some very sore heads in the anchorage the next morning. It is at times like this that I am really glad we gave up alcohol decades ago, in fact as soon as we realized that we could not afford to drink and sail!
- Pierre's successful attempt at match making. Chris, a seventy year old friend, who looks and acts at least fifteen years younger, arrived in his motor yacht Harmony, and came aboard Senta for a chat on 7 May. Louise, Chris' wife of 44 years had died two years previously and he was finding the life of a single hander very lonely. Pierre told Chris about Pauline, an attractive late-middle aged lady and owner of Summer Breeze, who had told us that she wanted to sell her boat and buy a small motor cruiser. We had found her to be a pleasant, quiet, thoughtful person, in fact a lot like Chris himself. Pierre suggested that Chris get to know Pauline. Chris made no comment but less than two weeks later he visited us again to say that he had engineered a meeting with Pauline. They had immediately taken a liking to each other and found that they had a lot in common. Pauline had moved on board Harmony and they were planning for Steve, her crew, to sail Summer Breeze to Mayotte in company with Harmony. There they would sell Summer Breeze, Steve would fly home to Australia, and Chris and Pauline would continue cruising the Indian Ocean together. We were absolutely delighted to hear the news. I don't know whose smile was bigger, Pierre's at his success as Cupid, or Chris' at his bloody good luck finding someone so exactly right for him in such a remote place.
- Learning about the phenomenon known as 'Epoxy Re-cure'. During one of the hot calm days of the changeover season, Phil, of the New Zealand yacht Tramontana, complained that the epoxy on his boat, a wood/epoxy composite hull, had started to melt and re-cure. This happens to epoxy when the ambient temperature increases to 20 degrees Fahrenheit higher than that at which it was originally cured. Once the re-cure process is complete the epoxy will be stable unless the ambient temperature rises a further 20 degrees, which is most unlikely. Phil, a boat builder, had laid up Tramontana's hull in chilly New Zealand and was now in the hot tropics, hence his problem.
- The arrival of Hans on Biggie, a Bavaria 45. Salamon atoll was definitely not what he was expecting it to be, as he learned from the disbelieving looks on our faces when he asked us where he could buy diesel, make a phone call and have a meal at a restaurant. Nevertheless he stayed for a month and then sailed three hundred miles north to Adddu atoll in the Maldives for diesel and provisions before returning to Chagos for a further month. He then sailed for Seychelles where he was stranded on an island. His lower shroud had started to unravel and he had put into Providence Island for shelter in the strong winds blowing at the time. In the process he had damaged his rudder by getting too close to a reef. He was ship wrecked on an uninhabited island and remained there for two weeks camping on the shore until a fishing boat fortuitously came by and towed him to Mahe, the capital of the Seychelles group.
- The hermit crab race meeting organized by Colin and Glynnis of Deja Vu and Pierre and I. The task of publicity fell to me and I was determined that everyone on the atoll would take part. A week beforehand I announced the event on the VHF radio giving people lots of time to find and train their crabs. Further radio reminders, posters on coconut trees at the beach and hand delivered invitations (under sail in the dinghy) to each boat ensured that there was a 100% turnout.
The children in the anchorage were especially excited, and as soon as they finished their morning school projects rushed off to shore to hunt out the fastest hermit crabs on Boddam Island.
Entry fee for each competing crab was anything suitable to be used as a prize with a value of less than one US dollar. An amazing selection of prizes accumulated on the planks, placed across two forty gallon drums, which served as a prize table: cans of food, fish hooks, a straw hat, half a dozen eggs, cool drinks, pirate CDs and videos, books and many other things including most prized of all, a bar of Toblerone chocolate.
The race course was a large circle drawn on the sand of the volley ball area. All contestants were placed in a large blue bucket , which was upended in the middle of the circle by the judge, Colin. After a few seconds wait to give the hermits time to find their feet, the bucket was lifted and the crabs scurried away from each other towards the circumference of the circle. First, second and third crabs across the line won prizes. Pierre, Glynn and I decided which crabs these were. As crab owners, trainers and supporters cheered and urged their pets onwards, an exciting commentary was given by Cap'n Fatty Goodlander of Wild Card. To my delight my crab won the first race and I unashamedly claimed the bar of Toblerone. When a few races later my crab won again I chose as a prize a delightful color photograph of a hermit crab taken by Ollie of the Swedish yacht, Ingrid. In terms of the contest rules I then had to retire my crab. Seventeen races later everyone was hoarse from cheering and laughing and most entries had won a prize. As the afternoon ended sundowners and snacks appeared to end off an exciting day.
- The dingy regatta organized on 7 June by Pennie and John of Aramia. First was a series of pursuit races for sailing dinghies. There were seven entries, including Senta's dinghy. The event was won by six year old Diego from the Italian boat, Daisy Duck, in his tiny seven foot dinghy. Phil of Tramontana, who was the handicapper, confessed to a strong bias towards Diego, mainly prompted by the case of rum delivered to Tramontana early that morning by Diego.
The second event, a down wind sailing race for jury rigged dinghies was a tie between the USA, represented by Glen and Arrya of Akku Anka and Tigger's crew of Eileen and Ron from Sarnia in Canada. Finally after a picnic lunch on the beach there was an international paddling race. Only inflatable dinghies could enter. There could be any number of paddlers per dinghy, but they all had to come from the same country. This race was won by Italy's team of Frederico, Fulvia, Valentina and Diego of Daisy Duck after a protest. When it became apparent that Italy would lose, Frederico jumped out of the dinghy, grabbed its painter and ran along the shore pulling his inept paddling family into first place. Frederico's claim that there was no written rule saying he couldn't do that was accepted by the judge. Some of the other competitors suspected that there would be further ferrying of rum from Daisy Duck to Tramontana under cover of darkness.
- Meeting Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander of the American yacht Wild Card. In his fifties now, Fatty has lived on boats all his life and has many wonderful tales to tell, always with a humorous slant. On his first circumnavigation, Fatty is working to keep eating and drinking by writing articles for sailing magazines. He also has a weekly half hour radio show broadcast out of St John's in the USA Virgin Islands. He prepares the radio slots months in advance and mails off the tapes whenever he gets near a post office. He recorded an interview with Pierre on the subject of the dismasted catamaran, SuiderKruis, described in earlier newsletters.
My favourite story from Fatty is about when he was preparing Wild Card for cruising. He had little money and what he had was spent on repairs to the boat and provisions. He had no means of transport, yet a great need to transport stuff to the boat. One day, passing the offices of the Yellow Cab Company, he saw that they were advertising for cab drivers. Aha! he thought, went in and applied for a job. Pretty soon he left with his very own Yot Grot transporter, disguised as a taxi. After about ten days Fatty was summoned to the office for 'counseling'. 'Well,' said his wife Carolyn, 'you had to expect that. You never picked up any passengers.' Fatty was indignant. 'Oh yes I did pick up fares. But, admittedly only if they were going my way and didn't mind sitting on yacht stuff: anchors, fibreglass, cans of paint, that sort of thing.' Needless to say that after a further two weeks Fatty was fired and the cab company got its cab back, a bit the worse for wear. But by that time Fatty had done most of his stuff moving and was happy to give the cab back. 'Much cheaper than hiring a car.', he said.
- The party given by Pacific Marlin, the red ship that brings the British marines once a month. Lots of salad, meat, desserts and best of all M&M s for the children and loads of ice cream. Again the wind kicked up quite a chop to make the dinghy ride back home unpleasant in the dark.
- Jenain's voyage to Addu for provisions prior to spending another couple of months in Chagos and then sailing for Africa, turned out longer than expected. The east setting current and fresh NW winds pushed them 150 miles east of the Maldives. Their engine transmission broke and they were unable to make westing to Addu. So they were forced to sail for Thailand, 3 500 miles away from where they really wanted to be in the second half of 2003.
- The Yot Grot swap days, where everyone brought out junk from their boats to sell or swap for other junk. We could never find anything on Senta that we wanted to be rid of, so we just went along for the outing and company and to see if there was anything we wanted to buy, which there never was.
- The mysterious problem of our starter motor which intermittently wouldn't work. After discussing it with anyone who was prepared to listen and being advised to do nothing other than hope it would start when needed, we took to examining the flywheel every time the starter refused to function, to see if we could discern a pattern with no success. All of a sudden the starter stopped behaving badly and started every time. But each time we turned the ignition key we expected the worst. All we could do was put it on our list of things to attend to when we reached civilization again.
-Aramia's sailing dinghy, which can be dismantled into two pieces for easy stowing and which sails extremely well, made us decide to get hold of the plans and build one out of plywood in Thailand. Deja Vu will do the same and we hope that building two dinghies together will be almost as easy as building one.
- Our seven-year old faithful Rutland wind charger gave up the ghost. After working on it for several days we couldn't fix it and had to put its repair or replacement on to the list of things to do later. Luckily we got enough sun each day to charge the batteries using the solar panel. Our philosophy on battery charging was to have three sources, alternator from the motor, solar panel and wind generator. So now that had paid off, because with one out of action we still had two back ups.
- The departure of many boats in May and June for Seychelles and Madagascar. We listened eagerly each morning to their radio reports of progress. We were like anxious parents or coaches as many of these people had asked for our advice and we were concerned that it should prove accurate and helpful.
Fatty on Wild Card reported 40 to 50 knot winds as he approached the top of Madagascar with the boat under storm jib surfing down the massive waves at fifteen knots. He and Carolyn, as advised by us, had stopped wearing clothes as they kept getting wet from waves in the cockpit. They only wore safety harnesses and the waves were so rough that they remained clipped on, even below decks. Fatty commented, 'Man, if a bunch of South Africans tell you that there will be big seas and heavy wind, don't for one teeny weeny second doubt them!'
When they were safely anchored on the leeward western side of Madagascar, Fatty swore that he was going to sell Wild Card, buy a chunk of Madagascar, set up a MacDonalds and never go to sea again. Needless to say a few days later, Wild Card was off the market again and Fatty and Carolyn were looking forward to their next sailing adventure.
- The giant beach bonfire on 21 June to celebrate mid winters day, a big holiday for the Swedish members of our community from SV Ingrid.
- The arrival in early July of the Australian yacht Spike. She had spent three weeks being ground intro a reef in Indonesia, then sailed to India and the Maldives before coming to Chagos. With her outer layer of glass penetrated Toredo worm had invaded the first layer of wood in her wood/epoxy composite hull. She was in bad shape and needed fixing. Her owner, Russell had no money or food and was hoping to be able to beach her in Salamon and fix her while living off fish and coconuts. But he hadn't reckoned on 'The Brits' who arrived and wanted their $80 mooring fee. When they learned he had no money, they gave him ten days to beach his boat, fix it and be off. They did however give him a little food to keep him going when he told them that he was a 'tad hungry'. When we left towards the end of July, Russell had sold some Indian saris and hammocks and paid his $80, so I reckon he is still there.
- The large school of spinner dolphins that visited the lagoon to hunt tuna. As they swim along they leap out of the water, do barrel rolls and tail-over-head flips, before smashing down onto the water. In this way they frighten and herd the tuna so that they can catch and eat them.
By mid July we had a list of forty pre-departure jobs to do and our food supplies were starting to diminish. We still had plenty of cans and staples like rice and pasta. But fresh fruit and vegetables were a distant memory and luxuries like chocolates, cold drinks and biscuits were almost finished so we started to think reluctantly of leaving our island paradise. while determined to enjoy each remaining day to the full.
We set a tentative departure date of 25 July and hoped it would be a long time coming.
About a week before we were due to leave, a French yacht Marimba was wrecked on the reef in the atoll between Isles De Passe and Mapou. The pass into the lagoon is between De Passe and Isle Anglaise. The incident happened at 0800 one morning. Glynnis of Deja Vu was enjoying her early morning coffee in the cockpit and watching the boat sailing in. When she realized that he was making for the wrong gap she rushed down below, grabbed the VHF radio microphone and yelled on channel 16, the international calling channel, 'Go back, Go back. There is no pass there. Go Back!' Both she and Colin rushed up on deck again to see that the yacht had turned through 90 degrees but too late. Marimba had hit the steep sharp coral wall. Serge, the skipper, was on the helm and Pascal, his wife was on look out on the bow. She yelled several times to Serge that there was no pass and that all she could see was breakers and rocks. His reply was that he knew what he was doing, that he had been here before and knew the way in! What a tragic piece of misjudgment!
Within half an hour many people had turned up in their dinghies at t he wreck site to help. Attempts were made to pull her off to seaward, but the waves were too rough. It was two hours to low tide, and the owner, Serge, made the decision to abandon the boat. The other yotties then set up a ferry system of inflatable dinghies and the contents of Marimba were safely unloaded and deposited on the beach at Isle De Passe before the tide came too far in again. The next few tides lifted Marimba high on the reef and there she will stay until she is completely broken up by the sea.
In the next couple of days Serge was helped to unfasten and remove most of the fittings from the boat. An auction on the beach raised $ 6000 which would help to buy air tickets home. Walt and Judith on Csa Vargo, a South African yacht, took Serge and Pascal and all of their belongings on board and will take them to Seychelles or perhaps on to South Africa.
There was a subdued pensive atmosphere in the lagoon for some time as we all thought how easily it could be to make a mistake like that, especially at the end of a voyage, when tiredness is at its peak.
In spite of the sad end we had enjoyed our stay, and reflected as we made our final preparations, that we would definitely be back some day.
Next newsletter - journey back to the real world, Langkawi Malaysia follows soon
Senta Newsletter Voyage to Chagos January/February 2003
On Wednesday 22 January we cleared Rebak Island off the West Coast of Langkawi, broad reaching in a light NE wind.
We had 2077 miles to go to Salomon atoll in the Chagos archipelago, and 370 miles to our first waypoint at the eastern entrance to the Sombrero channel in the Nicobar Islands, west of Thailand.
We planned not to take the direct route to the top of Sumatra, but to head northwest to avoid the tide rips and overfalls north of Sumatra and south of the Nicobars. We would hopefully get more wind further north and delay crossing the busy shipping lane from the east of Arabia until it had time to become less concentrated with some ships peeling off towards India and Bangladesh. The route we planned was 280 miles longer than the direct passage.
The light NE wind died at mid day and we sat in a frustrating calm for 4 hours, before a westerly wind allowed us to sail up the east side of the Butang Islands, reaching the area of the NE entrance at 2030, twelve hours after leaving. Our previous time for this trip had been five and a half hours a little under a month before.
As we slowly ghosted through the light winds in the lee of Ko Adang, Senta quietly came up on a school of dolphins. They must have had their sonars switched off, because as we approached they were startled and darted away in fright. The light westerly lasted all night but by 0900 the next morning had veered to NNE. We had covered 60 miles in our first 24 hours at sea. Not an auspicious start. We hoped things would get a lot better, otherwise we were in for a thirty-five day voyage instead of the fifteen to twenty days we hoped for.
The seas were rough and choppy with many small tide rips and the wind too light to drive us through them. We were both eating well, but our three hours on three hours off sleep pattern was not yet established and we felt tired and scratchy-eyed.
Our noon to noon distance for the next day was 101 miles, much better than the previous day’s 63, but a lot lower than Senta’s average cruising speed of 135 miles per day and in a completely different ball park to her maximum day to day run of 179 miles.
But we were speeding up. We encountered no calms the next day and a consistent N to NE wind.
When we ran the engine to cool the fridge we found that the pump taking the seawater to the fridge system heat exchanger was overheating. It blew several 15amp fuses. Consultation with the West Marine catalogue showed that we should have been using 25amp fuses but we didn’t have any. We thus did the dangerous thing of ‘hot wiring’ the pump directly to the batteries and it worked, but more on this topic later.
On my evening watch I checked the mast head tri-color navigation light and was pretty sure that it had been twisted anti-clockwise through 60 degrees. Jolly confusing for any passing ships! Pierre later confirmed that I was correct and wondered if the light had come loose and was about to fall off. It had been OK when we checked it on his pre-departure inspection trip to the masthead in Langkawi. We didn’t want to lose the fitting and hoped that in the lee of the Nicobars after going through the Sombrero channel we might find a calm area for me to hoist Pierre to the top of the mast for repairs. In the mean time we obviously couldn’t use it and had to rely on the mast head anchor light instead. In fact this is a better light, being much more visible than the tri-color.
At 0920 on Saturday 25 January we had 75 miles to go to Sombrero. We were making five knots in the consistent NE wind and at this speed we expected to reach the entrance to the channel just after midnight. The moon would rise at 0130 giving us some sight of land as we passed through.
We were settling down to the life at sea and things looked good. The sailing was comfortable, five knots in the right direction. We were eating and sleeping well. Some of our fresh fruit was going off and had to be jettisoned. The clear weather made sun shelter essential. Apart from our semi permanent bimini over the cockpit, we rigged a bright yellow and white striped garden umbrella on the bridge deck to give protection to the main hatch and front part of the cockpit. We also had some detachable side and back flaps for the bimini to help keep us cool. We even tried fishing and caught a small barracuda, which fried, gave us a delicious supper.
We sighted the Great and Little Nicobar Islands at 1500 and started the transit of the Sombrero channel at 1800. By 0130 we were through with no problems other than confused seas in a few places. The wind continued to be NE eight to twelve knots.
The next morning we were both tired, not having got much sleep the night before. We never found any calm area in which to try to fix our ‘out of whack’ navigation light.
The NE died for a short while in the lee of the Nicobars but came back again as the sun rose and Senta was soon barreling along.
Fruit and Veggie inspection led to a lot more being thrown overboard. It was obvious that only the onions, potatoes, garlic and ginger could last any time un-refrigerated. We almost cried as we threw away paw paws, cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, apples and onions. We managed to repack the fridge and find space for the remainder of the apples and carrots, which then lasted well, in fact until we had eaten them all weeks later in Chagos.
By 0625 on 27 January we were 164 miles from the waypoint at which we planned to turn and run directly southwards to cross the shipping lane as quickly as possible. We were going too far north on starboard reach, so goose winged the sails and like this, between 0625 and 1800 we made 38 miles of southing before returning to the starboard reach.
We sailed through fairly rough seas, which slowly smoothed out to longer swells as the day wore on. Dolphins paid us a visit at sunset. During the night we picked up a strong west going current which at times added 1,5 to 2 knots to our speed, and gave us a 24-hour run of 168 miles. The next morning we found many flying fish on the deck and thought of our friend’s Maltese poodle, Muffie, who loves to eat them.
We did an ‘all ships’ radio check call on our VHF and got an immediate reply that we were coming through loud and clear. This told us two things. Our radio was working and the ships were close. We sighted the first ship at 0900 on our port quarter. This was 20 hours earlier than we had expected so we headed five degrees to the north to more closely parallel the shipping lane.
At 1530 a catamaran, Kappa, appeared on the horizon aft and slowly overtook us, until at 1900 our paths diverged as she moved northwards to Sri Lanka and we went south towards the dreaded shipping channel. At 2045 we saw two ships, followed by many more on the midnight to 0300 watch. There was a lot of phosphorescence in the water and luckily some dolphins arrived to entertain us with their silver, starry tracks through the sea. Criss-crossing in front of Senta, darting in from both sides and accelerating past with a few flicks of their powerful tails. We could only stare in amazement and laugh with the joy of the moment, as the dolphins renewed their efforts, showing off to their appreciative audience. Sadly they had to leave on some important errand for Neptune, but we knew we would see them again some starry night.
Wednesday 29 January marked our first week at sea. We had covered 878 of our 2077-mile voyage, at an average of 125 miles per day. We no longer had any current to help us along and only very light winds with which to maneuver through the ships. We tried the spinnaker for a few hours. It gave a bit of added speed, but then Senta ran almost as fast as the wind, and in zero apparent wind the wind steering vane would not work. So we had to hand steer. This was too much like hard work, so after making twenty miles of southing under bag and human steering, we reverted to goose winging and vane steering.
At 1300 we were startled by a bang as Senta hit a large tree branch. The noise was loud and scary, but because of our low speed the impact was light and no damage was done.
Pierre was having trouble sleeping on his off watches and was getting more and more tired. When eventually he did fall asleep on the midnight to 0300 watch, I stood a double watch and let him sleep till 0730. This was made easy for me, as there were no ships in sight and only one sail change needed when the wind veered at 0145. Goose winging was no longer a viable option forcing us too far south on a course of 210 degrees. I brought Senta up on the wind to 250 degrees, collapsed the genoa through the fore triangle and re sheeted it to port as Pierre slept through the accompanying banging and thumping around.
We reached westwards through the following day at 5,5 knots in gradually smoother seas. No sail changes or course alterations were required so we had time to rest, read and cook a decent meal.
By mid afternoon we were through the shipping lane. It hadn’t been so bad and we had probably seen about thirty ships in all.
At almost 082 degrees east, the meridian marking the east side of Sri Lanka and 100 miles south of Sri Lanka we now entered a very lonely part of the Indian Ocean. The scarcity of soundings on our chart of the area testified to its remoteness. But we were still reminded of civilization as many chunks of polystyrene floated by, each carrying a label saying ‘To Maldives, Sri Lanka or Chagos, with love from Thailand and Malaysia’. We had now entered a period of light and variable winds and our day runs showed it; 178 miles on the 28th, then 146, 126, 114 and 90 on subsequent days.
By 0900 on Saturday 1 February we were 387 miles away from our next waypoint at the eastern entrance of the One and a Half-Degree Channel in the Maldives. We planned to ride the west going Equatorial Current through this channel to about fifty miles west of Salamon atoll, before turning south. We wanted this buffer to compensate for the east setting Equatorial counter current and SW winds we could expect south of the equator.
Calms and light NE winds plagued us. Slatting of the sails and chafe were taking their toll of boat equipment and our nerves. We added heavy bungee cord to the vang preventers for the main boom and wrapped the genoa fairleads in cloth to try to lessen the jarring, but what we really needed was a good press of wind.
During the night of 1 February we drifted past several fishing boats, one of which changed course and came straight at us. When it was close enough for me to see the brightly painted stern castle, the individual lights and people on board, I flashed a torch alternately onto our sails and his bridge, and then he altered course and moved off. Probably just curious, but scary none the less.
By 0900 on the 2nd our ATCF (As The Crow Flies) distance to Salamon atoll was 626 miles, but 733 miles by our chosen route. It looked very tempting to bear off and go direct to Salamon, thus saving at least a day. But the pilot charts of the wind and current, and our own log of our previous similar passage showed that if we took the direct course we would be badly affected by SW winds and an east going current. So we decided to stick to our plan.
On our 13th day at sea, with 1466 miles under our keel and another 610 to go, we pondered on how this crossing of the north eastern part of the Indian Ocean compared with crossing the Sahara from east to west.
The following table gives some idea: - Indian Ocean Sahara Distance 1253 miles 2172 miles Speed 5 knots ?? 10 MPH Water supply 800 litres 200 litres Food supply 240 days 40 days Temperature mild day and night hot day, cold nights Dangers containers, gales sand storms, thirst Pirates, ships, reefs robbers Critical factors strong boat, strong camels, navigation navigation fresh water, food fresh water, food health of crew health of camels and explorers
Makes you think doesn’t it? Certainly gives some idea of the size and scope of a crossing of a major section of ocean.
Our noon to noon run was an improved 123 miles. We seemed to have reversed the downward trend.
Chafe and noise are the bane of a downwind passage. We spent many hours padding blocks, fairleads etc, tying things up with bungee cord and adjusting lines on self-steering system, which continued to be finicky in the low apparent wind.
We were also kept busy tending the fresh produce, sorting through it every couple of days to throw away the rotten bits before they contaminated everything else. Our paw paws, bananas, mangoes and pineapples had all gone – either into our stomachs or overboard. The apples, pears, oranges, potatoes, onions, garlic and ginger were all doing well.
On Tuesday 4 February we ghosted slowly under goose-winged main and genoa towards One and a Half-Degree Channel, now sixty miles away. Dolphins were in almost constant attendance, darting past us, crossing our bows and then circling back to come from behind again. Almost as if saying, ‘Come on, Hurry up you slow coaches. Throw us a line and we will give you a tow, or else you will never get to Chagos’.
At mid day a rainsquall brought some wind and then a calm. But it marked a change in the weather because 45 minutes later a ten to fifteen knot NE arrived. We ran before it, assisted by a good westerly current and reached the eastern entrance to the One and a Half-Degree Channel.
The good wind and current held as we navigated across and through the fifty mile wide channel and round the NW corner of Huvadhoo atoll in the Maldives. Our first sight of land was at 0730 the next morning as we sailed south towards Salamon, now 360 miles away.
A large school of dolphins passed by, obviously on very important business, as they didn’t even stop to say ‘Hello’, which was most unusual.
In the lee of Huvadhoo atoll Pierre rigged the cutter stay and working jib in case we encountered heavy weather and squalls in the westerlies we could expect south of the equator.
Our noon to noon run was 129 miles, continuing the upward trend and we crossed the equator in time to share our afternoon cup of tea with King Neptune.
Just after midnight the NE wind started to die and our speed dropped to 3 knots. When the sun came up we motored for an hour. Then it was back to trying to drag some sea miles out of the chaos of light wind puffs, varying in strength and direction, swells from several directions at the same time, throwing what wind we did catch out of the sails, and the continuing slap, slap, bang of the rigging. All day long we worked hard constantly varying the sail trim and managed to keep Senta moving south at just under 3 knots. We were traversing the classic doldrums area around the equator and were creeping slowly towards the westerly wind belt. From early evening on 6 February the winds were trying to come from the west and by midnight a NW wind was truly established, and our average speed rose to 4,5 knots.
We were beginning to feel the effect of the east going Equatorial counter current and were having to steer ten degrees more to the west than our desired track. Just as well we had anticipated this and made allowance for it.
By 0900 the next morning we had 176 miles to go and started to think of the maintenance work we would have to do in Chagos: examine and service the much abused sails; fix or replace the overheating fridge cooling water pump; fix the starter motor which sometimes wouldn’t work; re seat the out of alignment tri-color navigation light. Not too long a list after nearly 2000 miles at sea.
An hour before the end of his 0300 to 0600 watch, Pierre was getting so cold in the cockpit and nothing much was happening, so he switched on the anchor light and went down below into the forecabin to get warm, and fell asleep. When I woke to take over watch at 0600, I got a bad scare as I couldn’t find Pierre. He was not in the cockpit, cabin or on deck. I thought he had fallen overboard. What a relief to find him sleeping safely in the forecabin!
After a night of moderate winds we were 75 miles from Salamon atoll. It was obvious that we had no chance of nipping in before sunset and so would have to slow Senta down so as to avoid a night time arrival. It is extremely frustrating to have to do this. After battling for days to make the boat go faster we now had to deliberately go slow.
We rolled in the headsail to the size of a spitfire jib and reefed the mainsail. At 2300 we hove to on port tack with 13,5 miles to go. Between midnight and 0500 we increased our distance from Salamon to 14,8 miles, and at that stage we turned and started to run under reefed sails towards the pass. Still we arrived a little early, as the sun wasn’t high enough to negotiate the coral heads in the atoll. So we sailed around outside the atoll until 0945 when we judged that the visibility would be adequate.
Some of our friends already anchored at Boddam, one of the islands in the atoll, knew it was us. ‘Who else,’ they said ‘would go for a little day sail after a 2000-mile sea passage? Most sane people would heave to outside the pass and wait for the sun.’ Their suspicions were confirmed when we sailed through the pass, navigated the three miles of bommie-filled waters to Boddam and put our anchor down under sail.
After stowing the sails, putting up sun awnings, having a cockpit bath and a big spaghetti lunch we slept for a few hours. Keith and Diane from Lady Guinivere and Rolf and Utte of Mariposa stopped by in the afternoon to say ‘Hello’. After a fruit supper watching the sun set over Boddam we went to bed and slept the whole night through. What bliss!!
Our voyage had taken 19 days at an average day’s run of 109 miles. Not a blistering pace, but at least we arrived safely and had enjoyed ourselves (well some of the time at least) on the way.
We could now look forward to five or six months of tropical island living, the kind we all dream about.
Malaysia and Thailand December 2002 and January 2003
In the first week of December the Hari Raya and Adilfitri holidays marked the end of Ramadan with fast breaking festivities, and the making and selling of local food dishes at the open air street market. Although we hadn't been fasting we assisted with the fast breaking and introduced our taste buds to many new sensations.
A week or two of stepped up boat provisioning and preparation preceded the arrival towards the end of the month of our long term friends, Judy and John Ryder, to spend two weeks with us on Senta.
We took a few welcome breaks from shopping to advise a friend, Mary, on sailing from here to South Africa, which she plans to do in 2003. Mary is a wonderful character. Sixty-four years old, comes from California and single-hands a 22-foot Falmouth cutter, Sapo. When we first met her in Chagos in 1999 I asked Mary why she sailed on her own and she replied, 'I got sick and tired of cooking three meals a day for an ungrateful wretch, so I left him and went sailing. During her stay in Chagos in 1999, cataracts developed in both eyes and became so bad that she was almost blind. Being ultra independent and almost a hermit, she told no one about her problem. She abandoned her plans of sailing westwards towards South Africa and returned to Malaysia. There she had eye surgery at one of the excellent hospitals in Penang, and now sees very well, with no need for spectacles. She plans to return to Chagos in 2003 and then carry on towards South Africa.
On 23 December, all preparations complete, we met John and Judy at the Langkawi airport in the final twilight hours. The 20 kilometer taxi ride back to where we had left the dinghy was soon over as we chatted away, catching up on news on each other's doings. They were pretty tired, having left Johannesburg the night before and spending the day sight seeing in Singapore, while waiting for the connecting flight to Langkawi. As we helped them through the hustle and crowds, collecting luggage and hailing taxis I said to them, 'Well, the good news is that we are going to take you away from all of this!'
Unfortunately the town lighting system failed as we approached our destination and the loading of our guests' luggage into the dinghy had to be done in the dark. Pierre and I then set off into the darkness of the harbor, sprinkled with anchor lights and the navigation lights of vessels moving around on their nocturnal business. It was a particularly dark night and half way back to Senta we started to chuckle at the thought of John and Judy sitting on the rocks at the side of the beach in the dark, in a strange country. They had no money or passports or anything and absolutely no idea where we had gone to or how to find us again.
Much to their relief the town lights came on and Pierre re-appeared out of the darkness to ferry them to Senta. We had prepared a bosun's chair attached to our spinnaker halyard to lift Judy on board. She had had polio as a child and found climbing on board from the dinghy difficult. This device worked well and after a first scary lift, Judy became quite happy for us to hoist her up onto Senta after her swimming and snorkeling sessions, later in the cruise.
Next day after a lazy morning, we sailed in a moderate NE to anchor off the beach at Pantai Cenang. We planned to sail to the Thai islands of Butang, as we had done earlier in the year when Ingrid and Phillip visited earlier in the year. This beach resort on the West Coast of Langkawi was a good jumping off point.
Our Christmas present the next day was a fresh easterly wind that took us to the Butang Islands and in through the NE pass to anchor off the beach at Ko Adang in time for lunch. Ko is the Thai word for island. The thirty-five mile hop had taken five and a half hours, at an average speed of over six knots. A great sail followed by Xmas lunch in the cockpit and snorkeling followed by reading and snoozing.
The next day we sailed to Ko Rawi and anchored in the same place we had been with Ingrid and Phillip. One of the great advantages of a GPS receiver is the ease of recording, storing and subsequently retrieving your anchorage co-ordinates for future use.
The snorkeling was good and we had great fun trying to identify the fish we saw in a book on reef fishes that the Ryders had given us for Christmas. On each dive we saw about twenty different types of fish and we made the mistake of trying to remember them all, an impossible task. Later we became crafty and only attempted to identify two or three on a dive.
After a few days we were chased away from Ko Rawi by an onshore SE wind and swell. We moved to the NE corner of Ko Butang in the lee of a smaller island. The snorkeling was not so good and we had an exciting (terrifying?) end to our swim when the tide came in and created a fast running vortex between the small island and Ko Butang. Pierre was in the dinghy acting as guard ship and noticed John, Judy and I being swept along faster and faster. He took us all in tow, but with the drag on the line was not able to make progress against the ever-faster flowing tide. Judy was concerned that we might look like delicious dinner to any passing sharks, but eventually using an oblique course towards the shore Pierre was able to bring us into shallower water and a slower moving current. We all arrived back at Senta, grateful for a fresh water shower, tea and Christmas cake and a rest in the cockpit. Unfortunately the SE swell hooked around the NE corner of Ko Butang and came straight in to our anchorage, causing Senta to roll from side to side and her crew to wear out their ears on their pillows as they tried in vain to sleep.
So the next day we sailed back to Ko Rawi for New Year's Eve. We decided that, because of sleep deprivation the night before, we would not stay up to see the old year out. But, no such luck! The swell kept us rolling and some hyperactive fishing boats kept moving up and down the shore with their noisy long tail motors shattering the silence. So we were forced to see 2003 arrive, and only managed a few hours of uncomfortable sleep in the early hours of the morning.
We were now desperate for a good night's rest so sought shelter from the SE wind and swell by moving to the gap between Ko Lipe and Ko Adang. That anchorage is well protected from the SE, but exposed to the west. So you can guess what happened that night. You are correct. Just on midnight the wind changed to the west and blew hard enough to bring up a nasty sea.
Next morning a bleary eyed foursome sailed Senta back to Ko Rawi, where we had some good snorkeling and, thank goodness, an undisturbed night. But the next night the SE swell was back again. We were now fed up with rolly nights and constant island hopping looking for calm water, so when I suggested that we sail back to Langkawi, where we could guarantee to find peace at night, everyone agreed.
The passage back in a moderate NE wind and sea was an enjoyable five and a half hours of sailing. We then sought out one of the most protected spots we knew, in a narrow gorge between high cliffs where there is never any swell. The afternoon was spent admiring the sandstone cliffs and watching the fish eagles soar overhead. The nighttime silence was broken by the sound of four happy snorers on Senta.
Next day saw us sailing to some of the smaller islands to the south of Langkawi. There, in the lee of the mountains, we encountered gusting winds and williwaws, so we sailed back northwards to anchor for the night at Pantai Cenang. As we ate dinner at the Oasis beach restaurant, we twiddled our toes in the soft white sand and watched the sun set over the Andaman Sea.
A lazy lay day preceded John and Judy's departure. Some games of Scrabble, reading and generally loafing were the order of the day. A busier day followed with packing of suitcases, lunch ashore at the Oasis and a short taxi ride to the airport. It was farewell to our friends who would return to a life of baths in a proper bath with hot and cold running water, beds that don't roll and pitch, television, supermarkets, work and traffic. We were left behind to continue battling away in our cruising sea gypsy way of life. I know which I prefer and didn't envy them even a little bit.
It was now 8 January 2003 and we were keen to leave Malaysia for Chagos before our visas expired on 20 January. So we sailed back to Kuah, took a walk-on mooring at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, hired a car and set about provisioning Senta.
We were not sure where we would go after Chagos. It was going to be either west to Madagascar and Africa, or east again back to Malaysia, with the further plan to explore Borneo, Papua New Guinea and parts of the western Pacific, with our friends, Colin and Glynn on Déjà vu. But, either way we decided to provision the boat for eight months away from civilization.
By January 18 we had loaded 600 kilograms of food, 300 litres of diesel, 700 litres of fresh water, 20 kilograms of LP Gas, 30 litres of petrol and many items of spares, medical requirements, toiletries and 70 rolls of toilet paper. In the process we had spent R16500. Quite a hit on the bank balance, but it would have ample time to recover, as our only expense in Chagos, would be $80 every three months for anchoring fees.
After final e-mails, ice creams and check out through customs and immigration, we sailed to Pantai Cenang. There we made final preparations to Senta before setting out on our 2000 mile voyage to a mid Indian Ocean paradise, where we would play at Robinson Crusoe and friends for at least six months.
Malaysia October to November 2002
After taking leave of the friendly staff at Ratanachai boatyard in Phuket, Thailand, we slowly motored sailed to Ao Chalong to check out. Some rest days and a few trips to Phuket town for fresh provisions saw us set off for Langkawi on 8 October.
First stop was Phi Phi Don, which we reached after 10 hot hours of drifting and motor sailing. Our night's rest was disturbed by the thumping noise from the discos on shore, which carried on until 0400. After a lay day at Phi Phi we left early the next morning in a moderate ENE wind on the 45-mile hop southwards to Rok Nok. The wind lasted all day, moderating slightly round mid-day, before swinging to ESE and allowing us to reach Rok Nok by 1530. This unremarkable average speed of 4 knots was so much better than we had achieved on our journey northwards a month earlier that we felt as if we had been really whizzing along.
We stayed four nights at this lovely anchorage, the first on our own, but later joined by a couple of catamarans and Marionette IV, a Taswell 49. On the third night there was heavy rain and an onshore squally wind. The anchorage became crowded with local long tail fishing boats seeking shelter. The following morning, Pierre's birthday, brought set-in rain and little wind so we remained at anchor reading and relaxing.
On Monday 14 October, we left Rok Nok under spinnaker in a light NE wind. Eleven hours later, still under bag and with the same wind, we reached Ko Bulon Le. There we anchored amid many fishing boats and long tails. The spot is exposed to westerly winds and is not recommended in the cruising guide 'Sail Thailand' for overnight anchoring. But we had misread the symbol of a sun (daytime anchorage only) for the moon (overnight anchorage). That first night was OK, so we decided to stay another day. Bad mistake! In the afternoon a fresh westerly started to blow, making conditions very uncomfortable.
After a disturbed, rolly night we set sail southwards at 0640 in a moderate 15-knot westerly. This took us well into the lee of Terutao, the large Thai national park island north of Langkawi. There the wind died to be immediately replaced by a light north easter. With spinnaker up we ran down the length of Terutao, and then motored for an hour in a calm, until the start of the Chinchin strait between Langkawi and Terutao. There the NW came back and we ran across the strait and down the east coast of Langkawi, We rounded the south east corner and beat up to anchor in the lee of Bumbon Island at 1700. Eleven and a half hours for 48 miles, average 4,3 knots and a good day's sail, but very tiring. We only had enough energy to cover the boat, make tea and bath before hitting the hay.
After three rest days at Bumbon we sailed round to Kuah town to check in on 21 October, fifty-two days after leaving for Thailand.
We celebrated with hamburgers at the Bay View Hotel. The lunch bill came to R179 for two hamburgers, a coke, an orange juice and a cup of tea. Quite a large amount to swallow, but the hamburgers were very, very good.
We met several friends who had recently returned from Chagos, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, south of the Maldives. All reported an enjoyable stay and were busy with re-provisioning plans for another visit next year (2003). With any luck we would be joining them.
The remainder of October and November were spent installing fans to help us through the hot months, visiting the dentist, servicing the Honda outboard motor, replacing the drier in the refrigeration system, installing new speakers for the CD player, making new fitted sheets for the fore-cabin, buying new non-stick pots and pans, painting the dinghy floor, changing the engine oil, making a new wooden whistle for the kettle, fixing the knob on the gear lever, buying, charging and installing new batteries, filling gas tanks (see end of newsletter **) and water tanks, replacing the baggy wrinkle on the back stays, painting and varnishing and hundreds of other smaller jobs. In between the work we found time to visit friends, shop for provisions, eat meals ashore and sail to interesting and quieter anchorages away from Kuah. The above description of our activities is to answer those who ask, 'But what do you do all of the time? Don't you get bored?' Well I can tell you, a bit of boredom would be very welcome now and then!
The last three weeks of November and the first week of December marked the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Many businesses were closed, so our shopping and maintenance became more leisurely and we spent more time sailing and relaxing.
** The job of filling the LPG gas tank is a good example of a short description for a very long lob, consisting of the following steps: -
- Unpack the lazarette and put all of the junk in the cockpit
- Disconnect the gas tank
- Remove it from its mountings
- Take it out of the lazarette
- Put it in the dinghy
- Pack the tools, ropes, connecting pipes etc. that you will need into the dinghy
- Make sure you have enough money
- Pack a picnic lunch and novel to read
- Take a stop watch
- Go to the shore near a tall tree
- Pull the dinghy and its load high enough up the shore so the tide won't get it while you are gone
- Go to the gas shop, buy the gas and pay the large (R100) deposit on the tank
- Carry the tank back to the dinghy Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!!!!!
- Sling a stout rope over a branch of the nearby tree
- Hoist the full tank upside down high up into the tree Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!!!!!!
- Place the empty tank upright on the ground under the suspended tank
- Connect the two tanks together with the special connecting hose you have acquired at great cost from West Marine in the USA. You will have attached to one end of this hose a fitting for a South African gas tank, and to the other end a fitting for the country you are visiting. Don't for one second think that there is any international standard for gas tank fittings.
- Open the tap on the connecting hose and let the liquid gas run from the tank in the tree into the tank on the ground.
- If you are luck enough to have a fitting with a release valve on your tank this process could be over fairly quickly. Otherwise the liquid will flow well at first, gradually slowing down as the pressure builds up in the tank on the ground
- Put your ear to the tank and when you cannot detect any liquid flowing, close the tap on the connecting hose and slightly open the connection to the tank on the ground to let off pressure for about a minute. Then reconnect the fitting to the grounded tank, open the tap on the connecting hose and start the liquid flowing again
- This alternating flow and vent phase must carry on and on, progressively transferring less and less liquid as the pressure builds up in the lower tank
- Keep checking the weight of each tank until all of the gas has been moved from the upper to the lower tank
- This tedious business can last for a couple of hours. The picnic lunch and novel that you brought along will come in handy
- Now you have to reverse all of your actions. Get the tank out of the tree and back to the shop, collecting your deposit. Pack everything including your now very heavy gas tank into the dinghy and get it back and up onto your boat. More hysterical laughter as you hoist the tank on board. Re-install the tank in the lazarette and put all of the junk from the cockpit back in there as well.
The good news is that a full gas tank lasts us about four months, so we have ample time to recover our good humor between gas tank filling sessions.
Look for more classic examples in future newsletters of how to make easy sounding jobs bloody difficult, because that is what cruising is really all about!
Malaysia/Thailand August to September 2002
It was now time to give Senta some concentrated Tender Loving Care. So, by early August we had made a reservation at the Ratanachai Slipway Company in Phuket, Thailand for Senta to be hauled out on September 4.
August was spent provisioning Senta for the trip to Thailand and the haul out. We did not want to use up any on our one-month visa shopping for food, paint, tools etc. We would need all the time we could get to finish the list of work we had prepared.
On Thursday 30 we checked out and sailed the 8 miles down the Bass Harbor sound to anchor overnight at Singa Besar. There we loaded the dinghy on deck and generally prepared Senta for going to sea. At 0745 next morning we left in no wind, but an outgoing tide and drifted for three hours to just north of Rebak Island.
The tide had now changed and was pushing us back the way we had come, so we motored for an hour before the wind arrived. It started in the NE and backed to NW rising from 8 to 25 knots by 1400: a strong wind and right on the nose! We reefed down to our very deep first reef and working jib.
The wind continued from the NW all afternoon and night, bringing a horrible choppy sea and vicious squalls. There were many fishing boats and floats and we had to keep on our toes, but even so we caught a fishing buoy on our rudder and dragged it for several miles before we realized we were getting no where.
Two very bad tacks and an adverse tide in the early hours of the morning brought us at 0300 to only three miles on from our 2100 position the evening before. Six hours to do three miles!! We lost most of these hard won miles when at 0430 a forty-knot squall forced us to run off in front of the wind. The effect of this maneuver was to reduce the apparent wind from 40 to 30 knots, and hence the force of the wind by a factor of 16 to 9, almost chopping the strength in half. (Wind force increases by the square of the wind speed). A very effective ploy when you are overwhelmed going to windward.
By dawn, just to the north of the Butang islands, the wind had fallen very light and, in spite of shaking out the reefs and trying everything we know about sailing in light airs, we could make little progress against the choppy seas. So we had to resort to motor sailing and kept the iron mainsail working all day until we anchored at Rok Nok islands just before sunset.
We had come sixty miles in 34 hours at an average of two knots. Not very good, and with so much effort!
At some time during the day Pierre had painfully twisted his knee while stepping down into the cockpit from the poop deck. We applied Deep Heat and a large crepe bandage and he took some Voltaren and pain-killer tablets, but still he had a restless night. We did not like to imagine how this injury was going to impact on his ability to work on Senta in the boat yard, especially with all the climbing up and down ladders.
The next day we set off for Phi Phi Don Island, 48 miles away, in the same horrible mixture of squalls, calms and choppy seas. As we moved away from the north of Rok Nok the seas became more tolerable. We had noticed on previous visits to this area that the seas for five miles north of Rok Nok were always uncomfortable.
The unhelpful NW wind backed to the west and then WSW, so that we were able to sail most of the way to Phi Phi Don. The last hour was motor assisted as we cooled the fridge, which runs off a compressor driven by the engine.
We had taken to heart something our daughter, Ingrid, had said after her last visit with us. 'If I ever had any doubt I am now convinced that I was born to a pair of fanatical sailing purists. What other sort of person would spend hours puff hunting in intolerably hot windless conditions, to arrive at their overnight anchorage and then run their engine for an hour to cool the fridge, thus sound polluting the lovely sunset and evening?'
Our next hop westwards to Ao Makham, the deep water port on Phuket Island, was accomplished in light to moderate westerly winds. There David and Sandy on Force 8 joined us. They had just come off the slip at Ratanachai after a short stay to scrub off and antifoul.
Luckily we had a day to spare before our date with Ratanachai, so we were able to rest and leisurely prepare fenders and warps. Pierre was particularly exhausted by the constant sail changes and tacking. His knee was still very sore, making matters worse. One benefit from the sail handling was that we had discovered if we moved our jib fairleads very far forward we were able to get a much better set of the furled headsail when taken down to jib size.
We had taken 52 hours on passage and 82 elapsed hours for the 134-mile trip. An average of 2,6 knots including 12 hours of motoring. Not very good for Senta, but at least we hadn't motored all of the way, as a lot of boats do.
As arranged we arrived at Ratanachai slipway at 0900 on 4 September, just at high tide. We had to wait for 20 minutes while a fishing boat, all shiny and bright in her new coat of paint, was launched.
Then it was our turn and we sat happily on deck leaving Senta in the hands of the ultra professional boat slipping and moving crew. During the couple of hours it took to position Senta in her cradle in the yacht section of the boat yard, we visited the office to sign in, drink coffee with the office staff and send off e-mails. We were pleased that, although the slipping and hard standing rates had increased from 1 August, we were charged at the old rates because we had booked in July.
There we met Rat and Son, two young Thai ladies who were to be our liaison with the rest of the Ratanachai staff, very few of whom spoke any English. Rat and Son were extremely helpful and cheerfully visited our site twice a day to see if we needed anything. Their smiling faces, topped by their hard hats were always a welcome sight and they made good use of their handheld VHF radios to summon whatever help we asked for. Moving trestles and planks, repositioning ladders, removing the garbage, connecting us up to power and water supplies, taking the anchor chain away for galvanizing, quoting for and executing carpentry and stainless steel repairs - all were done well, in good time and with a smile.
While I cleaned the hull and started to prepare it for anti fouling, Pierre removed all of the old seacocks and replaced them with the new ones we had bought in the Seychelles in 2001.
After three days we had made good progress on the work list, so we took the morning off and went into Phuket town to buy fresh provisions at Robinsons, the large department store. The trip to town was on the back of two 125cc motorbikes, a really down market type of taxi service. Coming back we hired a tuk-tuk, a small open-backed type of bakkie, into which we could load ourselves and our vegetables, fruit, baguettes, pastries, ham, bacon and eggs.
We could no longer operate our engine driven fridge compressor, so we pressed our iceboxes into service. We found a shop about a kilometer down the road that sold ice and for the rest of our stay each evening after work, Pierre would collect fresh ice. The local Thais, sitting on their verandahs sipping sundowners were highly amused as Pierre walked by balancing the ice box on his head, Zulu maiden style. The children used to wait for him and waved happily, calling out the universal greeting, 'Hello!'
The work of dropping the rudder out of the hull, inspecting its bearings, reinstalling it, replacing the engine anode and locating, digging out and refilling osmosis bubbles was again interrupted when, after six days in Thailand, we felt that it was time we cleared in to the country. It was unlikely that any customs or immigration officer would find us, disguised as laborers, working alongside Thai boat yard workers. But we had no ambition to test the hospital of the country's penal institutions. So we hired a taxi to take us the fifteen miles south down Phuket Island to the pier at Ao Chalong.
After the check in procedure we had a good western style breakfast at a thatched restaurant behind Jimmy's Lighthouse. As we sat watching the boats in the bay Pierre felt an itch in his throat which heralded the start of a bad dose of strep throat. Two days later I too was laid low. We had made the bad mistake of attending the daily mid-morning tea, coffee, Milo and cake sessions at Ratanachai, together with all of the boat yard workers. Someone had brought the virus in and it had spread like wildfire assisted by the not too hygienic method of rinsing the used cups in a large plastic tub of cold water. We were both very ill for five days, but had to press on with the work, never the less.
The dinghy also got some attention. After lowering it to the ground with the spinnaker halyard, we removed and replaced a section of the inside of the hull on the bottom, which had delaminated. A Ratanachai carpenter then removed the old rotten wooden gunn'l and replaced it with a strong new one.
The epoxying of the osmosis bubbles was completed, anchors chipped and painted, propeller removed, examined, painted and replaced, two coats of anti fouling paint applied, the turquoise boot topping repainted, the self steering under water parts reassembled, Senta washed, cleaned and made ready for launching.
We then had to wait for three days for the newly galvanized chain to return from Hattyai, a town 600 kilometers away on the East Coast of Thailand. At least it gave us a chance to relax and rest before our return to Malaysia.
Eventually the chain arrived and after loading it on board and paying our bill Senta was launched at the mid-morning high tide on 24 September. One day shorter than three weeks of boat maintenance purgatory, which had been made worse by Pierre's damaged knee and our throat infections.
We were sad to take leave of the boatyard staff Son, Rat, Nap, Mr. Smiley the yard manager and Mac the small black puppy, all of whom were there to see us off and wave goodbye. But no doubt we would see them again sometime in the future.
Malaysia April to July 2002
The five days between Bobby Wade's departure and Ingrid and Phillip's arrival were a flurry of cleaning, tidying and re-provisioning.
We had heard via e-mail from Ingrid that she and Phillip would definitely leave South Africa at the end of June to live in Germany for at least a few years. As Ingrid had been handling our mail, income tax, banking etc., it was necessary for me to return to South Africa to make other arrangements. So, in between the other shopping a visit to the travel agent saw me booked on a flight to Johannesburg on May 18. But before that working trip there was a lot of 'playing' still to be done.
Our friends Tom and Lou on the English yacht, Token, were anchored nearby, as was an American couple, David and Jane on a Wharram catamaran, Blue Moon. We had already had several conversations with David and Jane on how to sail to South Africa and what to expect there when they visit towards the end of 2003. By Thursday, with most of our provisioning done we hosted a tea party on Senta. Jane brought a home made apple pie to say 'thanks' for all the information. The six of us were in good spirits, and for many hours laughter rang out from Senta as funny stories and anecdotes were swapped.
Saturday morning was hectically spent loading ice, cold drinks, vegetables, meat, cheese, bread and yogurt. After an early afternoon rest we met Ingrid and Phillip at the airport. They looked well but pale from the South African winter, and tired from the flight. Phillip especially so as he had been traveling since Thursday: Waldorf to Frankfurt to Paris to London to Johannesburg: a short two hour stop for a shower and to re-pack and then on to Singapore and Langkawi. Needless to say he spent a good deal of his time in the next two weeks sleeping. That is when he was not sailing, fishing, swimming, eating, reading or studying German.
We wanted to do some snorkeling and the Langkawi waters are too murky for that. So we proposed to sail 40 miles to the off-shore Butang islands in Thailand, a National Park with clean water and good dive sites. It was common practice for yachts from Langkawi to visit Butang without clearing out of Malaysia or in to Thailand, and we had planned to do the same. But, a few days previously, a South African friend who has lived at Langkawi for a few years, advised us not to do that. 'The authorities are tightening up', he said, 'and there is an immigration check-in point at the National Park office in Butang where they will stamp your passport.' We didn't want Ingrid and Phillip to spend their holiday in a Thai jail, so on Sunday morning we went through the Malaysian check out process at the Kuah ferry jetty.
We then sailed to Singa Besar island at the western entrance to Bass harbor for a good night's rest before the long sail the following day. A promising 8 to 10 knot breeze sent us on our way early the next morning. But it gradually backed through north west to west, heading us and fading all the time, until in the late afternoon we had to motor for an hour to reach the anchorage between Ko Lipe and Ko Adang before nightfall. (Ko is Thai for island).
Checking in to Thailand was top of the list the next morning. Phillip was still tired and I decided to keep him company on board Senta while Pierre and Ingrid set off with the passports to sort out the red tape. They pulled the dinghy high up on the beach and set off into the palm trees. Several hours later they hadn't returned and we were becoming anxious. 'Don't worry', I said, 'I know what those b……s have done. They are in the air-conditioned restaurant at the national park resort having a leisurely breakfast, while we sweat out here guarding the ship!' Much later the dinghy returned under a little black cloud, carrying two hot, sweaty, disgruntled people. 'Don't talk to me! ', barked Ingrid, as she climbed on board. Pierre shook his head. 'It was terrible!' he sighed and sank onto a cockpit seat in the shade of the awning. 'What happened?' chorused Phillip and I, ' We thought you were living it up at the resort'. Far from it. They had tramped for miles through thick jungle and swamps, past dirty Thai villages in search of the authorities, or anyone who could tell them how to go about checking in. No one knew, some showed enough interest to look at the passports and one person offered the helpful advice that the only place to check in was on the Thai mainland, sixty miles away! 'Well!' said Ingrid, 'that was an original initiative task to start the holiday - a search through the Thai jungle for an imaginary immigration officer!'
So we became illegal immigrants and sailed to Ko Rawi, the northernmost island of the group to do some snorkeling before being apprehended and incarcerated in the, hopefully imaginary, Thai jail.
At Ko Rawi we anchored on a steep slope, which put Senta within easy swimming distance of the coral reef. We were in a potentially dangerous position if a strong wind were to come up from the south. But this didn't happen and we spent four wonderful days there snorkeling, reading, chatting, fishing, playing scrabble and studying German. No one looking even remotely official came by - in fact no one at all came by. A few local fishing boats anchored some distance away, but minded their own business.
On our last day at Ko Rawi, believing, wrongly as it happened, that the coral and reef fish could be more beautiful somewhere else, we motored in the dinghy to Ko Butang to try our luck. Not only was the coral all dead and broken, there were no fish and I cut my big toe quite badly on a piece of broken coral while walking out of the water.
Back on board Senta I operated on the toe, cutting away the almost severed top piece of skin and flooding the flesh beneath with disinfectant to wash away the bits of shell, coral and sand stuck there. Phillip, who had badly injured his big toe during his stint with the South African army in Angola, was unable to watch and went to sit on the pushpit, far away from the blood and gore. A week of careful cleaning and dressing ensured that infection did not set in, a definite possibility in tropical waters. But it was some days before I could walk easily and two weeks before I could wear a closed shoe.
On Saturday 28 April, as the first stage of our return to Langkawi, we sailed back to anchor between Ko Lipe and Ko Adang. That night we were treated to an impressive thunder, lightning and rain show. Luckily Ko Adang is very high and attracted all of the lightning strikes.
Already tired from weather and anchor watch the night before, we set off for Langkawi the next morning in light winds. Before the day was over, and after hours of motoring we were much more tired as we anchored between Pantai Cenang and Pulau Tepor. (Pulau is island in Malay.) Light winds and a smooth sea gave us all a good night's rest.
On Tuesday Ingrid, Phillip and Pierre went to the Under Water World aquarium. The state of my big toe dictated that I should stay on board, so unfortunately I missed seeing Mr. Fancy Frog again. We then sailed to the gorge near the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden for a peaceful night and to watch the eagles.
We started to prepare our story for the Malaysian officials at Kuah, to explain why we had checked out ten days previously, had apparently gone nowhere and now wanted to check back in again. The next day, after sailing to Kuah, we were met with smiles from the customs, immigration and harbor officials, and a few rolled eyes, as if to say, 'Oh, those Thais!' Our papers and passports were soon stamped and we were legally back in Malaysia, having lost our illegal immigrant status.
On Thursday we hired a car for a tour of Langkawi. After seeing the craft village at Atma Alam, several waterfalls, the top of Gunning Raya, the highest point in Langkawi, and a book village as well as miles and miles of rubber plantation we ended off with an excellent late lunch the Yacht Club. All agreed that, though vaguely interesting, the motor tour had been hot and tiring.
The next day, Ingrid and Phillip's last in Malaysia, was spent packing and relaxing. Ingrid and I played the final rounds of our Scrabble tournament, which was declared a draw. By 1700 the southwest afternoon wind was building up a choppy sea, thus hastening our guests' departure from Senta. Pierre went with Ingrid and Phillip to the airport while my big toe kept me behind boat sitting.
It had been a good visit and was sad to see them leave, but I at least would see them again soon in South Africa.
The transitional period between the northeast and southwest monsoons that had held off for our visitors now began to make itself felt. Lots of rain squalls let us catch up on washing and cleaning, but a particularly strong wind squall at 0300 one morning ripped our cockpit bimini in half. It was six years old and had been up almost all that time in all weathers, so I suppose it was to be expected. We found a sail repair and awning shop nearby and they made a new bimini for R300.
By Friday 10 May, a week before I was due to leave for South Africa, the south west monsoon was well and truly set in with cooler temperatures and lots of rain to fill our water tanks.
I left Langkawi on 17 May and returned on 10 July, nearly two months away. During that time I sorted out address changes, organized electronic banking, arranged for an accountant to do our income tax, visited family and friends, bought things for Senta as Pierre e-mailed his requests, helped Ingrid with tasks associated with their move to Germany and watched World cup soccer and Wimbledon on TV. It was particularly good to see our son Brett, his wife Hilda and our grand-daughter Angela, now four and a half. I bought Angela the four Harry Potter books and started reading the first one to her. By the time I left South Africa she had persuaded her father to buy her the video of the first book and I understand she has now watched it twenty times! Talk about being a fan! Brett and Angela are now well into reading book two, the Chamber of Secrets.
Pierre, in the mean time did an enormous amount of work on Senta; serviced all of the sheet and halyard winches; cleaned the barnacles off the chain and underneath the boat every week; swam overboard to clean off the topsides and waterline on both Senta and the dinghy; fitted new engine cooling water filters and cleaned the old ones to serve as spares; filled the diesel tanks; dismantled, cleaned and checked the Schaeffer roller furling gear; sealed window leaks; replaced in-line fuel filters; cleaned up loose epoxy at the base of the mast and examined the repair we had made in Chagos in mid 2001; dismantled and serviced the gate valve on one of our water tanks; brassoed the windows and hatches; re-attached the aerial to the backstay - it had become detached when we fitted the new bimini; made a new anchor chain cleaning brush; bought and installed three new fans; lubricated turnbuckles; tidied and repacked the lazarette; washed the decks; sailed Senta round to Bumbon Island for shelter when the south west winds became too strong; completely spring cleaned the interior of Senta; dismantled the engine sea water inlet ball valve and filled it with lanolin to cure a leak; paid many visits ashore for provisions, e-mail and to see Dr Chew, the dentist; continually adjusted the chain length to kill the barnacles; repaired wind scoops; battled with three bouts of ear infection from so much swimming to fight off the barnacles; and finally met me at the airport on 10 July.
Then followed a well-deserved rest for both of us including a weeklong stay at one of our favorite anchorages, Singa Besar Island. Barnacle growth still continues to be a problem, but I have taken over the job of swimming to scrape them off, to save Pierre's ears from further infection.
On 25 July Pierre made a quick same-day return ferry trip to Satun on the Thai mainland to renew his Malaysian visa.
We are now planning a visit to Phuket in Thailand and will haul Senta out on 4 September at the Ratanachai Slipway to start preparing her for sea voyaging again.
We haven't finally decided, but will probably set out in mid January 2003 to cross the Indian Ocean towards Africa. We have made so many new friends here and many of them will be journeying west to Chagos, Madagascar and South Africa next year. It is very tempting to join them. We spend a lot of time briefing other cruisers on the sailing conditions going in to South Africa and what they can expect once they are there. We try our best to counter the negative thoughts put out about South Africa by people who have left the country. To help us in this Hilda has let me have a lot of factual data put out by various South African government agencies. When one Australian sailor commented on the different story he heard from us compared to what other South African yachtsmen were telling him, an American who was with us said, 'Yes, but remember, those others have left South Africa for good and have to justify their decision to themselves and others. You will never hear anything good about the country from them - so don't listen!' Wize advice indeed.
That's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your cold winter and look forward to the coming spring and summer, while we carry on in the same old, same old tropics.
Malaysia February to April 2002
On Friday 1 February as we sat in the cockpit watching the lovely sunset over Bass harbor, I remarked that Bobby Wade, a long-time sailing friend, would have enjoyed the moment. So next day we sent off an e-mail inviting her to join us for a few weeks sailing at Langkawi, the Malaysian island close to the Thai border
Within a few days it was arranged that she would visit on the 7 April for just over a week. A week after that Ingrid and Phillip were due to arrive for a cruise to the Thai Butang islands.
These two pending visits gave added impetus to our boat maintenance tasks; the fridge gas was topped up and a new dryer fitted; the Honda outboard motor was serviced; mast inspection led to the reversal of the main halyard to avoid chafe - this job took five times longer than it should have because, by mistake, the halyard got away from us and disappeared inside the mast!; the cockpit was painted - a three day job; the fridge water pump and main engine water pump were serviced; jealous of the attention other pumps were getting, the head (lavatory) pump blocked and had to be repaired; the galley, head and fore cabin were painted; the running rigging was inspected; all of the halyards and reefing lines were reversed; wood surfaces down below were varnished.
During all of this activity, in mid February, our new genoa arrived from the Halsey Lidgard loft in South Africa. Maintenance was suspended for a few days while we fetched the sail from the airport, fitted it to the foil and went for a test sail to the resort beach area of Pantai Cenang. The genoa looked good and fitted well. We cannibalized the old genoa by removing the leach line, luff foam padding and a few sections of cloth for wind scoops. The remains of the old sail were then taken ashore to be gratefully accepted for use as boat covers by an outfit renting Hobies, Lasers and sailboards to the tourists at nearby hotels.
We took advantage of the shallow water and clean sea sand bottom to clean the barnacles off our anchor chain. We let the full 80-meter length out and let it drag backwards and forwards in the tide and wind for a few days. The barnacles and mud were soon history.
Well into the dry season we were no longer able to rely on rain to fill our water tanks and jerry cans. So, when the tanks approached empty we would motor over to the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, where for ten ringgit (about R30) we could use as much fresh water as we liked from the taps at the jetty. We filled our tanks, jerry cans and buckets. We washed the decks and ourselves and rinsed the clothing that had been soaked the night before. This wonderful fresh water orgy was then followed by ice cream from their 'Boatique' . What better way to spend a morning ?!
After one month on sanding, painting and varnishing, Senta was starting to look pretty good down below. A just reward for the hard work. It is darn difficult painting the inside of a boat that you are living in. Maintenance work continued but at a more leisurely pace as the lists grew shorter, and we were able to take more time off to sail and enjoy the new genoa.
At Pulau Tepor near Pantai Cenang, Pierre rowed ashore in the dinghy in the late afternoon to explore. No sooner had he walked about 20 meters down the beach than a troop of monkeys raided the dinghy. There was nothing for them to eat, but they grabbed three plastic water bottles, bit them open and spilled the fresh water everywhere. Pierre rushed back, grabbed an oar and threatened them with it, but they weren't impressed. They moved a few meters away, chattering, growling and barking. Every time Pierre tried to resume his walk the monkeys would invade again. Eventually he had to give up and return to Senta.
Early in March I painted the inside of the dinghy, as it was looking really shabby. Just as well, because a few days after I had finished, when we were anchored at the beach of the forest reserve on NW Pulau Bunting, the harbor master's launch approached us and asked permission to come alongside. We wondered if we were in some kind of trouble with the authorities, but they merely wanted to borrow the dinghy to go ashore. Thank goodness it was looking pretty ship-shape and not like the ugly, dirty junk heap of a week before. I told the harbormaster that I hoped they had come to clean up the garbage on the shore, as it was a big eyesore. He looked sheepish and said that, yes that was one of the things they were investigating. I certainly hoped so, but I didn't see any of the men in their smart uniforms, or the ladies in their colorful saris lugging plastic bags around gathering up the rubbish. So I guess that will have to wait till the 'workers' arrive, if ever.
Towards the end of March out three-month Malaysian visas were due to expire so we went on an hour's ferry ride to Satun in Thailand. There we stayed overnight at Amm's Guest House, a wood and bamboo structure built on stilts over a river. Our room was comfortable and cooled by a large fan. The only furniture was a double mattress on the floor, tented by a large mosquito net. Amm is a wonderful, resourceful Thai lady. She was married to and subsequently divorced from a German who took her from Satun to Austria, where she worked for 14 years before he left her for another woman, taking their eight-year-old son with him. With the small amount of money she received from the divorce settlement, she returned to her hometown and built the guesthouse herself. There she struggles to make a living from the tourists passing through Satun en route to Langkawi and the Thai islands of Butang and Terutao. Being fluent in German and English helps. Once a year for a month or so during the summer school holidays her son visits from Austria.
Back in Langkawi at the start of April we began provisioning Senta, so that we could feed our guests. This process involves many trips ashore in the dinghy as we can only carry and load a limited amount each trip. At this stage when we really needed the fridge to be working it decided to be temperamental, and the compressor started to make funny noises. What to do? Do we detach it, take it ashore for repairs or replacement and hope to get it back in time? Or do we soldier on trusting that it doesn't pack up completely. Eventually we decided to do the latter, but to hedge our bets we bought a large polystyrene icebox to hold a jerry can of ice, as a backup. Although the icebox took up a large amount of the galley floor area, it proved to be a great provider of iced drinks, yogurt and chilled fruit. Just what we needed to counter the tropical heat. In fact the fridge compressor didn't break, and after re-seating the wooden peg arrangement holding the electromagnetic clutch, has continued to work up to the present.
The week before Bobby arrived saw us taking on diesel, fresh water, vegetables, fruit and meat. Pierre unfortunately developed a bad tooth abscess, which needed several visits to Dr Chew, for lancing, cleaning and a temporary filling. But eventually everything was done and we met Bobby at the small Langkawi airport on Saturday afternoon 7 April.
Back on Senta a good sailing breeze welcomed us. As Bobby was not too exhausted from her flight we hoisted sails, weighed anchor (still 20kg!!) and sailed to Singa Besar Island, arriving there in the late afternoon. Tea and biscuits in the cockpit, followed by a light supper and we all dived into our bunks for some of Senta's gentle sleep inducing motion.
Next morning we sailed to the west out of Bass harbor and then north to show Bobby the tourist beaches and hotels at Pantai Cenang. We hoped to anchor there and visit the Under Water World aquarium. But a fresh on-shore SW wind and attendant short choppy waves made anchoring uncomfortable and going ashore in the dinghy impossible.
We thus sailed back into the Bass strait, and south past Singa Besar to anchor in the narrow gorge to the south of the Lake of the Pregnant Maiden. Although hot from lack of wind, the gorge with its high cliffs, dense rain forest and soaring eagles is definitely worth a visit.
The following day we remained at the gorge, bird watching from the cockpit in the morning. There was great excitement when Bobby thought she saw a python swimming along the rocky shore. It turned out to be a large iguana. Just as exciting, but not so scary for me as a snake.
In the afternoon Bobby persuaded Pierre to go fishing. We were pretty skeptical about catching anything as we have never before caught a fish in Langkawi waters. But still, there are fish for sale in the market and Bobby was keen, as well as being an expert fisherman. So the two of them set off trolling in the dinghy and several hours later returned to Senta with a small barracuda. We cleaned it and fried it, which together with a salad made a delicious supper and a happy ending to the day. Just shows that you can catch fish if you know what you are doing. Sadly with Pierre and I that's not the case!
On Wednesday morning we sailed counterclockwise around the southern shore of Langkawi and entered Bass Strait at the south end. Half way up the strait towards Kuah we turned to starboard through a gap between two islands and anchored in the lee of BumBon island. This is a good secure anchorage in a SW blow, but open to the east and south-east. A wooden trimaran was dried out on the beach and Bobby and Pierre discovered during a walk ashore that she was infested with termites. The owner had unpacked the complete contents of the boat onto the beach. Pest disposal experts had visited that day from Kuala Lumpur and pumped the boat full of poison gas. The owner now had to spend the night camped out on the beach before packing his belongings back into the boat the following morning.
We sailed on to anchor the next afternoon on the SE corner of Langkawi between three islands. After a few hours we were chased from there by a wind and swell from the south west. We sailed a few miles northwards and around a headland where we found good protection from the weather, in the lee of Tumun Island. But we were on a losing streak that day, because within a few hours the wind switched to the northeast putting us again on a lee shore. It was too late to move, but luckily the wind and swell died down as the sun set and we had a comfortable night.
On Friday morning we sailed northwards up the east coast of Langkawi past the entrance to Hole In the Wall, a perfectly protected anchorage, but hot, breathless and mosquito plagued. We rounded the NE corner of Langkawi, Cape Kemarong, and anchored in a bay with three small rocky islands near a river estuary and opposite a luxury resort hotel. We were in a strong tidal stream flowing into and out of the river. Bobby decided to try her luck trolling off Senta's transom in the current. Something really big took the lure and instantly bit through the steel trace. So that was the end of the lure and the fishing for the day.
Saturday brought a good NE sailing breeze and we ran down the Chinchin Strait between Langkawi and the Thai island of Terutao. It was an excellent sail even though most of it was against the incoming tide. After rounding the NW of Langkawi we sailed southwards to complete our unplanned circumnavigation of Langkawi at Pantai Cenang. This time we were able to anchor as the wind was off shore from the NE and there was no swell. In the evening we dinghied ashore for dinner at the Oasis restaurant to celebrate our circumnavigation and the good sailing winds we had experienced.
On Sunday morning we visited the Under Water World aquarium. The first half hour was spoiled by busloads of jabbering, pushing, excited Chinese tourists and their unruly children. But once they had rushed through the aquarium and had departed for the next stage of their lightning fast tour of Langkawi, we had the place to ourselves. We were fascinated by the variety of sea and fresh water creatures, from dainty sea dragons, only a few centimeters long, to a monster 4-meter fish from the Amazon River. My favorite was a small frog with beautiful green, orange, red and white lace-like patterns on his skin. The label on his tank showed him to be a 'Fancy Frog'. And indeed he was!
By lunchtime the afternoon westerly wind had set in and we sailed with it up the Bass Strait to anchor at Kuah town near the gigantic statue of a brown eagle. Bobby's last night in Langkawi called for a farewell dinner, so we took the dinghy into the creek used by the local fishing boats and walked to the food stalls on the waterfront, where we had local food for a fraction of the cost of a meal at restaurants in the tourist areas.
Monday morning was spent souvenir shopping. Pierre bought a beautiful eagle shaped kite for our granddaughter, Angela, and Bobby very kindly undertook to take it back to South Africa with her as hand luggage. I carefully wrapped it in bubble wrap and many layers of paper. A large label attached to the parcel said 'Little Girl's kite. Please don't break!'
Sadly on Monday afternoon we had to say goodbye to Bobby and Pierre took her ashore in the dinghy to catch a taxi to the airport.
In the eight days since Bobby's arrival we had sailed 88 miles. The longest daily distance was from Kemarong to Pantai Cenang and the shortest was 6 miles from Bumbon island to Tunum island. All in all a very enjoyable cruise, with good company, good winds, good food and good anchorages.
That evening during our usual tea and biscuit sun set session in the cockpit we reminisced on the past ten days and started planning for and looking forward to our next guests, Ingrid and Phillip who were due to arrive in a few day's time.
More about that in the next news letter.
Malaysia and Thailand August 2001 to January 2002
After arriving in Langkawi on 10 August we spent the rest of August in Bass Harbour anchored near Kuah Town getting used to civilization again; establishing e-mail contact with family and friends; shopping for provisions, magazines and ice creams; putting a new drier in the refrigeration system; meeting up with friends from our previous visit, some of whom were still here and were surprised to learn that we had crossed the Indian Ocean twice to South Africa and back since we had last seen them.
Grahame from the dismasted and re-masted catamaran, Suiderkruis returned to South Africa a few days after arriving in Langkawi leaving Dubi and Paul to take the boat to Singapore on their own. A big task, we thought, for two such inexperienced people. But they left on 28 August after chasing a sea snake off their anchor and arrived in Singapore safely about a week later.
It was hot, being mid summer but by 1000 each day a fresh westerly wind cooled things down. But it made returning to Senta in the dinghy loaded with shopping bags a tricky manoeuvre against the choppy waves. Several heavy rain showers helped wash Senta free of salt and kept the water tanks full.
At the start of September I began to feel ill with a recurring nausea/ headache/ dizziness problem that had been ongoing for five years. Several visits to the excellent hospital in Langkawi and a gastric endoscopy where they shoved a camera at the end of a fibre optic cable down my throat into my stomach, diagnosed a duodenal ulcer. Intensive medication for a week and ongoing daily doses of cimetidene seem to have cured the problem. The hospital treatment cost R6 per visit and R30 per visit when I saw the specialist. These fees included all theatre costs and medicines. A good place to be ill, if ever there is such a place.
By the first week in September we were becoming alarmed at the rate of barnacle growth on Senta and the dinghy. We gave the dinghy a coat of antifouling paint which helped, but Senta's bottom, ruder, trim tab, propeller and self steering apparatus continued to be a concern.
Along with the rest of the world we were shocked and riveted by the events of September 11. Langkawi is in Kedah province, one of the most Muslim of the Malaysian states. There was no overt antagonism towards westerners and the press was very supportive of the USA led anti terrorist alliance. Some of the American sailors felt unsettled and one, a woman who was boat sitting while her husband was home in the USA working to top up the cruising kitty, returned to America. But she had to wait over a month before she could get a flight. Both were back here again within six weeks.
After six weeks in Kuah we got pretty sick of it so stocked up on fresh provisions and sailed down the Bass Harbour sound to anchor in the lee of Pulau Singa Besar - known locally as Monkey Beach after the monkeys who come out of the rain forest to check your dinghy for edibles. Pulau (abbrev PU) is the Malay word for island.
As well as the monkeys we found a large group of Malaysian university students from Kuala Lumpur. They were camping, canoeing, swimming, hiking through the rain forests and generally enjoying the outdoor life.
We were pleased to see them spend a morning cleaning up the beaches of Singa Besar, which were littered with plastic garbage deposited there by the falling tide. Littering and plastic pollution is a major eyesore in Malaysia and Thailand.
Within a few days we returned to Kuah for fresh supplies and for Pierre to see Dr Chew, the Chinese dentist at 1430 (tooth hurtee time). This was one of a whole series of appointments to repair the dental damage that had happened since leaving South Africa over a year earlier.
The SW wind continued to make the Kuah anchorage uncomfortable especially in the afternoons, so we decided to move to the lee of Bam Bon island a few miles to the south. We went through the narrow channel between Langkawi and Bam Bon islands in the late afternoon, the peak traffic time for ferries to and from the Malaysian and Thailand mainlands. What a horrible experience as the ferries rushed by at 15 to 20 knots bouncing Senta around like a cork and hurling out deafening blasts of sound which echoed off the granite cliffs on both sides of the channel. On leaving and future visits to Bam Bon we used instead the passage to the south of Bam Bon - a further distance but much more peaceful.
At Bam Bon we found the water clarity good so we dived under Senta to get rid of the barnacle growth that had accumulated in the six weeks since we had arrived in Langkawi. Rain then settled in for several days and we were cabin bound, reading, listening to music and sleeping. When the weather cleared we sailed the 18 miles to Singa Besar against a reasonable SW wind but with the outgoing tide.
The next day, 2 October we were joined by Serida, a Norwegian yacht crewed by Len and Lena who had just arrived from Mayotte - what a distance! The last time we had seen Serida was 5 years previously on the hard at Zululand Yacht Club, where she had been stored while Len and Lena went home to earn more cruising money. During a long tea session on Senta they gave us news of Richards Bay.
The rest of October was spent exploring the outer islands of the Langkawi group, with frequent returns to Kuah for supplies.
Our old fashioned music cassette player started stretching tapes and sticking so we replaced it with a CD player. Now we had to spend our pocket money on CD's instead of ice cream. Unfortunately there is a crackdown on pirated CD's here and we have to buy the real thing at vastly higher prices.
Friends on Inomacas, Guinivere and Pierre, introduced me to the Harry Potter books and lent me the first three to read. Books one and two were in French! I battled through them with my schoolgirl French and the help of a dictionary. If they weren't so enjoyable I might have given up, but I found that my references to the dictionary became fewer and fewer as my vocabulary improved. The third book thankfully was in English.
The barnacle problem on Senta's bottom continued to keep us entertained with weekly diving sessions to scrape away the nasty creatures. On one such occasion we were joined by an inquisitive little sea snake. When we couldn't chase him away we postponed further work for another day.
The starter cord of our ancient second hand 2hp Yamaha outboard motor snapped one day. We were singularly unsuccessful at trying to fix it and ended up with a cockpit full of bits and pieces and meters of un-sprung spring steel. We eventually gave up, consigned the whole lot to the garbage dump and invested in a new Honda 2hp air cooled 4 stroke engine, which has given us nothing but pleasure ever since.
Our genoa was on its last legs, so after much measuring and thinking about the size and shape of a replacement we placed an order with Halsey Lidgard in Johannesburg for a new 135% genoa. The cost of the sail including the freight charges was cheaper than a similar sail from the Rolly Tasker loft in Phuket.
By 5 November our 3 month visas had almost expired so we took a ferry to Satun in Thailand and a taxi ride to Hatyai near the east coast of Thailand where we stayed over night. A bus ride back to Satun and a ferry to Langkawi completed the "visa run" and we could now stay in Malaysia for a further three months
By mid November the NE monsoon season had finally arrived with strong gusty winds. On visits to the smaller islands to the SW of Langkawi we experienced accelerated gusts and williwaws to leeward of the high mountains and hills. One of these flurries pulled our main sheet traveller from its mountings. The aluminium had been corroded where it was held down by stainless steel bolts. Pierre designed a new traveller and within a few days of returning to Kuah we had a new stainless steel traveller made by Mr Chin and installed by Pierre.
While at anchor near the fresh water lake a dinghy came over from "Salusa", bringing a 70 year old Hollander, Diederich, who had single handed from New Zealand. He told us that two of his previous boats had been named Senta and he was thrilled to see another one.
We had planned to visit Phuket in Thailand for the Christmas season and had hoped for delivery of our new sail before then. When this proved impossible because of delays in delivery of cloth to South Africa we provisioned, checked out and set off on Saturday 8 December.
The first leg was the now familiar sail down Bass sound to anchor at Singa Besar where we had a good night's rest. We were up early the next morning cleaning the bottom, loading the dinghy and rigging before setting sail at 1100.
Senta took 2 hours to clear the mouth of the sound in the light airs, before a moderate NNW wind allowed us to beat towards Terutao, the first Thai island on our way north. There we anchored off Ban Ao Makham as the sun set.
After another good night at anchor we left at 0530 motoring for an hour until the NW wind started to blow. We stood away from Turutao on starboard tack and held on for about an hour too long because once we tacked to port the wind backed through north to west until we were broad reaching for our next anchorage at Ko Bulan. There we anchored at 1600 in 3.2 meters of water in the wide channel between Ko Bulan and Ko Khao Yai. (Ko = island and Yai = big in Thai).
The wind deserted us the next day and we had a long hot 10 hour sail to Ko Phetra only 17,6 miles away. The last hour was spent motoring and even then we arrived at the anchorage on the SE corner of Ko Phetra in the dark. Luckily we had been there before, so we were not breaking our rule of never going to a strange anchorage in the dark.
On Wednesday 12 December we left Ko Phetra in a moderate NE wind that lasted till noon and past Ko Liang. During the one hour calm that followed we motored to cool the fridge and then the wind came back to allow us to fetch to Ko Kradan. After arriving at 1600, a swim in the lovely clear water was followed by a cold salad and ham supper and yet another excellent night's sleep.
Ko Muk, our next stop, only 5 miles away was reached in the cool morning NE wind. There we anchored in a small bay between two magnificent towering sandstone cliffs opposite a tiny beach. The water was so clear that we could see the bottom in 10 meters. After the murky green waters round Langkawi we were really enjoying these clean clear conditions. We had this beautiful spot to ourselves until at noon, several longtail boats full of tourists arrived to picnic on the beach, which they left even more littered than it had been before!
We left Ko Muk at 0645 the next day in a good NE wind with Ko Lanta as our destination. But the wind increased and we were able to sail on to Ko Phi Phi Don under reefed mainsail and working jib, with some short seas jumping into the cockpit to keep us amused. On the way we passed and spoke to a South African catamaran, Katrine, en route from Phuket to Langkawi. The anchorage at Phi Phi that afternoon was very rough with incoming waves from the fresh NE wind and the wash from the departing ferries.
Phi Phi Don with its ghastly tourist pollution is not our favourite place so next day we set off early on the 25 mile leg to Ao Chalong on the coast of Phuket. This was to be a frustrating 10 hour day. A light NE wind followed by a mid day shut off, drifting in the tidal stream and motoring for an hour before a rain squall sent us on our way again to anchor at Ban Nit in Chalong bay.
It had been 8 days and 8 different anchorages to cover 122 miles at an average of 15,25 miles per day. A slow but interesting trip.
On Sunday 16th the short hop from Ban Nit to Ao Chalong was done in rain which continued all day. On Monday we checked into Thailand at the new immigration/ customs/ harbour master offices on the new jetty. The officials were helpful, friendly and efficient and asked for no bribes. Quite a difference from previous entries to Thailand.
The NE wind caused rough waters in Chalong Bay so a few days later we sailed round the southern tip of Phuket and north up the west coast to anchor at Karon beach and a day later at smaller, more sheltered Kata Beach. There we again met up with Len and Lena of Serida who told us about the bus service to Phuket town. 20 Bhatt per person compared with the 300 Bhatt tuk tuk fee. We were now pretty desperate for some fresh fruit and bought some from a beach stall - bad mistake! 1 Paw paw, 4 mangoes and 8 bananas cost us R75.
The state of Senta's bottom continued to be a worry. It was by now 19 months since she was anti-fouled in Richards Bay. Although the rate of marine growth had slowed in the clearer Thai water we were concerned about what would happen when we returned to Langkawi. Haul out fees were expensive, especially with the rand doing its diving act, but we had heard of a jetty near the north of Phuket where we could lie alongside, dry out and repaint for the reasonable charge of $US 5 per day.
So on Christmas Eve we took the bus to Phuket town, bought our Xmas presents of antifouling paint, thinners, brushes, rollers etc. Some R2000 poorer we lugged all of this back on the bus to Kata Beach. On Christmas Day we sailed in fresh NE winds round the south tip of Phuket and up the east coast to Ko Naka Yai, doing 45 miles in 7 hours, a lot of it into the wind and against the ebb tide. There we found the promised jetty and the following day located Norris, the village headman for permission to use the jetty. He happily agreed and gave us fresh green coconut milk to drink, coconut custard to eat, promises of help and offers of the use of fresh water from his well.
The next few days as we waited for the spring tides I swam under Senta to make sure she was as clean as possible and Pierre made many trips to the jetty in the dinghy at various states of the tide taking measurements, marking water heights and deciding exactly where Senta should stand. He also made a ladder for us to use to climb on and off Senta, using two of our dinghy booms and some scraps of wood all lashed together. In the process while tightening a knot he tore the skin off the little finger on his right hand. We were worried that this would hinder him while scrubbing and painting, but careful cleaning and dressing speeded up the healing process.
We were joined in a few days by Serida who also planned to dry out and paint, but as she draws ,2 meter more than Senta she would have to take the ground a day later. Len and Pierre were now making final calculations, checking measuring and marking the jetty. The highest spring tides would be at night but the moon would be full which would ease the whole process.
On Friday 28 December Pierre fitted the fenders, fender boards and lines while I gave Senta's bottom a final wipe down and at 2100 we took Senta over the now flooded reef to lie next to the jetty.
For two days we painted being chased up and down by the tides. Once we had to stop work completely in a rain shower when the paint would no longer stick to the boat. We were a strong attraction for the children of the village who spent many hours watching us work.
Serida joined Senta at the jetty at 2300 on the evening of the 29th. By the afternoon of the following day both boats had lovely new red bottoms and the tide was on its way in again. Norris arrived to say good bye and brought a gift of several sea bass that he had caught earlier in the day for our last supper on his island. After farewell drinks of coconut in his garden we cleaned and fried the bass for a delicious supper before settling down to wait for the tide to come in. Before midnight the two boats were back out over the reef and bobbing gently at anchor in the moonlight and their exhausted but happy crews were preparing for a well deserved sleep.
We had hoped to be in Patong on the west coast of Phuket for New Years Eve to watch the magnificent fire work display. But we rested at Ko Naka Yai instead and on New Years Day sailed 35 miles under reefed main and jib down the east coast, round the southern tip of Phuket and back up the west coast. As we approached Patong we encountered a stream of yachts leaving, but the anchorage was still very full when we arrived, so we anchored to the north of the main crowd near Kelim Beach.
We rewarded ourselves for our hard work on Senta with a visit to a bookstore where I bought the latest Stephen King and Harry Potter books as my Xmas/New Year presents to myself and Pierre treated himself to a yachting magazine, almost certainly the only one in the whole of Phuket.
During the first two weeks in January we beach hopped along the west coast of Phuket, mainly under reefed sails as the NE wind continued to be fresh and gusty. We mingled with the European and Asian tourists at the beach side shops and restaurants and were annoyed by them roaring backwards and forwards on jet skis around Senta. Unfortunately we had to pay tourist prices for everything and were quite pleased when our visas expired. A quick bus trip to Ao Chalong and back to check out and we were on our way on 15 January 2002 on the first hop southwards towards Langkawi.
We anchored at Ko Racha and stayed there for two days, enjoying the early mornings and evenings and hating the time in between as longtails, dive boats and high speed motor boats poured in bringing tourists from Phuket.
On Thursday 17th we sailed south again towards Ko Rok Nok in a good NE wind making good progress until 1300 when the wind switched off for the day and we had to motor for 3,5 hours to Rok Nok. As this is a national park we had to pay an entrance fee of US$ 10 or 400 Bhatt to the park ranger who came out to Senta in a dinghy to collect the money. Luckily we still had some Bhatt left to pay him.
We were concerned about the next 45 mile leg to the Butang Islands. If the wind was going to switch off at mid-day as it had done for the last few days we would have difficulty making the distance in a day without considerable use of the engine.
So at midnight on Sunday 20 January we set sail in a moderate NE wind hoping to get at least half of the distance under our belts in the cool night airs. We were playing Russian Roulette with the many unlit fishing floats and Dodgem with what seemed like hundreds of well lit fishing boats. Luckily we didn't hit anything and in the NE wind which died at dawn, but picked up again after sunrise, we sailed in to anchor at Ko Adang beach at 0930 after a 9 hour sail, averaging a good 5 knots.
We slept in the morning and the afternoon was spent watching the four masted barquentine, Star Flyer, arrive, anchor and sprinkle the beach with tourists. They swam, sunbathed, dinghy sailed, water skied and had a great time before returning to their sailing hotel to drift slowly under sail into the pink and purple sunset. A remarkable sight!
The next day we left Ko Adang at 1000 under genoa one third rolled out and sunshades in the gusting NE wind and sailed thus, hoping that no one we knew would see us, to Ko Lipe the SE-most island in the Butang Group. The NE wind blew fresh and gusty all day and night so the next morning in preparation for the 28 mile beat to Langkawi we removed the genoa from the furler and replaced it with the yankee. We also set up the cutter stays and runners and rigged the working jib.
A half an hour after leaving Ko Lipe we had to furl the yankee and downsize to working jib for a difficult sail into short choppy seas which turned out to be more like 40 miles than the 28 atcf distance (atcf = As The Crow Flies). Around mid-day the wind moderated and we un-reefed the main and unfurled the genoa, but still made slow progress against the tide and choppy square waves. By mid afternoon we were in the lee of Langkawi and made more headway in the calmer waters to anchor at Pantai Cenang. There after an early supper of tea, biscuits and tinned pineapple, we settled in for a good rest. We were very tired; me from hand steering 40 plus miles in ghastly seas and Pierre from constant sail changes and trimming.
We were now back in the familiar Langkawi cruising grounds and after a beat up the Bass harbour sound we set about checking in , buying provisions, and deciding what to do next.
The last few days of January were marked by two amazing coincidences.
As we sat having lunch at a table under the trees on the banks of the lagoon where we leave our dinghy while shopping, we heard a voice behind us say, "You two look like yotties and I need to know how to get my gas tank filled." We looked around and soon recognized Bob, the 73 year old Canadian single hander we had met in Mayotte in October 1999. We had last seen him in Richards Bay in December that year as he left bound for Cape Town. Bob, now 75, had in the intervening 2 years sailed his 26 foot sloop, Vaya, alone across the Atlantic, through Panama, across the Pacific and through Indonesia to Singapore and Malaysia - well on his way to a second circumnavigation. What a fantastic person! Bob remains happy, healthy (if a bit deaf), does all of his own boat maintenance and only sees his wife now and again when their paths cross as she tours the world on ships and airplanes with her friends. He had last seen her in Curacao. Vaya was struck by lightning a few months ago in Lamut, halfway down the Malacca Strait. So he will have to slow down his world girdling and stay here for a year to repair the damage to his electronics etc. We hope to see a lot more of him.
The second coincidence happened this morning, 1 February. I noticed the owner and father of two from a boat, Daisy, anchored next to us sailing his small dinghy and called out to him, "I see you have to get up early to steal a sail before your children wake up!" He couldn't quite hear me so sailed over to Senta and introduced himself as Frederico. He said that he had been cruising for 17 years but was only now really enjoying sailing, and that in a 7ft dinghy!. I remarked what fun I had had sailing our dinghy in Chagos. He queried' "Chagos?...June last year?..' and then I recognized him. "La Cardinala," I exclaimed, "You were the skipper who put Suiderkruis' mast back up!". "Yes", he replied," That was me." He explained that he had spent nine months last year earning some cruising money as skipper of La Cardinala and was now back on Daisy with his wife, Fulvia and their two children. Pierre soon arrived back at Senta after fetching diesel from the fuel barge. You should have seen his face when I said, "Let me introduce you to Frederico, the skipper of La Cardinala!" He couldn't believe it and I am still surprised at how small this cruising world is. But there is plenty of room for more - so - those of you who are dreaming of cruising, firm up your plans, move into action and join us out here. It really is a good life, and now with Bob's example we can continue for at least another decade.
Chagos to Malaysia June to August 2001
Our Chagos routine carried on through June gradually concentrating more on maintenance and boat preparation. Yachts continued to leave and a few arrived from Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling. By mid June there were 17 boats left at Salamon atoll, a welcome reduction from the sixty there earlier.
In between the work sessions there was still plenty of time for fun; several sails to Isle de Passe in the dinghy to say goodbye to boats leaving from there; a memorable picnic on Isle de Passe where Ree of Southern Voyager supplied a large bowl of green salad and tree tomatoes - what a treat. Ree is a keen hydroponic gardener and Southern Voyager looked like a jungle covered in tomato plants, cucumber vines, pepper bushes etc. When Nom de Plume left we inherited two basil plants and the harvested leaves provided a welcome variation to the taste of our ship's stews.
We continued to be well supplied with fresh fish, especially from Colin and Glynnis of Deja Vu, who regularly took their inflatable out through the pass to hunt for yellow fin and dog tooth tuna in the deep ocean water outside the drop off of the fringing reef. We once dog-sat Muffie, their Maltese poodle, on Senta while they fished, but she was so miserable that on future trips she was left behind on Deja Vu. There she sat in the cockpit gazing towards the pass waiting for the return of her owners (and of course her fish dinner!). Pierre commented that she looked just like a 'furry winch'.
Towards the end of June, Nom De Plume and Southern Voyager left for Malaysia and Deja Vu for Seychelles, Mayotte and back to South Africa. We began to feel quite lonely and itchy to start moving ourselves. On our 42nd wedding anniversary on 27 June I received the magnificent gift of two coconuts!
June rolled into July and news on the radio net was that Deja Vu reached Seychelles on the 2nd after a quick 6 1/2 day passage. Southern Voyager and Nom de Plume had hit problems 750 miles out and with more than 1000 miles still to go to Malaysia, Southern Voyager's aft lower shroud broke in an early morning squall and Nom de Plume's auto helm had 'burned out'. John and Pam were having to hand steer, an awesome task with such a long way still to go. We were comforted to know that our main steering device is rugged, simple and driven by a wind vane. As a backup and for use in calms we have a small auto helm 1000 driving the tiller, which has worked fairly well the few times we have used it.
At the end of the first week in July there were only five boats left in the atoll.
On Sunday 8th we heard on the radio that Suiderkruis, a South African catamaran had been dismasted 90 miles west of Perhos Banhos. The mast had been retrieved and the boat was motoring towards Perhos, which they reached the following day - a day we spent mainly listening to the BBC broadcast of Goran Ivanisovitch winning Wimbledon.
A few days later Suiderkruis motored to Salamon, planning to make minimal repairs, erect a jury rig, buy some fuel from the other boats and then motor the 300 miles to Gan in the Addu atoll of Maldives.
That afternoon we went on board Suiderkruis and met Graham, the delivery skipper and Dubie(Israel) and Paul(S Africa) who had joined the boat in the Seychelles. We had a look at the damage to the mast, mast step and cabin top and believed that the boat could be repaired well enough to sail to Malaysia. "So," said Pierre, "When do you want this mast back up? Today or tomorrow?? Forget about jury rig to Addu. You're going to sail to Malaysia under full sail." There were some skeptics and doubting Thomasses among the other visitors to Suiderkruis. But Graham, who at first thought that Pierre was joking, liked and agreed to our suggestions for repairing the damage.
So next day we started. Suiderkruis was rafted alongside Senta, whose spinnaker halyard was used to lift the stricken mast off Suiderkruis' deck thus freeing the trapped boom and sails, and repositioning the mast lying horizontally on the cabin top. I sewed several long tears in the mainsail watched by Dubi who would take over the rest of the sail repairs from me. Pierre repaired the bent foil while Richard of Mr. Curley started work on a new metal mast step, as the T-piece of the old step had snapped off. Good progress was made and Suiderkruis' crew came out of their despondency and were a lot more hopeful and positive.
Questions started to be asked about how to get the mast up again. Pierre said not to worry about that. The priority was to repair all the broken parts so the whole thing would work again. We could raft two boats on either side of Suiderkruis and lift the mast on their spinnaker halyards; Suiderkruis could be put on the beach and a palm tree used for the lift; or, said Pierre, "Maybe a maxi yacht will sail in here and re-step the mast as easy as anything!" Loud derisive laughter greeted this as no one had ever seen or heard of a maxi stopping at Salamon.
By the second day of work the new mast step was made; Richard was working on repairs to the Pro-Furl's lower drum, some of the bits of which had been lost; Dubi was sitting on the beach at Fouquet Island sewing the mainsail; Paul was chipping away gel coat on the cabin top preparing for the repair job; Graham was generally tidying up and straightening the large steel H-piece that supports the mast below deck; Pierre continued work on the foil and the fitting at the head of the forestay, which had been the cause of the dismasting, and fixing various other bits and pieces. Talk kept returning to the problem of hoisting the mast with Pierre urging everyone to concentrate on their tasks and forget the raising of the mast. "Don't forget, that maxi might still arrive!"
Senta had to supply most of the materials, fittings and tools as Suiderkruis was surprisingly ill-equipped for a cruising boat.
On the third day I did epoxy/fibre glass repairs to the inside of the cabin under the mast step, assisted by Pierre and watched by Paul who was keen to learn how to work with fibre glass. The H-piece support was then glassed and bolted into place. The following day was taken up with glass repair work to the outside of the cabin top and bedding down with resin of the new mast step. We were starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, and thoughts again returned the problem of how to get the mast back up. Just after lunch an Eeenormous! dark blue maxi yacht, La Cardinale, sailed into Salamon, with an Italian family, paid skipper and crew on board. Immediately after anchoring the skipper rowed over and said' "I see you have mast problem. I put it back for you. You want today or tomorrow?" Well, talk about synchronicity! He then told us that they would only be in the atoll for 3 days - the owner never liked to stay more than 3 days in any one place. We wondered why and who or what might be chasing him!
There was now added impetus to the job and the remainder of the day and the next morning were spent finishing up and preparing the mast for stepping. La Cardinala's spinnaker boom was already rigged out to starboard with a block and tackle at the end fed back to one of the giant power winches. After lunch, to cheers from the spectating Italian family, Suiderkruis' mast was successfully stepped and her crew proceeded to broach two of the bottles of Red Heart rum from her liquor store. When we visited them at sundown they were incoherently, drunkenly sprawled on the trampoline, but profuse in their thanks, calling us their guardian angels and saying that they didn't believe it could be done until we told them it could.
The next morning La Cardinale sailed away to grateful cheers and horn blasts from Suiderkruis, Senta and Mr. Curley. Suiderkruis' hung-over crew set about cleaning up the boat and preparing for sea and we started to look again at Senta's "to do" lists. High in priority were checking the mast and rigging and swimming over the side to clean the hull and check the rudder, trim tab and self steering system. So we started with these followed by; re-sticking the Velcro on the deck for the fore and middle hatch covers; changing the drier in the refrigeration system and topping up with gas; repacking the grab bags; checking GPS's; preparing charts and generally re-rigging Senta for sailing, something she hadn't done for nearly 4 months.
During this time we heard an amusing story on the BBC from one of the competitors in the program "Quote/Unquote". He and his wife had watched with interest for several days as a small fox wandered into their garden early each morning. When this happened again they woke their fourteen year old daughter to come and share the excitement. After peering through the window for a few moments she turned to them and asked, "And this affects me HOW?" It reminded us a lot of someone we all know and Phillip will certainly be able to guess who.
Some welcome rain in the last few days allowed us to fill our water tanks. Last minute baking ensured that we would not go hungry in the first few days at sea when we don't like to cook.
Suiderkruis left after lunch on 26 July under sail for Langkawi, Malaysia. The plan was for us to follow about a day behind. She would radio her position each morning so we could keep track of her and be close enough to help in case of problems.
Senta reluctantly sailed away from Salamon atoll the following morning in a moderate SE wind and soon fetched into the lee of Blenheim Reef, a sunken atoll. The sea there was ultra calm and quite beautiful with the SE trade breakers crashing on to the reef 1/2 a mile to weather. The good wind continued all day and strengthened so that we put a reef in the main and rolled the furling headsail down to jib size for the night.
News from Suiderkruis the next morning was good - no problems and they had covered 230 miles in less the 24 hours. We hoped that they weren't pushing the boat too hard. We had stressed that they should consider themselves to be under jury rig, reef early and generally not stress the boat or rigging too much.
Senta fetched to the east on a heading of 80 degrees magnetic keeping to the south of the rhumb line between Salamon and Rondo Island just north of Sumatra. We hoped to cross the equator no sooner than 82 degrees east, to ensure that we picked up the SW winds as early as possible. We were both sleeping and eating well with no seasickness in spite of the rough seas.
By noon the next day we had climbed to weather and were now 50 miles to the south of our rhumb line, so we bore off and freed the sails to parallel the line. We had averaged 130 miles per day after three days out. All the fresh bread rolls were eaten so I had to bake some more; quite a job holding onto the frying pan in the rough seas.
On 31 July we were passed by a tanker/freighter, Sagamore. The captain, Mickey Spillane (Honestly, it's true!) called us on the VHF radio. He lives in Maine where he sails a "sloop" and is missing it very much. Sagamore was un-laden and rolling around like crazy. Micky complained of sore knuckles from hanging on to the edge of the leeboards of his bunk. He was on his way to Diego Garcia to "Pick up a load" - of what I hated to think; used engine oil? garbage? sea sand: empty Coke cans? coconuts? He told us of bad weather up ahead with force 7 winds and 11 foot seas at 85 degrees between 1 degree north and 2 degrees south. We were on course to sail right through there in a day or so and hoped that all of the badness would be gone by then.
We had now pushed our average daily run up to over 135 miles. At this rate we would pass the top of Sumatra at Spring tides, something we had planned to avoid. If this fast passage continued we would have to sail between Rondo and Wei islands to miss the overfalls and tide rips that we knew from our 1997 passage waited to pounce north of Rondo. We then risked falling into the wind shadow east of Sumatra - but we could deal with that - overfalls we definitely didn't want to deal with. The good winds continued veering through south to southwest and all was well except for the rough seas and the big southerly swell, the constant pest of the South Indian Ocean, which kept on coming and hitting us every 8 seconds.
On Thursday 2 August, six days out, we were now 756 miles from Rondo and over 800 miles from Salamon. The wind speed was now 20 knots and Senta was thundering through the sea like a rhino with a bee under his skin. News from Suiderkruis was good and she was 144 miles ahead of us. The wind veered to the WSW and increased to 25 to 30 knots in the afternoon. We reefed the main, furled the genoa and set the working jib on the cutter stay. We carried this rig all night and crossed the equator at 2200 at 85 degrees 45' east, happily nearly 4 degrees further east than we had hoped for.
The next morning the 18 knot SW wind pushed us on our way until 0900 when a large rain squall caused the wind to veer to the west and increase to 25 to 30 knots. Senta was blasting downwind at 8,5 knots and the first very deep reef in the mainsail was working well. Being on such a dead run the jib was blanketed by the main for 80% of the time. So we sheeted it in hard on both sheets. It then acted like a forward rudder/vane coming into play to prevent broaches if Senta sailed too much into the wind. Constant rain meant that our watches were pretty wet. We had to stand them on deck in case of rig failure at the speed we were going. At 2230 a 35 knot squall had us both anxiously on deck, but Senta handled it well on her own.
This wonderful westerly wind continued all night and the following day until it abated to 15 knots in the evening. By the noon sight on Saturday 4 August we were 420 miles from Rondo and had covered over 1100 miles from Salamon at an average of 136 miles per day. Suiderkruis' radio message at 0400 UTC each day continued to show that all was well and she remained just over a day's sail ahead of us. This was a perfect gap because if she had a problem just after a transmission and only contacted us 24 hours later we would still be to weather of her. It would not have been pleasant to turn and beat back to her in the prevailing conditions.
At lunch time next day a container ship passed us. I called them on VHF to ask if they could see us on their radar. It would be reassuring to know that we made a reasonable radar target for when we crossed the shipping lanes around Rondo in a few days time. The deck officer, once he understood my request said, "Ah so! Ladar - jus stan by preez whire I switch on" Twenty five minutes later an Italian voice came on the air. Obviously the skipper, disturbed from his lunch or siesta. After I repeated my request he studied his now running radar and confirmed that he had a "maybe" image. He could correctly identify our position speed and course at a distance of seven miles. So we guessed this would be OK - as long as the ships had their radars switched on! But to improve our chances Pierre assembled our new spare radar reflector and deployed it above the poop deck at the end of the dinghy's aluminium mast.
Rain squalls at 0300 on the morning of 6 August caused the second reef to go into the main, the genoa to be completely furled and the working jib set. We continued like this trying to slow down to arrive at the strait between Rondo and Wei islands at daybreak on the 8th. At mid day we replaced the working jib with the storm jib in case we had to do some ship dodging necessitating going to windward. In these 30 knot winds anything bigger would be unwise. At 1530 a rain squall overtook us bringing 40 knots in the gusts. I hand steered for about 40 minutes as we were goose winged and I wanted to ensure that the little storm jib stayed set and didn't collapse and refill putting extra stress on the rig and possibly tearing the sail. Things soon calmed down to 20 to 25 knots and we continued on our hopefully slower approach to Rondo.
An uneventful night running under storm jib and double reefed main brought dawn at 0600 and 100 miles to Rondo. So our task was clear - do 100 miles in the next 24 hours or a bit longer if possible. At 0700 we crossed the 1000 meter contour line and the swells seemed to decrease. At 0855 we radioed a ship on our bow coming straight towards us. He had not seen us as we were obscured by a rain shower behind us. We both altered course to starboard and all was well. The ship's captain called us up and thanked us for warning him. He wished us "A Happy sailing"
At 1230 we hove to for three hours to kill time as we were approaching Rondo too quickly. During this time a 30 knot rain squall passed over. We then continued sailing in an 18 knot SW wind for the rest of the day and evening.
At 0100 on the morning of 8 August we picked up the lighthouse on Breueh Island, at the western end of the Bengal Strait between Wei island and Sumatra. We hove to again to kill time before setting sail towards Rondo at 5 knots. By 0700 we had reached Breueh island and saw the mountains and rain forests of northern Sumatra behind this large island. In 20 to 25 knot winds under one reef in the main and yankee Senta tore at 8 knots across the mouth of the Bengal Strait towards the passage between Rondo and Wei islands. We needed to go fast to counter the outgoing tidal current. As I sat in the cockpit enjoying the spectacular sail I glanced in to the water on the starboard side and saw to my horror a massive, waterlogged, moss covered tree trunk less than a meter away. It was too late to do anything and I watched open mouthed as Senta's bow wave gently nudged the monster away and we slipped past.
The 20 to 30 knot SW wind took us through a few small tide rips and past many ships into the Malacca Straits and true to form a day later abated to 8 knots for a few hours and then died completely.
We hadn't heard from Suiderkruis for a few days and were pleased when she came on the air to say that she had stopped at Wei to check something on the mast and was now under way again with 80 miles to go to Langkawi.
We suffered the calm for a few hours, then started the motor and progressed forwards at 4,5 knots for 18 hours until dawn on Friday 10th when a light SW wind allowed us to sail for the morning before dying off at lunch time. By 1400 we were motoring again and continued thus until anchoring off Pantai Ceneng on the west coast of Langkawi at 0200. We had covered 1793 miles from Chagos in just less than 16 days. A very satisfactory passage and much better than 22 days as in 1997.
We slept uneasily for the remainder of the night as this beach is completely exposed to the west and SW and the next morning we motored the 12 miles up the sound in Bass harbour to anchor off Kuah Town. There we found Suiderkruis safely anchored and were pleased to see the successful end to her dismasting misadventure. No one was on board and we guessed they were ashore celebrating. This proved to be so when slightly tipsy Dubi and Paul visited later in the day. We didn't see Graham until he came aboard Senta for coffee the next morning.
As it was the weekend the banks were closed, but Humphrey on Brumby anchored nearby leant us 100 ringitt, so we were able to check in, buy fresh supplies at the market and have dinner ashore.
Memories of our stay in the paradise of Chagos were already beginning to fade as we looked forward to tasting civilization again. More about that in the next newsletter.
Chagos April to June 2001
After an exhilarating sail from Perhos Banhos atoll the previous day we spent April Fool's Day tidying up, packing away and generally preparing Senta for an extended stay of several months at Salamon atoll. Sails covered, sun awnings up, sheets stowed below away from the sun's harmful rays, winches covered, cockpit dodgers off to allow more breeze over the boat.
We counted nine boats in the anchorage at Boddam Island, some of whom we knew; Southern Voyager and Nom de Plume (New Zealand); Brumby (Canada); Mariposa (Germany and Richards Bay); Lady Guinivere(UK); Bubble Hull (Mayotte). We met the crews of the other boats the following evening on the beach at a pot luck party to celebrate John's(Nom de Plume) 60th birthday.
During our stay at Salamon more than seventy boats would come and go with a maximum of sixty at the peak, and six or so when we left three and a half months later.
The next day an American boat, Leviathan, a DownEaster 32 crewed by Richard and Paula Porter, arrived from Addu atoll in the Maldives, some 300 miles away. They reported a very bad passage with winds of seventy knots and the boat had taken in a lot of water. The cause of this massive leak was never really explained, but there was talk of chain plates working or a leaking stuffing box round the propeller shaft. Paula was extremely upset and vowed that she would never go to sea again, but would rather remain at Salamon for the rest of her life. Tragically, when they left for Mayotte at the end of May, they encountered bad weather between the Farquhar Islands and the NE tip of Madagascar and Leviathan disappeared. We could only assume that the cause of the previous intake of water had not been fixed, she became water logged in the rough seas and sunk. Richard had been in daily radio contact with the other boats on the same passage, but after passing Farquhar, where the other boats stopped to let the bad weather blow over, there was no further radio message from Leviathan, although an EPIRB signal was reported from the area. After Leviathan had been missing for over a week and prompted by cruising boats, the French Navy from Mayotte sent a ship, and the American Navy an aircraft from Diego Garcia to search. But nothing was ever found. We were all upset, wishing too late that we had done something to ensure that Leviathan's leak was repaired before she set sail again. The incident was a sober reminder to us all that, happy and carefree as our existence seemed to be, we were actually living with constant danger against which we had always to be prepared.
Talking of danger and back in time to early April we began to think of making certain that Senta stayed securely anchored in the imminent change over period. The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) would cross over us going northwards and the winds would change from WNW to SE with strong gusts and squalls. Salamon is not a place in which to drag anchor, infested as it is with bommies. We re-anchored Senta in 15 meters of water with a 35lb CQR anchor attached by 12 meters of chain to the main 70 meter chain just behind the main 60lb CQR anchor. This would keep us in place, but we hated to think of getting it all up again! We found that we had to be in 15 meters of water to avoid the coral heads in shallower depths. We didn't want to damage the coral or get our anchoring gear stuck.
We rigged the dinghy for sailing with the cannibalized Mirror rig, unpacked our snorkeling and fishing gear and got ready to enjoy some lazy Chagos days. Sailing the dinghy was always enjoyable either on long crossings to other islands or short meanders through the anchorage visiting other boats. The first few outings were fairly anxious until we became familiar with the position of the bommies that could damage the lee board. We became quite expert at judging the depth of the water from the color. Blue and green were good, yellow marginal and brown a definite no-go area.
Each afternoon we would sail the dinghy to the beach to watch the volley ball games and chat with the other spectators. On the first afternoon jaunt we took the beautiful green deck chairs that had been our 1999 Xmas presents from Ingrid and Phillip. We were the envy of everyone as we relaxed in ultimate comfort. The deck chairs had lived in the starboard quarter berth for almost a year and now at last started to show their worth.
We began to think about doing some maintenance work when we saw Claire of Brumby busy putting many coats of varnish on their companionway steps. She was very keen but her enthusiasm waned a little after a rat chewed off what was supposed to be the final coat!
The isolation we had felt on our previous visits was no longer there as several boats with ham radios had e-mail. Using a piece of software called PACTOR they were able to send messages by radio to any one of a network of ham stations equipped to receive the messages, which they voluntarily and for free passed on to the Internet. They also handled messages in the reverse direction. The Canadian boat 'Tigger' established contact with Ingrid for us to tell her that all was well and to receive any urgent messages if any. Luckily there weren't any. In some ways this electronic communication was reassuring but in other ways it detracted from the romantic notion of really being 'away from it all'.
Plenty of rain during April allowed us to keep our water tanks full of sparkling clean, soft rain water. Full moon on the night of 8 April was celebrated with a Pizza evening. Each boat brought their own version of pizza. These were all shared out and we munched our way through the rising of the moon over this unforgettable lagoon.
A down day happened on 10 April when the British troops arrived from Diego Garcia to check in new boats and collect $80 in anchoring fees for three months. Sad to lose the greenbacks, but excellent value for money.
Although we had brought plenty of fishing tackle we hardly ever used it. We were kept well supplied with fresh fish by the many other keen fishermen in the anchorage; sweet lips, job fish, snappers, yellow fin tuna (Our favorite).
A large turtle lived on a bommie near us and we often came across him as we went to and fro in the dinghy. Unfortunately unless we were very quiet he would dive deep before we could get a good look at him.
Towards the end of April we heard on the VHF radio that a Sri Lankan fishing boat that was illegally inside the 200 mile exclusion zone around Chagos, had been wrecked on the reef on the northernmost island in Perhos Banhos, 25 miles away, and abandoned by her crew. Within a day all small items of value ranging from electronic equipment and radios to bags of onions and potatoes had been removed by the crews of the yachts anchored at Perhos Banhos. Jerry cans of diesel were removed from the deck and some yotties were in the process of cutting in to the boat's diesel tanks and removing the fuel. As the Sri Lankan fishing boat was illegally fishing in the area the authorities turned a blind eye to this looting. We didn't think it was particularly decent behavior, but who knows, if we had been closer we might have gone for some of the onions! (an essential ingredient for ship's stews).
Several of the boats had very young crew members. A favorite was Jules, the son of Peter(Swiss) and Jenny(South African) on Blue Shadow. We had first met Jenny in Langkawi at Rebak Marina in 1998. She had introduced herself and said that a friend of hers knew Hilda very well. What a small world it really is. Jules was learning to talk and would repeat everything said to him like a little parrot. One evening while Peter and Jenny were playing volley ball, Pierre taught Jules to point at Venus and say "Look, there's a planet". Peter was very chuffed the first time Jules did this trick for him. But after a while the novelty wore off as Jules repeated "Look there's a planet" ad nauseum, changing the object of his finger pointing to other bright stars as Venus set. Months later as we were saying our goodbyes Jenny said to Jules, "Say goodbye. They are going to Malaysia". He dutifully complied "Good bye they are going to Malaysia". For the rest of the evening whenever anyone else arrived Jules would point at us and parrot "Say goodbye they're going to Malaysia", until we were actually pleased that we would soon be going and could get away from this charming little monster.
Snorkeling around Boddam island showed that most of the coral had died in the hot water of the 1997/97 El Nino, but that some of it in the deep water was starting to grow again.
Chagos days continued as we waited for Deja Vu to arrive. News on the Indian Ocean radio net was that their generator was still not fixed or replaced, but they had decided to leave Dar Es Salaam and come to Chagos anyway with a brief stop in Seychelles for fuel and fresh provisions.
The general lazing about was interspersed with more strenuous activities; walks on the beach, book swops, visits to other boats for tea and small items of maintenance. Jonathon, Rebecca, Sophie and Sebastion sailed Rose of Sharon over from Takamaka island, accompanied by about 30 dolphins to have tea and borrow our chart of the Farquhar islands. That same day there was great excitement in the lagoon as Keith, from Lady Guinivere, overturned his dinghy in heavy surf while returning over the reef from a fishing expedition. The alarm was raised and pretty soon there were a dozen inflatables anchored inside the surge line with their crews in the water helping to rescue Keith, his dinghy and gear. Some items were lost including the anchor, but no one was hurt.
Deja Vu arrived from Seychelles on Sunday 22 April after a ten day passage of mainly calms and a one day flurry with some 50 knot gusts. Colin and Glynis joined us and Richard and Paula from Leviathan for a prolonged lunch on Senta as we all caught up on news of the months since we has last met in Tanga in January.
Our refrigerator was becoming less and less efficient, cooling properly for about 20 minutes then melting down and stopping cooling. We had bought a new tank of Freon in Tanga and had topped up the gas a few times, but we obviously had a leak somewhere. There was also probably water in the system which was not being removed by the filter dryer. Luckily Dan on Invictus is a refrigerator fundi and helped us make repairs. We used his electronic freon leak detector to find the problem areas and he made some replacement copper joints to sort out the problems. He also repaired a leaking sight glass. We did not have new filter driers, but at Dan's suggestion we baked some old ones in Tigger's oven for several hours to dry them out. Although not essential on a cruising boat a good refrigerator keeps fruit and vegetables fresh much longer in hot tropical weather, you don't have to eat all the fish you catch or are given on the same day and a really cold drink is welcome when you are hot and sticky.
At the end of April the ITCZ had almost passed over and the SE trades started to push through. Boats started to trickle and then flood in from Perhos Banhos, with a real invasion of seven boats on the last day of April. Just in time too as the next day the SE wind was blowing hard and continued gusty for several days before settling down.
Keith and Diane (Lady Guinevere) who had met in Mexico, organized a "Cinquo de Maya" beach party on, surprisingly enough, 5 May. This is some kind of Mexican national day. On 17 May we celebrated "Norwegian Constitution Day". Any excuse for a party! Jules attended in his birthday suit topped off with a paper mache Viking helmet. He was now reciting his latest astronomical lesson from Pierre, "The sun comes up" - finger pointing to the east, "and the sun goes down", finger now pointing to the west.
We were tired of the rough anchorage at Boddam and so moved to anchor on the sand spit on the SW corner of Fouquet Island. We did this on the last sunny day for a week. The rain settled in accompanied by gusty winds. Several boats were preparing to leave for Madagascar and were waiting for the weather to clear. An epidemic of cabin fever set in as crews were confined to their boats.
At last on 23 May the sun rose in a clear sky with a moderate SE wind and four boats set off to the west. These were more than replaced by eight boats who moved to Takamaka Island from Boddam to escape the rough water. An added attraction on the Fouquet and Takamaka sand spits were the frequent visits from large manta rays. Several people swam with the rays, but I was too chicken. One morning as I sat in the cockpit a large ray shot out of the water less than 8 meters away, flew several meters through the air towards me before splashing back into the water as if to say "Come and play with us - don't be scared".
One evening as we lay in our bunks in the fore cabin reading we heard a dull, metallic screech up on deck. A brief inspection showed nothing obviously wrong. A more detailed look the following morning revealed the problem. The mast is deck stepped on a stainless steel plate bolted to the deck. Between this plate and the mast is a thick aluminium T-plate. Whatever had insulated these two reacting metals from each other had worn away and sea water had encouraged a corrosive action. The bottom of the aluminium plate had oxidized and expanded, lifting the mast about 5mm and the noise we heard was one of the bolts being lifted up a millimeter, straight through the threads. Two of the six bolts had been affected and although they were still tight, we didn't want them to be lifted any further. The corrosion lifted the full weight of the mast and rigging against the downward pull of 500kg on each of nine stays.
This definitely had to be fixed so we lay for many hours on our stomachs on the deck digging away the corroded metal between the two plates with hacksaw blades, knives and improvised hooks and scrapers. Eventually as we removed the last of the corrosion the thick aluminium plate slowly straightened and settled back into place as the mast pushed it downwards. After copious rinsing with fresh water and drying in the hot sun we examined the mast step and pronounced it sound. We then injected epoxy resin into the gap between the two plates and the bolt holes to firm everything up and seal it against further ingress of sea water which could lead to further corrosion. Subsequent frequent inspections have shown the area to remain in excellent condition.
During an afternoon sail back from the beach in the dinghy the wind became too strong for the over sized Mirror sails we use. We dropped the main but could not beat under jib only. So up went the main again for a dicey beat back to Senta shipping water over the gunwale and frantically bailing. The next day we made a storm mainsail out of the top of Senta's old mainsail. Tests showed this to be useless, as the dinghy just slipped sideways through the water. But we could make reasonable progress under the full gaff-rigged Mirror mainsail, although this was still far too big for heavy winds. We would just have to watch the weather carefully in future. Several days later I sailed back to Boddam to see what it was like with no one there. On the way back I noticed a black rain squall approaching from the east, and for safety's sake sailed into the shallow water just to leeward of the outer fringing reef. With less than a kilometer to go to Senta the squall struck the east end of the lagoon. I hurried to a shallow sandy patch, anchored and dropped sails to wait for the squall to pass. Gallant Dave from Shady Lady soon arrived in his inflatable and offered me a tow back to Senta. Although there was no danger I didn't want to appear ungracious, so accepted the somewhat bumpy and wet tow.
Boats continued to leave on a daily basis bound for Madagascar and Salamon was slowly emptying. We were beginning to run out of some supplies, but were able to buy replacements from boats leaving; flour from Tigger, sugar and oats from Non de Plume, Rice from Deja Vu, crackers, powdered milk and cheese from Southern Voyager and more crackers and baking powder from Brumby. We could now stay for several more months - very tempting!
Soon the constant SE trades strengthened and made the W Fouquet sand spit uncomfortable so we moved Senta to anchor north of the gap between Fouquet and Takamaka islands. As well as being in calmer water we were now closer to the well on Takamaka. This must be the most beautiful bathroom in the world! Completely shaded by coconut and takamaka trees; sunlight filtering through the gaps in the dome of high foliage; tropical birds flitting to and fro; floor carpeted with fallen leaves and moss; sounds of breaking surf from the seaward side of the island; and to the leeward side, breathtaking views of white beaches and turquoise water. A place to linger while hauling water from the well, doing the laundry and showering.
We had long since eaten the last of our packets of sweet biscuits, so I was now experimenting with making tea time treats on our 2 burner gas stove (no oven). A basic bread mixture with baking powder instead of yeast and laced with sugar and grated coconut (Plenty available), Milo or raisins, spooned into the frying pan, covered and gently cooked for five minutes each side made quite delicious "Ship's buns".
Glynnis and I did a fair amount of snorkeling as the coral on the east side of the lagoon seemed to have been unaffected by the El Nino hot water. Beautiful shapes and colours, many different types of fish, every now and then a turtle or small sea snake. One afternoon we dinghied to the gap between Takamaka and Fouquet and walked toward the outer reef along the Fouquet shore. Then we swam into the outer lagoon and drifted with the current through the pass into the inner lagoon. In spite of the current the water was the clearest we had seen. There was not much coral in the pass but the abundance and variety of fish life was a joy to see. We had so much fun that we persuaded Pierre, Colin, John and Pam(Nom De Plume), Noel and Ree(Southern Voyager) to join us in another afternoon "Pass shooting snorkel" a few days later. This time it was even better with the added bonus of an under water turtle sighting. Although we snorkeled at several different places we found that the best coral was actually within 30 meters of where we were anchored.
One morning a hot and flustered Glynnis stopped at Senta on her way back from the beach. Her maltese poodle, Muffie, was looking crestfallen. "I'm going to kill this dog!" said Glynnis. While she had been busy doing the laundry, Muffie had wandered off as usual, but she didn't return when Glynnis called out that they were going back to Deja Vu. After hours of calling and searching Glynnis noticed some paw prints on the beach. She followed these to the large sand spit on the NE end of Takamaka, at the tip of which stood an angry rooster. Muffie, with bloodied nose was standing guard refusing to let the rooster back to the sheltering bushes of the island. Well, little dogs have to amuse themselves while their owners do the chores!
We were now well in to June and the lazing, swimming, sailing, fish braais and beach parties continued unabated. But we would soon have to start thinking of departure preparation. In 1997 we had left Salamon for Malaysia on 1 September and had experienced very light winds, taking 22 days for the passage. We wanted to leave earlier this time, with hopefully better winds. We started to make the inevitable list of "Things to do before we leave" and to plan our first activities back in civilization; visits to ice cream parlours; reading news magazines; raiding the market for fresh fruit and vegetables. But there was still a month or more of Chagos to enjoy - more of which soon.
Tanzania to Seychelles to Chagos December 2000 to March 2001
As Senta slowly dried out on the beach at Tanga Yacht Club on the morning of Monday 11 December we sat in the cockpit enjoying our mugs of tea and Milo. We heard the sound of a cat continually meowing, but ignored it for a while. The cries became more persistent and after a while pitiful. The sound seemed to be coming from the water so we scanned the moored boats with binoculars and eventually spotted a very bedraggled tabby clinging onto the stern drive of an inboard/outboard motor boat. Pierre set out in the dinghy on a rescue mission armed with a large towel to wrap around the cat and prevent scratches. As the dinghy drew closer the yowling became louder and more desperate as it seemed to say 'I've been calling and calling - Why did you leave me here so long?' Pierre spoke soothing words, gently wrapped that cat in the towel, put it on the front seat of the dinghy and rowed to the beach. There he unwrapped the cat and expected that it would immediately jump ashore and run away. But the cat just sat glancing to and fro between its rescuer and the beach. Pierre eventually gave a gentle push and pussy landed on the wet sand. There it proceeded to lift up each foot, shake it free of nasty wetness, and put it down again, slowly going up the beach until he disappeared into the tree line. The cat was obviously very reluctant to get out of the dinghy and walk on the beach.
Later that morning we found out why. Aidan, from the catamaran 'Shibumi' came by asking if anyone had seen his cat that must have fallen overboard sometime during the night. The cat had lived aboard all of its life and never been ashore. And now we had pushed it out of the dinghy and chased it away! We searched and Aidan searched but the cat was nowhere to be seen. A troop of very loud monkeys had appeared in the trees above the beach and probably scared the cat away.
But this story has a happy ending. At 0300 the next morning the tide was in and Aidan rowed along the shoreline smoking his pipe and calling 'Kitty Kitty' Eventually from the bushes, almost exactly where he had disappeared came an answering meow. Aidan was happy, Pussy was ecstatic as he talked to Aidan all the way back to 'Shubimi, and we had a large load lifted from our shoulders.
A week after refloating Senta and a week before Christmas we discovered a nasty surprise that had been waiting for us since Sunday 6 August when we rounded Cap St Andre in Madagascar and were approaching Baaie de Baly. With five miles to go a 25 knot SE head wind had come up and soon developed a nasty short sea. We beat into it, taking a lot of green water over the deck and down the hawser pipe into the forward sump. Although we had pumped water out of the sump some had flowed back into the locker under the port saloon berth where we had a lot of canned food stored.
We did not notice it and for about 4 months the sea water had been working its horrible nastiness on our food supplies. We had to unpack all of the cans and take them ashore for rinsing in fresh water and drying. Forty cans were discarded having been rusted through and a further thirty marked as suspect. Murphy's Law ensured that our favorite food, sweet corn, accounted for many of the jettisoned cans.
The very next maintenance job done on Senta was to close the limber hole letting the water flow from the forward sump back into the saloon lockers.
Our Christmas presents were visits to the hospital! Pierre had a piece of coral removed from his foot and I had a tropical boil lanced. All without local anaesthetic!
Christmas itself was celebrated with a quiet lunch at the Tanga Yacht Club.
New Year's eve was much more jolly with a disco/dinner of pork roast on a spit - also at the yacht club.
Shopping in Tanga was always an adventure. The yacht club is a few kilometers from the town along a shady avenue lined with flowering shrubs. A short walk from the yacht club brought us to the Ras Kasoni terminus point for the 'dala dala' taxis, where for a small fee of R1,50 each we rode into town with the locals in a minibus which could very likely be on its last trip, so bad was the condition of most of them.
The driver took his bus along the pot-holed road as fast as he could, while his assistant leaned out of the window shouting out the route and trying to drum up business. Sometimes the dala dala would get so full that the only way the passengers in the back could disembark was to climb through the window. Joining the dala dala at its starting point meant that we had reasonable seats at the front and could get out easily.
The 'Princess Nadia' Bakery supplied us with fresh bread and rolls. On our first visit Pierre addressed the group of young Tanzanian women standing behind the counter, 'Good morning ladies. Which one of you is Princess Nadia?', causing smiles and suppressed giggles.
At the market we filled our Madagascar baskets with a variety of good quality fruit and vegetables at low prices. Mangoes and plums were particular favorites.
Our final stop before catching a 'real' taxi back to the yacht club was for a brunch at either the grandly named 'Food Palace' or 'Patwa's Restaurant' where we enjoyed fresh fruit juices, samoosas, spring rolls, kebab and egg chops (hard boiled eggs parceled up in mashed potato and fried).
During the second week in January we faced our next boat maintenance challenge. When we ran the engine to cool the fridge the engine overheated and the flow of water through the refrigeration system heat exchanger was substantially reduced. We puzzled over this for days, disassembling filters, engine heat sensor, etc. and eventually decided that it must be a problem with the raw sea water inlet sea cock. Sure enough the handle of the ball valve had broken away from the valve itself through corrosion and when we moved the handle to open or close the valve the ball remained where it was, partially open! We were astounded. During the haul out at Richards Bay the previous year we had gone to a great pains to acquire and fit new ball valves on all of the seacocks in the boat, the existing ones being now nine year's old. They were still working but we had thought it a good idea to replace them. Now a new one, supplied to us as a marine quality ball valve, had corroded and broken after only seven months. We suspected that the other new valves were also broken or about to break, and this turned out to be the case. Luckily we had kept the old valves. They were slightly scratched and corroded but still operable. We didn't want to dry Senta out again to effect the change back to the old valves, and the only alternative was to do the job on the water. This involved plugging the holes in the hull as best we could with wooden plugs, cloths, rubber bungs etc, removing and replacing the valves with water slowly leaking onto the boat. A scary process! But it went well and we then e-mailed an order to Manex Marine in Cape Town for new ball valves to be delivered via DHL to Port Victoria, Seychelles in mid February. - trusting naive customers that we are!
Our planned departure for Seychelles on 26 January was delayed by a week. Pierre had hurt his back again and needed time to recover. Also Glynnis and Colin on Deja Vu were due to arrive soon from Dar Es Salaam and we were keen to see them again. They did arrive and on Sunday 4 February we had a chatty Sunday morning breakfast of bacon and eggs on Daja Vu. We cleared out of Tanzania on Monday morning at the same time showing Glynnis and Colin around Tanga. They had just spent two months in Dar Es Salaam and thought that Tanga was much nicer.
0700 Tuesday morning 6 February saw us motoring slowly away from Tanga Yacht Club as Pierre carefully worked stowing the anchor, trying to protect his back. We set the full main and yankee in a light NW wind which veered as we beat slowly towards the north point of Pemba Island, 35 miles away. The wind strengthened as it veered and after lunch we furled the yankee and set the working jib on the inner cutter stay. We continued on port tack till within one mile of the north of Pemba when we tacked onto starboard
We wanted to give the shoals and possible fish traps and nets a wide berth. A large school of porpoises visited to say 'Farewell - Happy Voyage' Several adult porpoises swam in formation around Senta and in the space between them and the boat many youngsters had a 'whale' of a time playing with Senta - swimming, diving, jumping - wonderful to see and be part of.
The tide was ebbing eastwards over the north of Pemba against a fresh easterly wind causing a nasty sea. Pierre was horribly seasick, but luckily I had taken Stugeron and was fine. With the wind now up to 20 knots we put a reef in the mainsail and tacked back onto port. The wind forced us southwards, giving away all of the northing we had made on the starboard tack. During the night Pierre bravely stood his watches even though feeling very sick and washed out.
By sunrise the following morning the wind had eased to 12 knots and backed to the north. The seas were much more orderly. The reef came out of the main, the jib was dropped, the yankee unfurled and Senta was on her way eastwards towards Seychelles. During the day the wind veered forcing us southwards again, below five degrees south. Our strategy was to remain above this latitude to avoid any possible cyclone activity. We would just have to hope for the wind to back to the north.
That night some peculiar tide/current rips disturbed an otherwise excellent sail under the full moon. We were both feeling well, getting good doses of sleep on our off watches and the sea motion was kinder to us. The weather was cool enough to need a warm jacket or blanket in the cockpit at night. For two days we continued beating into the NE wind which pushed us down to five degrees thirty one minutes before backing and allowing us to climb back towards the north.
Friday 9 February was a day of very little wind. At mid-day in an absolute calm, an agitated sea and a speed of 1,5 to 2 knots over the ground showed that we were in the east setting Equatorial Counter current. A six hour calm from noon onwards was spent sleeping and reading and Pierre singing 'Calm, calm go away! Senta wants to sail today!'. Two large birds tried to hitch a ride at sunset, but visions of pooped-on decks made us chase them away. The rising moon cast a sliver and gold pathway for Senta to sail along. It also brought a 12 knot NNE wind that lasted all night and the next day only dying around mid night.
By the morning of Sunday 11th we had sailed 540 miles from Tanga and there were 440 miles still to go to Port Victoria in Seychelles. The next three days were beset by calms and very light winds. We used all of our light wind skills often resorting to hand steering as the wind was too light for the steering vane to work. We also replaced the yankee on the furler with a genoa. The heavy winds we thought might mark this passage just were not materializing.
At sunset on Thursday 13 we were surrounded by rain squalls. At 2000 we sailed into a gigantic, dark,, arched cave of a squall. The term 'Gates of Hell' came readily to mind. Inside the squall we found little wind except for a 40 minute 35 knot blow, but what wind there was came from all directions, making the seas unbearable. We were then treated to a torrential downpour. There was not much rest for either of us until well after midnight.
The next day after lunch we passed the northernmost island in the Amirante group and drifted slowly towards Mahe Island, 133 miles away. The wind died at mid night and we hove to until dawn, setting sail again in a light NNW wind. By 1500 we were lifting on port tack towards the north of Mahe, now 45 miles away. We set up three waypoints to take us safely round the north tip of Mahe and into Port Victoria on the east side, and slowly drifted on our way until, just before mid night, we sailed into the wind shadow of Silhouette Island. There we stayed until 0300 when we started the engine to motor the remaining 10 miles to Port Victoria. There we anchored in the outer harbour next to the light house, exactly 10 days after leaving Tanga.
Winds of less than 10 knots had prevailed for 60% of the time, with half of that being flat calm. So our average speed of just below 100 miles per day was not really as slow as it seemed.
We were please to be in Port Victoria and were again impressed with the efficient check in procedure, where the officials come out to the boat to do all of the pen pushing, paper shuffling and money extraction.
This was to be a working visit to Seychelles, basically to stock up for our planned 4 to 5 month stay at Chagos. Top of the agenda was to collect the ball valves that Manex Marine had hopefully sent to DHL's offices in Port Victoria. Fat hope! Not only had DHL never heard of us, Manex Marine or ball valves, but repeated e-mails to Manex brought only frustration and a significant lack of response from them. Eventually by enlisting the help of our daughter and guardian angel, Ingrid, we learned that Manex had not sent the ball valves (value R 600) because DHL had quoted R2000 for delivery to Port Victoria! We immediately cancelled the order and after a fairly time consuming search found the valves we needed in a chandlery a few kilometers from the Seychelles Yacht Club. These now reside with our other spares waiting for the old ones to die or until we next slip Senta.
The 2 week stay in Port Victoria saw us fill up the diesel and fresh water tanks via jerry cans; re-fill one of our LP gas bottles; obtain petrol for the 2hp outboard motor; and send off that last e-mail messages for a while.
On Saturday 3 March at 0730 we sailed past the light house and fetched towards Isle St Anne at the entrance to the outer harbour under full sail. Outside the harbour we found that the wind speed was 18 knots so we put a reef in the main and furled the genoa to yankee size. The good wind lasted all day with Senta making 7 knots, assisted by the current. The seas were rough on the Seychelles Bank, but settled once we sailed off the bank.
We had a good first day's run of 150 miles. Then the wind decreased slightly and moved to the east putting us on a beat. The good wind continued during the night and, together with the moon and a dolphin escort, gave us another happy deposit for our memory banks.
We continued to beat into the SE wind and three days out of Port Victoria we had averaged 120 miles per day. But then the wind shut up shop! Our 24 hour runs for the eleven day passage tell the frustrating story:- 155, 126, 88, 60, 83, 76, 76, 52, 90, 114, 74. Wind direction stayed in the east varying from SSE to NNE until five days out when it moved into the west, swinging from SW to NW and sometimes N.
It was a frustrating tiring journey, with the usual calms and nightly squalls we had grown to expect sailing this close to the equator. Some comments from our log help to paint the picture:- sails down - no wind; still no wind; started motor; stopped motor; wind very light - only just moving; 3 hours of puff hunting for only 7 miles!; better this time - ten miles; spinnaker up; spinnaker down; no wind; squalls about but no rain; slow, slow, slow!; wind at last!; light, light ghosting; nothing at all - very frustrating; started motor; motoring; repairing chafe on genoa; sailed for 30 minutes this watch; sailed for 90 minutes - then nothing; started motor again; rain squalls - trying to use the wind; 3 miles this watch; goose-winged - no substance to the wind; spinny up for 3 hours - made 10 miles; motor started again; sailing tres lentement; slower, slower - only 5 miles; dodging rain squalls - all missed us; motor sailing in wind blowing out of rain squalls; still motoring - sea like lead; engine off - attempting to sail; no wind - again!; started motor; sailed 1,5 hours; motoring again; motor off - sailing!; good wind - about time!(this when we had 35 miles to go).
And what is more, we are supposed to remain sane!
At 2000 on the night before entering Perhos Banhos, the closest of the atolls in the Chagos Archipelago, with 13 miles to go, we had some time to kill if we wanted to enter the atoll in daylight. With the wind now blowing 20 knots from the NW we took in 2 reefs in the main, set the working jib and started a series of slow tacks to windward to hold station and not be swept eastwards by the current. This continued until 0300 when we laid a course for Perhos Banhos. We made an easy entrance through he pass at 0730 after a rain squall had passed. A right hand turn to starboard and a short motor into the wind brought us to anchor on a sand patch between Daimante and Grande Mapou islands. There we saw 'Southern Voyager' a New Zealand boat we had last seen in Malaysia in 1998. After a brief chat with Ree and Noel we tidied up the boat, cooked a meal and then slept - and slept!
On our previous two stops at Chagos we had not visited Perhos Banhos and were pleased to be there now. We know we could only stay a short while as the SE trade winds would start to blow in a few week's time and the anchorages in this large atoll are very uncomfortable and often dangerous in strong SE winds.
Seventeen happy days at Perhos Banhos saw us swimming, snorkeling, fishing, sailing the dinghy, doing a bit of boat cleaning and maintenance and making new friends of people from the other boats in the anchorage. A memorable night was on Saturday 17 March when a St Patrick's party was held on the beach. Crews from the six boats in the anchorage all had an excellent time. We became particularly fond of the crew of 'Rose of Sharon', a Corrida, sailed by a Zimbabwean family, Jonathon, Rebecca and their two children, Sophie,7, and Sebastian, 5. They had left their game lodge/safari park in Zimbabwe to the mercy of Robert Mugabe and his 'war veteran' land grabbers, bought 'Rosie' in Cape Town and sailed west-about, three quarters of the way around the world and were now on their final stretch home. Sophie needed to start school soon, but her parents were anxious not to return to Zimbabwe until Mugabe left!
Towards the end of March the SE wind started to blow and the lee anchorage became very uncomfortable, so on Saturday 31st we sailed out of Perhos Banhos, en route for Salamon Atoll 25 miles away. As we sailed through the pass we caught a one meter job fish - a lovely light blue colour, but with lots of sharp teeth. The fish was taking a long time to die in the cockpit, so Pierre eventually cut its head off. I then filleted the rest. Pierre, tossing the remains overboard, picked up the head, which promptly bit him! Gross, being bitten by the head of a dead fish! Anyhow he made an excellent few meals, lightly fried with garlic and onions.
A NW wind of 20 knots gave us a wonderful sail reaching at 7 knots to enter the pass at Salamon Atoll at 1130 in bright sunlight. Under reefed main and working jib we slowly sailed westwards up the atoll to Boddam Island, with the bommie obstacle course clearly visible. Claire, of 'Brumby' later told us that she had seen a boat sailing in, said to herself, 'Who on earth is that sailing in through the bommies?', checked through the binoculars and then said 'Oh - Senta! I might have known'.
So there we were. In the paradise of Salamon atoll where we planned to spend the next four months with friends who would come and go, and doing just whatever we pleased to do every day. And we wished very hard, that everyone of you could have been there to share it with us.
Here follows some cruising advice which Faith & Pierre have given to a couple who are keen to go cruising, which may interest some of you readers out there
- This break from the 'Rat Race', your comfort zone, and the venture into the unknown world of cruising will be the hardest thing you have ever done. But it will be worth it. So DON'T GIVE UP. More than 90% of people who talk of going cruising never even start to plan it and of those who do start to plan only 5% ever end up actually going. So be determined and become one of the 5% of the 10%.
- 50% of voyaging and slightly less of coastal cruising will be at night. So start to become expert at sailing in the dark. In the five years we had Senta on the Vaal Dam we sailed every Friday and Saturday night to get used to handling the boat in all conditions from dark and stormy, through gentle starlight to bright moonlight. Do the same and cover all of you internal lights with red sailcloth to protect your night vision.
- You should both get the necessary qualifications early. You will need:-
a) VHF radio operator's License - we did this through the NSRI station at Deneysville.
b) Richards Bay Pilot's Exemption Certificate. Zululand Yacht Club will organize the notes and test for you.
c) CASA Coastal skipper's certificate. Any of the Durban sailing schools will do.
- Make sure that you can each sail the boat single-handed.
- When you get to Richards Bay, race in all of the races and don't listen to the people in the boatyard and the pub. They are the same people who were there in 1995 when we arrived from Johannesburg and they haven't moved from the boatyard and the pub.
Before answering your questions here is a list of books you should invest in and study:-
SKILLS
1 Pass your Yacht Masters by David Fairhall and Mike Peyton published by Nautical Books
2 Heavy Weather Cruising by Tom Cunliffe published by Fernhurst Books
3 Marine VHF Operations by Tom Cunliffe published by Fernhurst books
NAVIGATION
US Navy publications available from Time and Tide - Durban
4 PUB 170 Sailing Directions (Planning Guide) for the Indian Ocean
5 PUB 171 Sailing Directions (En Route) For East Africa and the South Indian Ocean
6 PUB 173 Sailing Directions (En Route) For India and Bay of Bengal
7 PUB 174 Sailing Directions (En Route) For Strait of Malacca and Sumatera
8 East African Pilot by Delwyn McPhunn published by Imray Laurie Norrie and Wilson
9 World Cruising Routes by Jimmy Cornell published by Adlard Coles William Collins and Co
10 World Cruising Handbook by Jimmy Cornell publisher as above
The above are all highly recommended and virtually essential. 6 and 7 you will need only if you go into the north Indian Ocean and to Thailand/Malaysia.
Another excellent book, but not essential at this stage is 'Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia' by Linda and Steve Dashew, published by their own company Beuwulf Inc, 6140W Finisterra Drive, Tucson, Arizona. Website at http://www.SetSail.com and e-mail at dashew@concentric.net
Now for answers to your questions.
1. Book 4 in the previous part will help you plan any route as it gives wind, currents and lots else for the months of the year. But basically the cyclone season dictates that you leave SA after mid April and leave the cyclone are by mid November, either by returning to S Africa or going north to Kenya.
2. Heavy weather is not a problem if you handle it correctly. Make sure that you can reef your boat to 50% and 25% of the working sail area quickly and easily and REEF EARLY. And please make sure you have a boat that will sail well to windward. Between 10 degrees south and 10 degrees north the weather is pretty benign, but there are squalls at night with 30 knot gusts. Plus the SE trades in the Indian Ocean are boisterous, 20 to 35 knots in July and August.
3 Water is freely available, though you will have to jerry jug it, filter it and treat it with chlorine. Diesel is also freely available but can be pricey, so plan to sail as much as you can. We have never looked for ice, nor have we seen it conspicuous anywhere.
4 We have a deep freeze, exceptionally well insulated, built into the boat It runs off a compressor off the main engine. We operate it as a fridge and thus get away with running the engine 30 minutes each day. BUT... refrigeration is a problem. In almost every anchorage we have been in at least one boat and often more have refrigeration problems. Plan your food so that you don't rely on the contents of your fridge and be prepared to throw away everything if the worst happens. Also make sure you can service and repair the refrigeration system yourself. Carry spare Freon, spare driers and a freon detector for locating leaks.
As far as costs are concerned we started off in 1995 with a budget of R5000 per month and escalated it at 6% per annum till it now is R 7000 per month. We have been spending just below the budgeted amounts. We suggest you look at US$800 to US$1000 per month. Your expenditure will not be smooth. Boat maintenance expenses, which are considerable, will peak each time you slip or have to replace a piece of equipment or a sail. Other expenses will also peak when you are in port, especially expensive ones like Mayotte, Seychelles and Maldives.
6. Mooring and visa costs vary from place to place. You won't find any marinas until you reach Thailand/Malaysia and then expect to pay R2000 per month for a 40ft boat. Anchoring is usually free except for Seychelles which charges US$10 per day. Chagos cost is US$30 for three months.
7. We haven't bothered with visas in advance yet, but for Madagascar you can get a three month visa from the consulate office in Durban for the cost of a one month visa obtained in Madagascar. Places like India, Australia and Indonesia insist on visas in advance, but you can get them at the prior country.
8. We do not have an SSB transmitter, though we do have a SONY World Band receiver ICF-SW55 on which we can pick up SSB transmissions, as well as weather reports and the BBC etc for entertainment. Don't be fooled into thinking that an SSB transmitter, or an EPIRB for that matter will make you any safer. We know boats with both on board that have been lost without trace. You have to be prepared to get yourselves from one point to another without outside assistance.
9. Tanzania, Zanzibar and Kenya are delightful cruising grounds - see book 8 as previously mentioned. But you will have difficulty going straight there because of the south going Mozambique current. Instead cross over to Madagascar, start off at Baaie de Baly, just east of Cap St Andre and cruise up the north west coast of Madagascar to the Nosy Be area. Then go to Mayotte, Zanzibar, Mafia, Tanga and Killifi as we did. You will enjoy it.
10 Don't underestimate the number of charts you will need. We have over 300 charts on board and 110 of them cover the area from Richards Bay to Singapore. So start collecting them now, especially from west about international cruisers who will probably sell you their charts, or at the least lend them to you to copy. Budget about R10 per copy. New ones cost R150! The Richards Bay Town Council copies charts (no questions asked about copyright!)
11 Stock up on provisions in S Africa. Quality and variety are the best we have seen and prices the lowest. Work on about one year's provisions. This would cost about R12 000. So, together with whatever foreign currency you want to take you will have a large cash outflow just before you leave. Arrange to use your credit cards abroad.
Hope we have helped a bit. Please keep us updated on your progress and let us have any more questions. I guess what you have asked is a lot like what others in a similar 'boat' might ask. So I am going to ask my 'editor' my daughter Ingrid, to circulate a copy of these e-mails to the recipients of the newsletters.
Mayotte to Zanzibar to Tanzania October to December 2000
Mayotte, the island of crunchy French baguettes and expensive tomatoes. (R20 per kilo) is a good place to hang out and do very little. Our first ferry ride from Dzaoudzi, on Petit Terre to Mamoudzou on Grande Terre was to buy visas (R50 each) and draw money at the bank. We were to do the later several times during the month we spent in Mayotte as our francs didn't seem to last very long.
We saw Arran, a South African catamaran and spent time with her owners, Graham and Veronica. They had been just about to leave Mayotte for Richards Bay when Arran caught fire. Graham and Veronica were having a last cup of coffee on a friend's boat prior to departure when they noticed smoke coming from Arran's main hatch. They jumped into their dinghy, but by the time they got near Arran the flames were so high and the heat so fierce they could not get close enough to do anything. Luckily the fire was noticed by the manager of the ferry maintenance company who alerted the navy. A fire fighting boat raced to Arran and pumped so much water onto her that she almost sank - but the fire was doused. The damage was considerable. The cockpit, aft portions of the hulls and all of the internal woodwork were destroyed. The main boom and mainsail were vaporised. The mast was still standing but the foot was bent and mangled. The other cruising yachtsmen and the members of the yacht club at Dzaoudzi rallied around to help. Arran was lifted out of the water by crane and the charge for this was waived. Unfortunately Arran was not insured, so Graham and Veronica worked extremely hard for more than a month under difficult conditions and in uncomfortable heat to make the minimum repairs absolutely necessary to get Arran in a fit state to sail back to South Africa. Her engines were not damaged by the fire and she could still set her genoa on the repaired mast. She left Mayotte early in November in company with Catch 22 and towards the end of November we heard that she had arrived in Richards Bay after waiting for a while in Bazarruto for a bout of bad weather to pass.
Soon after arriving in Mayotte we heard that Colin and Glynis on Deja Vu had left Richards Bay bound for Mayotte and they in fact arrived on Friday 13th October, Pierre's birthday. It was good to see them again and catch up on news from South Africa. There were about 40 boats in the anchorage, a mixture of cruisers and local Mayotte boats. Several of them had children on board. The mornings were quite and peaceful while school work was being done. But afternoons went by to the sound of shouts, squeals and laughter as the youngsters abandoned their boats and took to the water to swim, play, sail and generally enjoy themselves. A few of the older ones put an advertisement on the notice board at the root of the jetty, saying that they would do boat cleaning, shopping, run errands etc. We thought this very enterprising and contracted with Chloe, the young lady from "Hippo's Camp" to keep Senta supplied with fresh water. This she did by collecting our jerry cans in her dinghy, taking them to the water supply point at the yacht club, filling them and returning them to Senta. There was a severe drought and water shortage, all fresh water coming from a massive desalination plant. We had to pay 4 francs for 100 litres (about R6).
On Sunday mornings the man who sold baguettes near the jetty stayed at home. So we had to walk across the causeway to the bakery. This was a great pleasure as we treated ourselves there to fresh fruit juice and delicious French pastries and cakes, finishing off with an ice-cream cone. Colin and Glynis joined us in this Sunday morning ritual. The only negative factor was the cost. Bread (cheap) at 2 francs each baguette but the rest set us back about 30 francs each. But it was the only form of eating out that we could afford in Mayotte so we enjoyed it. Glynis invited us to dinner and a movie on Deja Vu on 19 October to celebrate my birthday. Lasagne, fresh salad and baguettes by candlelight in the cockpit. Followed by chocolate ice-cream and meringues. There was even a purple birthday balloon for me. I would wish everyone's 62nd birthday could be as happy as mine was.
The lazy life at Mayotte was seductive, but we had to start planning our move to Zanzibar where we were due to meet Ingrid and Phillip in mid November. We were concerned about possible violence during the forthcoming elections in Tanzania, of which Zanzibar is a reluctant part. We had also heard of several cases of attacks and robbery on yachts, especially when anchored opposite Stone Town at Zanzibar. So Pierre spent several days planning counter measures and making defensive "weapons". These included:- drawing pins to place on deck where people might board; pieces of plywood with nails hammered through them and sticking up, for the same purpose; a plywood AK47 and revolver, which looked very real from 40 metres away; our 2 spare booms from the dinghy, with fishing hooks attached to one end for about 1 metre, to be used to fend off anyone trying to come on board; a pair of fighting sticks made from cricket stumps and kevlar line; a heavy rubber baton/cosh; a fencing foil; a catapult and bucket of stones collected from the shore. We also listened to the radio net. A couple of boats reported no problems, but one boat was boarded by soldiers. But we suspected that the crew was being aggressive and unhelpful. The Zanzibar elections were due to be held on Sunday 5 November. We expected the voyage of over 500 miles to take 5 days. So planning to arrive on Monday 6th, we left Mayotte at 06h30 on the November 1.
We had a light SW wind for an hour and then nothing for 7.5 hours as we motored round the north of Mayotte and out through Passe M'Zamboro. The NE wind eventually came in and blew consistently between 12 and 18 knots for 2.5 days. It became obvious that we would get to Zanzibar far too soon, in fact, right in the middle of the election. So we decided to sail for Mafia Island and wait there for a few days. During the morning on 4 November a dying wind and fairly strong north setting current threatened to sweep us past the north of Mafia Island, so we motored for 5 hours to anchor at 15h00 a mile or so south of the NW tip of Mafia. It had been a fast trip. Three days and 7 hours for 442 miles ATCF (as the crow flies) - an average of 134 miles per day. We had seen some animal life on the way:- a large leaping something - either a whale or killer whale; 2 large dolphins arcing through the air across Senta's bow; a performance of the night time silver dolphin ballet and, as we rounded the top of Mafia, something that looked remarkably like a dugong.
After 2 peaceful but slightly rolly days at Mafia we set off northwards at 15h00 on Monday 6 November to cover the 110 miles to Zanzibar. A moderate NE wind was blowing and we made good progress covering 53 mile in the 9 hours to midnight. Thereafter the wind continually abated until at 08h00 we were in a dead calm, still 20 miles from Zanzibar town. We slowly drifted, assisted by the engine at times to arrive at Zanzibar signal station at 16h30. We asked for permission to anchor at Mtoni Marine Centre for the night after which we would travel in to the port for clearance and check in the following morning. But this was not allowed. Security was very strict. We had to anchor opposite the signal station and the House of Wonders and immediately go ashore to the port for clearance. After pleading tiredness and a reluctance to leave the boat at nightfall we received reluctant permission to remain on board and check in the following morning. We assumed that this concentration on security was due to a rerun of the previous Sunday's elections in some of the constituencies where there had been allegations of fraud. The re-election was in fact under way as we arrived. After setting up our anti robber alarm and security devices we settled in for an uneasy nights rest, with Pierre sleeping in the cockpit.
The next morning I took Pierre ashore to check in and returned to guard Senta. Pierre was escorted to immigration, customs etc by 2 armed soldiers who hovered close by during the check in process. They were particularly anxious and jittery when he returned to the dockside and removed the hand held VHF radio from his knapsack in order to call me to fetch him. The soldiers had wanted me to accompany Pierre to immigration but I had refused saying that we did not want to leave the boat alone because of the threat of theft. They were quite upset and angry saying "There is no theft in Zanzibar !" and, when I laughed derisively, repeated "No, there is no theft here - because we are here !" I didn't believe him but he was right. We saw no sign of unwelcome visitors or thieving hands. But nevertheless Pierre set up the security system each night and slept in the cockpit, disturbed by noisy post-election celebrations on the shore. We decided not to go to Mtoni Marine but to stay where we were for the 3 days until Ingrid and Phillip were due to arrive by ferry from Dar es Salaam. These days were spent cleaning and tidying the boat, shopping for fresh bread, fruit and vegetables and petrol for the dinghy.
Eventually Saturday morning 11 November arrived, and so did Ingrid and Phillip on the early morning ferry. It was great to see them, and over lunch we caught up on news before setting sail northwards up the west coast of Zanzibar to anchor off a quiet, secluded beach. Quite a change for us from the noise of Stone Town and the wash from the ferries. A Hobie catamaran sailed past and said that if we went ashore, not to take our cameras as we were anchored opposite ground occupied by the military. We didn't go ashore but saw no life from the shore except a few cows and one local man who came down to the beach for his daily ablutions. The next day we sailed to the nearby island of Chapani where we anchored on the north side inside the protecting arms of 2 reefs. Ingrid and Phillip motored round the island by dinghy and reported that there was an attractive resort on the south side. While at Chapani we heard on the BBC World Service a report of bombs exploding in Zanzibar Town. Presumably the opposition objecting to having lost the elections. After a lay day at Chapani we sailed north for 6 miles then SSW for 6 miles to anchor at Changu (prison island). The next morning Pierre, Phillip and Ingrid visited the island to see the prison ruins, peacocks and giant tortoises. They had to pay US$4 each for the privilege. When we had last been here in 1996, the price had been US$1 per person. Quite an inflation rate.
A 2 day visit to Bawi Island saw Phillip do some snorkelling. I had a bout of flu and Ingrid was afraid of crabs and sharks so Phillip was on his own. We were running out of fresh food so sailed to anchor opposite Mtoni Marine Centre with the plan to visit Zanzibar market by taxi on Monday. On Saturday evening Pierre, Ingrid and Phillip left flu ridden me on board to guard Senta and rowed ashore to dinner. They returned full of food and praise for the excellence of the cuisine and service. It had been expensive. More than R500 for dinner and drinks for the 3 of them, but as Phillip said, "It was something you expect from a top class restaurant in Europe - not on a beach in Zanzibar". Sunday, a day of loafing and rest when the only activity of note was a walk for Pierre and Phillip through the quiet streets of Mtoni, was followed by a more eventful day on Monday. In the early morning I took Ingrid, Phillip and Pierre ashore in the dinghy so that they could catch a taxi to Zanzibar town for sightseeing and to replenish our fresh supplies from the market. Back on board I noted anxiously that the wind had moved to the NW putting us on a lee shore. As the morning progressed the wind strength increased and the waves got bigger. I hoped the others would return before the seas got too rough to get the dinghy ashore. As the tide came in a ridge of rocks on the shore formed a small natural breakwater. Senta was plunging up and down in the waves and the dinghy was doing a wild dance behind her, but I managed to get into the dinghy and row her behind the ridge of rocks. The owner of a catamaran anchored nearby, Bahati, saw the problem we would have to get everyone and the bulging shopping baskets back on board Senta. He kindly took Ingrid and Phillip and the baskets out to Senta in his large, powerful inflatable while Pierre and I struggled back with our small 2 hp outboard. Unluckily on the way we passed too close to a fishing canoe and got his line caught around our prop. We had to cut the line and paid the fisherman about R10 for his lost tackle, for which he seemed very pleased. Once back on board everyone and the shopping were rinsed in fresh water, lunch was eaten and the rest of the day declared a rest period.
Tuesday 21 November gave us an excellent 20 mile sail southwards past Chumbe Island to anchor to the west of Kwale Island for lunch. In the afternoon, anxious about our position exposed to the west we sailed round the bottom of the south side of Kwale to a more sheltered position with Kwale to the west, Zanzibar to the east and reefs north and south. Just as well because the night brought strong winds from the NW with rain, thunder and lightning. The rain lasted all of the next day and we were able to collect plenty of fresh water. Lots of reading happened on Wednesday as the grim weather did its worst outside. Senta was comfortable, well protected and we all enjoyed the rest. Thursday was a beautiful day. Sunny, everything washed clean by the rain and a calm sea. Ingrid, Phillip and I motored in the dinghy round the north end of Kwale to snorkel off a sand spit. It was excellent. The water was clear, the coral alive and colourful and a great variety of fish. As the tide rose and the sun got hotter we motored back to the shade of the awnings and the cool drinks on Senta. Several boat loads of tourists arrived at the sand spit after we had left and by mid-day there was standing room only under the sun umbrellas that had been planted in the beach. We were pleased to have enjoyed our snorkelling before the crowds arrived.
Philip and Ingrid's Zanzibar holiday was nearing an end and on Friday we sailed back to Stone Town to anchor in front of the House of Wonders. On Saturday morning Phillip arranged ferry tickets back to Dar es Salaam on the lunchtime ferry. Pierre checked us out of Zanzibar and after waiving a sad farewell as the high speed ferry set off taking our guests on the first leg of their trip home we started to prepare Senta for an overnight sail northwards to Tanga on the NE coast of Tanzania. We set off at 15h00 in little wind which slowly increased from the east so that by the time we reached Ras Nungwi, the northern most part of Zanzibar, Senta was broad reaching at 7 knots. As night fell the wind stayed with us and it looked as though we would reach Tanga long before first light the next day. But a horrible time was almost upon us. At 20h30 at 05 40'S and 39 12'E we hit the first of a series of unlit fishing nets floating just on and below the surface. Senta was hurtling along at 7 knots when she ploughed into the first one. The keel rode up over the net which then sprang up and tangled round the sail drive, propeller and rudder. So tight was the pressure on the rudder that for a while we thought that a bearing had broken and the rudder shaft jammed in its housing. But we soon noticed that, even though the wind was blowing and the sails filled, Senta was not moving through the water. We looked over the transom and saw a large V-shaped line of nets reaching back into the darkness on either side of Senta. The nets were lit up by the phosphorescence as Senta tried to pull them through the water. We dropped and the sails and tried various ways of getting free, but eventually Pierre had to climb over the transom on the small ladder there and cut the nets away with a large bread knife. This was a very dangerous operation. The wind was fresh and waves were bouncing Senta's transom up and down in the water. There was a real danger that Pierre, clinging on with one arm, would be washed off the boat and become snarled in the net. But eventually we were free and drifting downwind, unfortunately towards the African shore. Pierre was exhausted as he climbed back on board and rinsed off with fresh water. We hoisted the sails and set off again, only to hit the second net within minutes. Again Pierre went over the transom to cut us free, returning on board even more worn out. This time before he could even rinse off we hit the third net. This ghastly nightmare continued for three hours as we tangled with net after net - 6 in all. I don't know where Pierre found the strength to continue hacking away at the nets, hanging onto Senta and being thrown up and down in the waves. Eventually by midnight we were through the mine field of nets and could sail on. The wind of course then died and we slowly drifted through the rest of the night. As soon as the sun was high enough to cast light into the water I dived overboard to check and sure enough we were dragging a large clump of tangled nets and fishing buoys wrapped around the propeller, rudder and self steering gear. I cut these away and Senta was then able to drift along slightly faster through most of Sunday to anchor at the Tanga Yacht Club at 15h00 on Sunday 25th November. We were very hot and tired. Pierre was sore all over with many bruises, abrasions and cuts from his battle with the nets. But at least we and Senta were safe.
For the first 2 weeks in Tanga we rested, explored the town, shopped, did our washing and chatted to some of the club members and people on 2 other cruising boats, Shibumi and Beau Soleil. We noticed a local boat, Footloose, standing high and dry on the beach, supported by some poles which had been concreted into place. She was being cleaned and painted in preparation for the annual Dar es Salaam to Tanga race. We made enquiries and plans to use the poles ourselves and at 03h00 on the morning of Monday 11th December at the high tide we took Senta in between 2 of the poles to let her dry out. Pierre had done an extraordinary amount of investigation, measuring, planning, shaping the beach with a shovel and preparing lines, fenders and fender boards for Senta. Everything went smoothly, although it involved checking tensions on the retaining ropes and lines every half hour as she settled onto the beach and again when the tide lifted her off. We remained there for 3 tide cycles during which we made repairs to the sail drive anode and the rudder blade where it was damaged by the nets. After refloating Senta at the 16h00 high tide on 12th December, we made a decision to remain in Tanga until after Christmas and not to rush up to Kilifi to join in the festivities with the other cruising boats. We will rest and relax in laid back Tanga as we start to think of and plan our further travels in 2001.
Baly Bay, Madagascar to Mayotte August to September 2000
At three o'clock in the morning on Monday 7th August, our fist night at Baly Bay, we were woken up by loud banging as the tiller slammed to and fro in the cockpit and the anchor chain snatched on the roller. A fresh wind had sprung up from the north, bringing short, sharp waves into the bay. Just as well we were used to being woken up in the night. Pierre strengthened the elastic ties on the tiller and put a nylon spring on the anchor chain as I sleepily watched from the main hatch. We usually do set the anchor spring but had not done so the day before. We were tired and expected the wind to come either from SE or SW. But instead we had a northerly blowing straight into the bay. Good lesson ! No matter what you think may happen, always prepare for the worst - always set a spring on the anchor chain.
I spent most of the first day at Baly making adjustments to the sock that we use to cover the roller furling headsail, which does not have UV resistant cloth on the leech and foot. We deliberately had it made that way as the UV cloth makes the leech heavy and the sail does not set properly. I had to adjust the position of the tensioning lines so that we could pull the sock tighter round the upper part of the sail. I set up the sewing machine on the cockpit table and spent a pleasant and industrious day in the shade of the awning, watching the happenings in the bay. The two prawn trawlers continued to draw muddy circles in the water and were followed by circling seabirds. In the afternoon a local trading schooner entered the bay and slowly reached southwards to Soala, a small town at the head of the bay. Towards sunset an open boat powered by an outboard motor stopped alongside Senta. Three Malagasy men spoke in French and then broken English and asked us if we knew the way to Soala. And I thought we were strangers in this place! Luckily we were able to give them some idea as we had studied the charts. As they headed towards the mangroves at the south of the bay, in the dying light, we hoped they would find their way. We were now 1056 miles from Richards Bay and realised just why we were so eager to leave there and come cruising again - no pollution, no coal dust, no motor cars, no pressure, just peace and quite with only the boat and ourselves to manage.
Two days later we planned to leave Baly for a 36 hour hop to Morambe Bay, passing Majunga on the way. This was a perfect opportunity for some lively constructive debate - in other words, a full blown argument ! I wanted to leave early in the morning in the SE wind which would blow us the 8 miles out of the bay and then some way along the coast until the mid-day lull. Then the northerly would come in and we could reach on port, the reach getting broader as the wind backed to the N, NW & SW. Then we could gybe onto starboard when the night time SE set in. Our previous passage from Baly to Morambe, so our log book showed, had taken 34 hours. Leaving at 06h00 we had arrived at Morambe at 16h00, in good time to find an anchorage in the day light. We had been beset by calms and light winds. I was sure that, with the kind of winds we were experiencing, we could better that time and arrive at lunchtime. Pierre's position was that if we left in the late afternoon and took 36 hours we would arrive just before sunrise, and hang around if necessary, for an hour or so for the correct amount of daylight. The early morning wind and the favourable ebbing tide told me we should go. But Pierre stuck to his guns and we waited all day before leaving at 16h45 and beat out of Baly Bay in a moderate north wester. The wind freshened and remained with us all night as we reached fast along the coast under working jib and one reef in the mainsail. By 06h00 the next morning almost level with Majunga, having covered half of the 136 miles to Morambe in just over 13 hours. This meant that if the same conditions prevailed we would get to Morambe two hours after sunset and have 10 hours to 'hang around' until sunrise. Oh for two or three of those last hours we had spent in Baly waiting to go. All morning the wind blew fresh from the SE and we close reached in 25 to 30 knot winds with Senta blasting through the water at 7 knots. After lunch the wind started to drop and back to the east. We were now 26 miles from Morambe with 4.75 hours to sunset. It was obvious that with the drop in wind we would definitely arrive after dark. So I got out the charts, the USA navy sailing directions and Poon McPhunn's "East Africa Pilot" and studied all I could about entering Morambe. The first thing that became obvious was the chart was wrong. It's longitude was about 0.7 of a mile too far to the West. So I abandoned the chart as a navigation aid. Using Poon's books and the USA Pilot I set up an entry and an anchoring waypoint on the GPS. I also checked that our approach waypoint was accurate. Right ! Now the sun could set when it wanted to. There was a half moon, we had been into the bay some 4 years previously, and we would now go in at night. I wasn't going to hang around outside for 10 hours when there was an excellent, safe, protected anchorage within easy reach. The dying wind perked up again, this time from the NW, and we fetched towards Morambe, reaching our approach waypoint at dusk. We could see the entrance and motor sailed towards it in the fast fading light. The sky was cloudy and it seemed as if we would get no help from the moon. But as the twilight faded, the skies cleared and the moon shone brightly through. In this half light we slowly motored in checking our GPS position, depth sounder and visual sightings carefully. All went well and by 19h30 we were safely anchored exactly on our predicted anchorage spot. We had taken 27 hours to do the 136 miles, 7 hours better than our previous time. We had sailed the full distance on sounding in 10 to 20 metres of water within 3 to 5 miles of the shore. The water was reasonably flat and Senta went very well. A quick mug of tea, some chocolate chip cookies and to sleep. An end of a good days sailing and an interesting trip. We had passed no big shipping, but about a dozen fishing boats.
The next morning we woke to see once again the beautiful Morambe Bay. Weird rock formations, many small beaches and coves all guarded by the majestic baobab trees, their misshapen arms reaching to the sky and their bronze bark glistening in the sun. We spent a week in this lovely place, never once going ashore, but just admiring it from Senta's comfortable cockpit. We did small items of boat maintenance, read and did puzzles. Early each morning a fresh SE wind came up and blew until lunchtime. It kept us cool but made the anchorage quite bouncy. Fish eagles, wild boar and lemurs made interesting noises on the shore. One evening a lovely little dhow sailed past. The wind died and the sail was dropped. Pierre said "out come the paddles". But no ! Out came the outboard motor, probably stolen from some cruising yacht. The dhow putted away to the head of the bay. The silver moon rising cast a silver pathway to Senta from the hills in the east. Spring tides would soon come & go and we started to think of leaving - next stop - Russian Bay.
Late in the afternoon on Thursday 17th August we moved our anchorage to the SE shore in preparation for leaving the next day. We didn't want to have to haul anchor in the usual blustery morning SE wind that stirred up the water and made Senta bounce around. In fact the SE wind at 06h00 the following morning was light as we got the anchor up, but it started to freshen as we ran out of the bay and then reached northwards along the coast. Around mid morning the wind died, so we motored for an hour, cooling the fridge. When the wind came back it was from the NW and we close reached towards the Radama Islands, passing Nosy Lava at mid-day. This island is a prison for really bad people; rapists; murderers; armed robbers; so we kept well off. A canoe being paddled fast towards us from the direction of Nosy Lava caused some anxious moments until it stopped to fish. We then headed for an anchorage at the NE tip of Nosy Shaba as a possible overnight stop. There is a narrow sand strip in otherwise deep water and it would be exposed to a SE wind, which we could almost guarantee would start up in the early hours of the morning. So we sailed on and at 16h30, in sight of Nosy Antanymora, we decided to move off soundings for the night. The way ahead was crowded with islands, reefs and isolated rocks. As we beat out through a pass I went down below to check the charts and decide on a safe distance off shore and course for the night. All of a sudden Senta's heading violently changed to port and Pierre yelled "Whale !". I clambered up the companionway asking "where ?" and Pierre said "right under our bow, moving to starboard". I looked to starboard and there, right next to Senta, level with the cockpit was a large black back, followed by a slick in the water as the whale sounded. Pierre had heard the whale blow and seen it's spout disappear under Senta's bow as he violently jerked the tiller to starboard to miss the large mammal. It was an exciting moment but I would not like to get that close to a whale again.
That night was dreadful with a very light NW wind until 22h00 then dead calm for the rest of the night. The morning SE came through at 08h30 and we sailed back onto soundings north of Nosy Kalakajoro, the northern most of the Radama Islands, where we say a local schooner sailing slowly northwards. At 10h00 the wind died so we started to motor and ran it until the afternoon seas breeze had really set in. We were anxious to get to Russian Bay by nightfall, and where pleased to leave the Radama Islands behind , having sat next to them all night drifting in no wind. We sailed past the mouth of the Baramahamay (Honey) River and then between Nosy Iranja and the Madagascan coastline to the east. There we saw the first yachts since leaving Richards Bay - a catamaran anchored at the beach and a blue steel sloop motoring away from Iranja towards Russian Bay. We kept company with her and shamed her into at least setting her genoa as we sailed between Nosy Ankazoberavina and Pointe Angadoka and then south eastward down the coast to enter Russian Bay in the mid afternoon. There we found 8 other boats anchored, some of which we knew:- Con Brio (South African), Vingila (South African), Catch 22 (South African), and The Graduate (New Zealand). Gert and Anita from Con Brio rowed over to say hello. We had last seen them in Mayotte in October 1999, when they were on their way to Chagos. They told us that, due to rigging failure they had not made it to Chagos and were now on the way back to Richards Bay for haul out and a big maintenance job.
The next few days were spent resting, reading, swimming & chatting with friends on the other boats - the usual cruising routine. Pierre rigged the dinghy for sailing and we had great fun testing it out. One morning Karen from and American ketch "Beau Soleil" rowed by to give us 4 big Spanish mackerel steaks. An 8kg fish had jumped out of the water onto their cockpit awning that morning. Amazingly, exactly the same thing had happened a few days previously, so they had more than enough fish and were sharing their new catch with the other boats in the anchorage.
Pretty soon the loafing had to end and I started on the one major job we had not done in Richards Bay - painting the cockpit and deck. We had deliberately left this to do in the pollution free air of Russian Bay. This was a wise decision and the job went well, although slowly. It took almost 4 weeks, with an interruption to sail to Helville for check-in and provisions, and Nosy Komba for water and to do our washing. At Nosy Komba the youth of the village were preparing an area on the beach for a boxing match and "concert". We wondered wether we should go ashore for the concert but at 3.00pm the music started - canned and live LOUD Malagasy disco music. So loud it sounded as if the band was in the cockpit. What torture ! We hoped that seeing as the music started early it would end early. And it did - early the next morning - at 06h00. Our heads were spinning and throbbing and our ears were hurting as we sailed away past Tanikely Island to Crater Bay.
The rest of August and almost all of September were spent in the Nosy Be area: Most of the time at Russian Bay with a few sails back to Helville for fresh fruit and vegetables. The stops in Helville were plagued by periods of fallout of large black pieces of soot from the burning of sugar cane on Nosy Be. So we didn't stay there longer than was really necessary. Russian Bay on the other hand was delightful, often all on our own, sometimes with other boats - and also other sea creatures. Once a whale blew and sounded fairly close and a few minutes later there was an upwelling of water under Senta, as if the whale was inspecting our bottom paint job. Several days later in the late afternoon as I was reading in the cockpit and Pierre was down in the galley making tea. I felt Senta suddenly lurch to starboard. This was followed by a squeaky, scraping sound on the hull to port. We looked over the port side to see a 10 metre whale shark lying alongside, just under the surface. It didn't stay long - just came to say "hello".
On 25 September we made one last trip to Hellville to check out, buy fresh provisions and baguettes and have a last coffee and cake at the "Oasis", a favourite pavement café, where we could sit and watch Helville pass by. Then back to Russian Bay for final pre-departure preparations. Our next trip was to be a 2 day one to Mayotte but we needed to check everything out just as we would for a longer ocean crossing. A nasty shock awaited us. I swam overboard to clean the bottom of the dinghy and the boat topping and check the trim tab, rudder etc. When I looked at the sail drive and propeller I saw that the anode which fits over the prop-shaft between the propeller itself and the S-drive housing was completely loose. We had had problems fitting it in Richards Bay as the holes for the Volvo supplied bolts (6mm) were damaged. We had drilled and tapped the holes out to 8mm some years back and used larger bolts to overcome a corrosion problem. But now the 8mm bolts weren't holding. What were we to do ? We could still run the engine and compressor to keep the fridge cool, but we could not allow the propeller to turn. The loose anode could interfere with the spinning prop, causing a lot of damage. Should we leave it like that and try to sail to Mayotte with no help from the engine ? We could encounter problems with no wind and unfavourable tides and currents going in through the pass to Mayotte. Or should we remove the anode here in Russian Bay ? We would have to first remove the propeller underwater, without dropping it or any of its bits and pieces into 15 metres of water. We would then not have the anode protecting the sail drive from electrolysis. We decided to remove the propeller which I did because I can stay in the water longer than Pierre without getting cold. With Pierre directing operations from the cockpit I pretended that my finger were made from "super glue". I dismantled the propeller and removed the anode, all of the time terrified that I would drop something. All went well and after a brief rest in the cockpit it was back into the water to replace the propeller. We then hung the anode over the prop shaft with the aid of a length of galvanised wire, hoping that this would give some protection. The plan was to remove the anode while we were moving Senta and hand it back again when we were at anchor. A long term solution would have to be found when we could take Senta out of the water - perhaps in Mayotte - or Kenya.
On Saturday 30 September we left for Mayotte at 07h00 and had to motor until lunchtime as there was no wind. Just as well that we had removed the anode. The afternoon wind lasted until midnight and we beat into it in unusually rough seas. The wind then fell light and variable, backing continually to SE. We managed to keep sailing through the next day, but the swell made conditions very uncomfortable, especially when the wind went aft. The genoa wouldn't set and the mainsail was slatting itself to pieces. We eventually resorted to the motor again for a 4 hour period in the early evening until the NW wind re-appeared. It stayed for a few hours and then died again at 03h00. So we motored the rest of the way to Mayotte, arriving at Passe Bandele at 08h00 and Dzauodzi at 09h30. We were pleased to be in Mayotte but irritated by the calm beset passage. After wiring the anode to the sail drive, checking in with the port captain and buying some fresh baguettes, we had a meal and a good sleep to start our stay in Mayotte.
Richards Bay, South Africa to Baly Bay, Madagascar October 1999 to August 2000
We returned to South Africa towards the end of October 1999 after a 2 and a half year cruise in the Indian Ocean. We had enjoyed ourselves so much and had missed so many places we still wanted to see, that we decided our next voyage would be back into the Indian Ocean. But first of all some resting and relaxing had to happen, followed by a lot of work on Senta before we would be ready to leave again. Pierre's work list already had 50 items and was growing. During November, December and January we visited and were visited by family and friends. The Christmas holiday period was spent in Johannesburg and we were lucky enough to see the new millennium in with Ingrid and Brett and their families.
In January we had a steel cradle built on which Senta could stand during her time on the hard. We also bought ourselves some electrical appliances to make our lives easier; a kettle, a toaster, a frying pan, a small bar fridge and a table lamp. On February 7 Senta came out of the water and work could begin in earnest. We had three major projects to tackle along with a multitude of smaller jobs: 1. Remove sail drive, service it and replace the rubber diaphragm and plate that holds the drive into the boat; 2. Strip the rudder housing from the boat and replace it with a new stainless steel one in which the bearings could be easily fitted and removed; 3. Remove the blistered "No-Mosis" from the hull, dig out and repair about twenty osmosis bubbles, followed by fairing of the complete hull with epoxy and topping off with epoxy tar and anti-fouling. We started all three projects at the same time to allow for hold ups waiting for parts to come or work to be done by other people. By mid April, with two months work done, our list of 50 jobs had grown to sixty nine ! Surely we would never finish at this rate.
Percy and Jenny Elston, old friends from TYC days, were frequent visitors. They gave us much encouragement and lent us some very useful tools, which all helped to make our task easier. Slowly, by doggedly sticking to our work, with only the occasional day off, we finished what needed to be done while Senta was out of the water, and Senta was refloated towards the end of May. What luxury ! Gone were the woes of living at the top of a 4 meter ladder in a dusty boatyard. It took another 6 weeks to finish the rest of the jobs on the list, to provision the boat and to finalize all the paperwork involved in leaving the country for an extended period. Eventually, in the middle of July, we were ready to go. The whole maintenance process had used up the 1999/2000 budget with a further large amount spent on provisions and foreign exchange, which will last for some time. Thank goodness we don't need to go near a supermarket for at least a year.
We were eager to leave but the weather thought otherwise. Two intense cold fronts swept over the country, with associated high winds causing abnormal sea conditions and freak waves. So we stayed safely tied up to our walk-on jetty at Zululand Yacht Club, waiting for the weather to improve. Ingrid helped by faxing detailed weather reports which she got from the SA Weather Bureau's website. The synoptic charts and seven day long range forecasts were particularly useful. Eventually conditions looked favourable and we could go. Early on Saturday morning 22 July I went around the boatyard giving away our electrical appliances. They all found new homes. Our large green vacuum cleaner had already become a boatyard communal possession, being passed from boat to boat as the need arose. News spread fast that we were about to leave and many friends came to the jetty to see us off. We hoped to see some of them soon in East Africa, as at least three boats planned to leave within the next 2 months. At 11h00, to a friendly "Have a good voyage" from the signal station we sailed out of Richards Bay harbour exactly nine months after we had returned in October 1999.
We ran northwards inside the Aghulas current, taking advantage of the light SW wind and the north flowing counter current. Off St Lucia estuary we passed three whales blowing and thrashing their tales around. We crept slowly by and they minded their own business, thank goodness. The first night out was cold, wet and windy in the increasing SW wind. But we weren't seasick, thanks once again to Stugeron. And the dolphins visited to give another performance of their breathtaking "Dance with Senta" in the sparkling blue and white phosphorescence. The wind started to back through SE to E and strengthen so that by mid morning on Sunday we were reaching up the Maputoland coast under tri-sail and working jib. There was some shipping and many birds to entertain us. We were to the north of a 1035 millibar high which kept throwing out strong blasts of wind at us. This bombardment slowly eased off during the night and the dawn saw a moderate ESE wind which died completely by lunchtime. To try to control the slatting of the sails we motored until 18h00 when a NE wind came up. We sailed on starboard tack into the Maputo might in the direction of Xai Xai until midnight when, at the change of watch, we tacked onto port to make some easting.
On Tuesday 25th there was again no wind in the afternoon. At 15h00 we started the motor to find that the electro-magnetic switch that operates the clutch for the fridge compressor was broken. We could use the motor to propel us forward and charge the batteries but not to cool the fridge, which was full of margarine, cheese and other perishable goodies. So, thinking caps went on as we motored into the night. At 23h00 we stopped the motor, dropped all sails and sat waiting for the wind. There is either fat too much or none at all. At 02h00 on Wednesday the wind started to make from the SW and slowly increased until at 15h00 it was blowing at 30 knots. We were running under 2 reefs and working jib. Our new mainsail had 2 deep reefs instead of the conventional three. We had found that we never used the first reef of the old sail, and that with the second and third reefs in we usually did not have enough sail. So the first new reef is halfway between the old first and second reefs, and the new second reef is halfway between the old second and third reefs. And for really strong wind we take the main down completely and use the tri-sail. We were encountering nasty seas and a horrible cross swell as we broad reached across the Mozambique current. While Pierre was putting in the second reef I heard an ominous hissing sound. O looked to starboard and saw 2 large toppling waves bearing down on us. I shouted "watch out" to Pierre and dived for the shelter of the main hatch dodger. Pierre darted to the leeward side of the mast but was still drenched fro head to toe as the 2 unwelcome visitors came on board. Later in the day Pierre had a look at the compressor, but working was extremely difficult in the bouncy conditions. He did ascertain that the compressor itself seemed OK and turned freely and that the problem was almost certainly the electro-magnetic switch.
At 06h00 on Thursday 27th we were 130 miles from Europa Island. This was 70 miles closer than we had been on our 1997 trip, when we had used the tactic of crossing the Aghulas current straight out of Richards Bay. This time we went up the coast first as advocated by many Zululand Yacht Club members. So perhaps they have a point. But I believe you can only do this if you have a forecast for a good long weather window, so that you have no risk on encountering bad wind and seas in the stretch of coast where the Aghulas current comes really close in shore.
In the afternoon Pierre managed to fix the compressor by jamming the clutch into place and hence over-riding the spring holding it out. He used wooden clothes pegs, separated into their halves and with their springs removed, as wedges. They were pushed and then lightly tapped into the gap between the clutch plate and part of the compressor housing. We were thus able to cool down everything in the fridge. It's amazing how you can make a plan if you have to. The wind remained fresh to strong from the S to SE all day and we made good progress, shaking out one reef mid morning. The roller-furled head sail had a short glimpse of wind at noon but we soon packed it away again.
After many course adjustments in the night we arrived off Europa Island at 06h30 on Friday 28th. As we sailed slowly past the north shore we saw a pretty coral island with white beaches, blue breakers but no palm trees. A small fishing trawler lay wrecked on a beach near the French meteorological office. The people in the met station called us on VHF to ask if all was well and take down our details for their log book. They sounded disappointed that we did not plan to stop - I guess that they don't get too many visitors. Our time to Europa was 18 hours faster than it had been in 1997. Leaving Europa we headed north and the wind started to die. In the afternoon we drifted along at 3 knots and less and at 20h00 the wind shut off completely. There was no wind at all through the whole night. No matter what we did Senta kept heading South. Not that she was going anywhere. She just kept facing to the South as if to say "Enough of messing about in tropical waters. The Antarctic sounds coool !Let's go there." At last as the sun rose a light NE wind arrived and we were able to continue on our way. With all the light winds our daily average was looking pretty sick at less than 100 miles per day.
We had planned for our first stop in Madagascar to be at Baly Bay, but a study of the charts changed our minds. The Barren Islands, just South of Mainitrano, at latitude 18 deg 33 min South looked interesting. So we spent some time reading the pilot books, checking the charts and setting up way points. We had now been gone from Richards Bay for a week so I celebrated with a haircut and a salt water bath followed by a rinse in 1.5 litres of fresh water. The wind slowly backed to NW, W, SW, S - all at no stronger than 8 knots but mainly 6 or less. In the early evening we were running goose-winged towards the Barren Island, 194 miles away.
On Sunday morning 30th July the wind continued to back and settled in the SE at 8 knots. We gybed the genoa onto the port side of the boat and board reached on starboard at 4 to 5 knots. With the wind having abated but still enough of it around to keep us moving and not slatting around, we were catching up on lost sleep. At mid-day the Barren Islands were 144 miles away. If we could manage to average 6 knots for the next 24 hours we would arrive at noon with a low tide rising and the sun overhead and behind us to see the coral. But this would be ideal and very unlikely to happen. We would probably arrive in the middle of the night. We would then have to shorten sail and sail up and down outside waiting for sunlight and the conditions to be right. One of our basic rules is never to enter a strange anchorage at night. There is no moon now and the nights are long and dark: sunrise 06h30, sunset 17h20. Just over 13 hours of darkness. Luckily the weather is warmer and the nights are not as chilly as the first few nights out of Richards Bay. But I still wear long winter pyjamas, Norwegian ski socks, warm tracksuit pants and a padded jacket on deck during my watch. This outfit is topped by a royal blue fleecy "Patagonia" balaclava that Brett brought back from his trip to Canada. Apart from my stuffed gorilla and my teddy bear, that balaclava is my most prized possession.
We reached in light to moderate SE winds all day and night and dawn on Monday 31st July saw us 63 miles from the Barren Islands. At 15h00 we still had 27 miles to go. So we took one reef in the mainsail and put the working jib up on the inner sat, to slow the boat down and make it easier to heave to or sail up and down passing the night away. While doing this we saw a whale blowing and lashing his tail about 250 meters away. His grunts were awesome. He could have made mince-meat of Senta if the fancy took him. Luckily it didn't and we were able to sail silently by. At 17h00 we hove to on port tack for the night with 18 miles to go. The wind was still in the SE but rising. At 05h30 the following morning, 1st August, now with 14 miles to go, we got the boat sailing again into the orange, dust-filled sunrise. This had been a slow passage. Ten days for about 900 miles. But enjoyable none the less. By 08h00 we were only 2 miles away from our entry waypoint, but the sun was still too low to venture safely into unknown waters. So we hove to again for another hour before proceeding. We followed our pre-determined waypoints, sailing in a fresh SW wind taking Nosy Androtana, Nosy Dondosy and Nosy Andrano to starboard and then slowly inching up on starboard tack to anchor in the lee of Nosy Lava, the southern most of the Barren Islands, at noon. We did a cursory tidy up, rested, slept, ate, slept some more, made supper and went to bed. The wind was blowing fresh from the SW but in spite of a lumpy, rolly anchorage, we slept well. There is nothing quite like the first unbroken night's sleep after a passage.
The next morning, Wednesday 2 August, we woke refreshed to find the wind abated and the water much calmer. We did some repair work on the mainsail, putting a patch over the bolt rope on the foot near the track, where the track had chaffed the cloth, and binding on the twine, 3 more slides that had come off. Some locals came by in a canoe to sell us a magnificent shell and langoustine. We had to decline as we had no Malagash money and nothing to trade. The islands live up to their name "Barren" - white beaches, bleached jagged rocks, low hills covered with scrub grass and scraggly bushes. They are on a crescent of reef providing shelter from W through S to SE. The water is not very clear. The islands are uninhabited except for nomadic fishermen. We spent a pleasant sunny day in the cooling SE breeze tackling some of the 11 jobs that had arisen during our 10 day passage.
After 2 days we tired of the anchorage which became quite rolly at high tide when the swell cam in over the reefs and around Nosy Lava. so on Friday 4 August we left to sail northwards, round Cap St Andre and into Baly Bay. We estimated that the trip might take 3 days. We drifted slowly up the coast in a light easterly and just before lunchtime caught a good sized game fish - a Spanish Mackerel I think. What good timing ! Off with his head, cut a few steaks and put 2 of them in the frying pan for a delicious lunch. After lunch the wind cam up from the SW and we broad reached on port gybe until midnight. The wind started to back to the east so at the 03h00 watch change we gybed onto starboard tack. We were making good time as we reached towards the passage between Isle Chesterfield and Cap St Andre. We had decided not to go off soundings but to sail on the Pracel Bank to keep in shallow and calmer water. Slowly through the day the wind did an anti clockwise circle from SE to E, NE, N, NW, W and ended up in the SW again where it remained from 16h00 through the night. We passed Isle Chesterfield in the late afternoon. By 21h00 we were well past the northern edge of Cap St Andre and gybed onto starboard to head east and round the cape. As we sailed eastward into the lee of Madagascar the swell diminished in size and the seas became less confused. The wind was fresh, around 20 knots and Senta reached along at over 7 knots, covering 9 miles in one particularly fast hour. We could see several lights from fishing boats and we had to keep a good lookout, as best we could on a dark night, as Senta roared her way to Baly Bay. This was really exhilarating sailing. The wind abated slowly during the early hours of the morning, and at sunrise, when we were within 5 miles to the entrance to Baly Bay, the wind completely died. But almost immediately the well remembered early morning easterly came through, blowing at 20 knots right on the nose ! Soon a short, choppy sea built up and we had to power up the sails, in spite of the wind strength, to provide enough momentum to cut through the waves, two of which close together were enough to stop Senta dead in her tracks. By 09h00 we managed to reach the west side of the entrance to the bay and then reached southwards into the bay towards our previous anchorage just north of the village of Baly. We were accompanied by 2 small white fishing trawlers bottom fishing for prawns and leaving circles of muddied water behind them. Lunch time saw us anchored, tidied up, fed and ready for an afternoon snooze. The trip from the Barren Islands had taken 2 days and 6 hours instead of the 3 days we had estimated. Mainly because we had taken a shorter inner route over the Pracel bank, but also because we had experienced good wind most of the way. We went to sleep that night looking forward to a few lazy days at Baly Bay.
Madagascar to Mayotte to South Africa August to October 1999
On Thursday 19 August Senta sailed out through the pass from Russian Bay, turned to port and ran to the western edge of Madagascar and then on towards Mayotte, the only French owned island in the Comores group. The wind was a very light easterly which died at mid day, so we had to motor for an hour before the south westerly afternoon breeze arrived. This swung to south east as evening fell and strengthened so that by mid night we had to reef. We encountered very high swells from three different directions, north east, north west and south west. In consequence Senta's motion was very peculiar and quite uncomfortable. Some dolphins visited in the night to say goodbye and wish us a happy voyage.
By three am the next morning the wind had died and we slatted around in the lumpy sea. At ten o'clock we could not stand it any longer and started the motor. We pressed on under motor for the next 18 hours until the south east wind came through at 0330 on the morning of 21 August. The night watches were moonlit until around three am and thereafter the many stars replaced the moonlight. It was quite chilly and we needed warm coats and hats when we sat up on deck.
At 0900 we sailed in through the outer reef of Mayotte through Passe Bandélé on the eastern side, and then on to anchor at Dzaoudzi. Two hours later Cockaigne arrived. We were very surprised to see them as they had said they would only be leaving several days after us. But they saw us leaving in a favourable wind, and suddenly remembered that the GPS week number roll over to zero again was due to happen at midnight on 21 August. They thought that it might be a good idea to leave then as well and make sure that they were anchored somewhere for the roll over, the GPS equivalent of Y2K.
Pierre of Inomacas came over for a chat with the news that Genevieve had flown home to France for an operation to remove a lump from her breast. It was a very anxious time for all of us until the news came almost a month later that the lump had been removed and was benign.
On our last visit to Mayotte in 1996 we had not needed visas, but the port captain, after checking us in told us that we would have to go to Mamoudzou, the main island, to obtain visas. So on Monday we set off on the ferry to Mamoudzou. We spent a hot, tiring day tramping to the bank, post office, Service Fiscaux to purchase 160 francs worth of stamps for the visas and then on to the prefecture for the visas themselves. There we found the place crowded with hundreds of people from Anjouan, the nearest Comores Island. Anjouan is in a state of revolt against the Comores government and wants to become independent, or better still re-unite with Mayotte under the French flag. When the Comores islands gained independence from France the Mahoraise opted to remain a French possession, and the citizens of Mayotte lead a much better life with a far higher standard of living than their neighbours. As a consequence many people from Anjouan were trying to gain permanent residence status in Mayotte. We were the only tourists in a crowd of Comorans. We wanted tourist visas and they wanted resident papers. No one seemed to understand what to do with us and insisted that we needed a 'Carte de Sejours' before we could apply for a visa. We had no idea what this was. After several hours we were rescued from the crowd by the French immigration officer, Monsieur Let Blanc, who invited us into his office, gave us refreshments and organised the visas in a few minutes.
We were quite embarrassed to walk out with our visas through the crowd of people still waiting. Before returning to Dzaoudzi on the ferry we stopped at the Caribou pavement café for refreshments. One coke, one coffee and two small pastries set us back 40 francs. A franc is roughly equivalent to a rand. So this was a taste of things to come. We were to find that, although we could buy almost anything we wanted, the price would be high. Roughly double the equivalent South African price. But Mayotte is an island far away from anything and all provisions come in by air or ship. So I suppose the price wasn't so bad.
We spent ten days anchored at Dzaoudzi, during which time we met and chatted with several cruisers; Brent Craig, Tracey and Pearl their Maltese poodle on Odyssey; Gert and Anita on Con Brio; Ruth and Martin and their family on Enigma.
By then we were getting bored and set off on a clockwise circumnavigation of Grande Terre, another name for the main island of Mayotte. Pamandzi, the small island of which Dzaoudzi forms a part is also called Petit Terre. Our first stop was Isle Bandélé, close to the pass of the same name. There is a good beach and several magnificent bronze coloured baobab trees. The first day there we were on our own, but the next day, Friday, in the afternoon about 40 people arrived in four boat loads to camp on the island for the weekend. On Saturday we sailed round the south eastern corner of Grande Terre to anchor at Ronabéja Bay. Pierre trolled in the dinghy and caught three 4kg groupers. He gave two to a couple of young boys from the village who were playing on the beach and kept one for our supper. It was delicious and a delight to have fresh fish for a change. We spent a calm night but at 0530 the next morning the wind started to blow from the south, putting us in quite an exposed anchorage. But we were protected from the seas by the big outer reef of Mayotte and an inner reef at the entrance to the bay. The wind was now very boisterous so we were happy to remain where we were.
On Monday the wind had abated and we sailed 8 miles up the west coast of Grande Terre to anchor in 10 metres on mud opposite mangroves at Mzouazia. The next afternoon we rowed ashore to a chocolate coloured beach on which a group of chocolate coloured children were playing. We strolled through the village and bought some fresh bread and highly priced "arts and crafts" from a local woman artist.
The next day there was no wind so we motored further north to Boueni Bay where we anchored off Isle Caroni. We had last been there in 1996 with Kestrel and La Cigalle. We were starting to be plagued by flies, so many in fact that we wondered if they had laid eggs on Senta and the eggs were hatching each day. The flies were very bad in the late morning and afternoon, but disappeared at night.
There were several yachts anchored in the south west corner of Boueni Bay. After a few days at Isle Caroni we sailed over to look at these yachts and then went on to Baie de Selous. Senta surprised several turtles who dived out of the way deep down into the clear water. At Selous we washed our clothes and showered in the waterfall that drops down onto the beach. The flies were getting worse and we put the mosquito screens on the hatches during daylight to keep the flies out of the boat. We decided that the flies were not being manufactured by us but were coming from the shore. As we had not had the problem on the east side of Grande Terre we decided to escalate our circumnavigation and sailed the next day via Isle Choizil and Isle Zamboro to anchor at Longoni, the new deep water harbour of Mayotte. We would have liked to anchor at Isle Choizil, but there is only a small patch on shallow water over sand between two islands and the wind was blowing from the north onshore. It looked too dangerous to us.
At Longoni the fly population was much smaller. There were two big ships and a couple of yachts at anchor. We were running out of goodies like yoghurt, puddings, ham, bacon, chocolates and fresh baguettes, so we only stayed at Longoni for one day before sailing back to Dzaoudzi. There we found that the flies were gone and that Trevor and Christine on Gallivant had arrived from Seychelles. The remainder of September was spent at Dzaoudzi reading, shopping, doing minor bits of boat maintenance and getting to know some new friends. Voitek and Pauline on Syrenna arrived from Darwin having stopped for two days only at Diego Garcia to buy new batteries as theirs were giving problems. The voyage had taken 40 days; nearly twice as long as our longest sea passage.
Trevor flew off to San Fransisco for a business meeting, leaving Christine behind to do all of the varnishing on Gallivant. When Trevor returned a week later we met him again at a 'happy hour on Syrenna. Jim and Maggie from First Choice were there and we met Alec and Lindsay from Gladys May for the first time. Trevor was very happy to be back and in cruising mode. He told us all how horrible it had been back in the rat race.
As the time approached for us to think of leaving Mayotte and sailing to South Africa we started to listen to the weather forecasts and reports from Durban Radio, Tony Britchford in Killifi and Alaistair Campbell south of Durban. Towards the end of September we heard Kingston Rover, Tillerman and Zest on the net talking of their experiences when hit by a 40 to 50 knot south westerly wind while 200 miles north of Richards Bay. They moved close in shore at Ponto D'Ouro to get out of the major force of the current and remained hove-to for 36 hours. Eventually Tillerman and Kingston Rover sailed safely in to Richards Bay, but with minor damage and Zest took advantage of the then blowing north easter to sail to Durban. We believed that they had gone south too early. The early spring gales are very fierce and only begin to settle down after the middle of October, so we planned to leave Mayotte on about 12 October.
We cleaned out our food lockers, getting rid of old food and rusty tins and then filled up again with new provisions . After the first week in October we started our countdown procedure starting with taking on fresh water. This was particularly easy at Dzaoudzi as the fresh water taps are on the jetty and the jerry cans can be filled while they are in the dinghy.
On October 7th Moonshadow left Mayotte to sail across the Moçambique channel. They encountered 40 knot south easterly winds most of the way and made the crossing in just 48 hours in mountainous seas and towing a drogue. David on Moonshadow said that those were the biggest seas he had ever seen.
Five days later we upped anchor and sailed past Inomacas to say goodbye. Two other boats in the vicinity, Amiga from Sweden and Isadora from Finland hailed us and said that they were also leaving that morning for Richards Bay. They asked us to keep in contact by radio. We replied that we did not have HF radio but would try to contact them on VHF from time to time. We motored round the north side of Grande Terre inside the outer reef which we then exited through Passe de Choizil. The wind stayed away all night as we motored southwards between Mayotte and Anjouan. The south setting current helped us on our way. The next day, October 13, was Pierre's birthday. The wind started to blow from the south and after a few hours turned to a 20 knot south westerly, right on the nose. We reefed Senta down to two reefs and working jib for the night. We were being pushed too far north on port tack by the wind and current, but the starboard tack would keep us away from the south setting Moçambique current, so we carried on. The following day the wind backed to the south and south east, but continued to blow over twenty knots. At 0630 the mainsail tore just above the second reefing point. We took it down, replaced it with the tri-sail and continued to beat into uncomfortable seas for the rest of the day and night.
On Friday 15th in an eighteen knot southerly wind we sailed to within 7 miles of the Moçambique coast. At mid day we tacked onto starboard and headed off shore again. We were disappointed at having to beat home, compared to our last passage when we had reached and run in a north easterly wind all of the way from southern Tanzania to Richards Bay. We held to the starboard tack before going back onto port tack again after six hours.
Eating wasn't a problem but we were a little tired, not yet having settled into our three hour on, three hour off sleeping pattern, after only three days at sea. As soon as the seas calmed down we fixed the mainsail with patches of cloth and contact cement. Senta picked up a couple of knots in speed once we replaced the tri-sail with the repaired main. We were now in a situation where we could either have the full main up or replace it with the tri-sail. We could not reef the mainsail as it had already torn at the first two reefing points and was about to tear at the third. We thus hoped that the wind would remain above twenty knots for the full passage to Richards Bay so that we would not have to change sails too often.
We listened on the radio net for news of our fellow travellers. Sara was stopping at Fogo Island to retrieve a lost main halyard. Ginseng had gone into Ncala to repair part of her bowsprit, and now she and Minuit were waiting at Bazarutto for the wind to change from south to north easterly. Isadora and Amiga were 60 miles behind us on the same course. Some of the boats had opted for sailing directly to the Moçambique coast from Mayotte or Madagascar and then short hopping down the coast to Richards Bay. We are frightened to sail too close to land and so had chosen and advised many others to sail westwards until in the current about fifty miles off shore and then to take a rhumb line to Richards Bay, passing well outside all of the salient features on the coastline. This seemed to be working well because, in spite of contrary winds, we were doing better than boats who had chosen the course close to shore.
As Senta approached the northern edge of the Beira bight we tried to make sure, by sailing as close to the wind as possible, that we were not forced into the bight. For to do so would mean having to beat out of it against the south easter.
By Sunday 17th we had settled well into our passage-making mode. Eating and sleeping well; no ailments; even showers in the cockpit in the warm afternoon sun. How wonderful it was to have silky soft hair instead of salty thatch on top of your head. By 1500 the south easter had strengthened to over twenty knots and we reefed down to tri-sail and working jib on the inner cutter stay. We were well pleased. Senta was sailing like a dream and in the right direction!
The wind continued all day and through the night but moderated to ten knots at 1300 on the following day. We took down the tri-sail, put the full main up and unfurled the genoa. Sara reported no wind at Fogo. Ginseng and Minuit were still holed up at Bazarutto, waiting for better winds, while we, further out to sea were having spectacular sailing weather. We congratulated ourselves at having a boat that sails well, especially to windward.
My birthday on Tuesday 19th was marked by a continuation of the south easter at 10 to 15 knots picking up to 25 knots at 2100, when we had to take down the main and hoist the tri-sail. By the next morning the wind had moderated so it was up with the main, jib down and genoa unfurled. But by 1200 the fresh wind was back again so it was main down, tri-sail up, genoa furled away and jib up. This lasted until 1500 when a moderating wind made us reverse our sail setting once again. We were getting pretty tired of all of this sail changing calisthenics. But luckily the wind remained moderate and we had an excellent night's run under full sail in the moonlight with the wind backing further to east south east. We now had just over 200 miles to go to Richards Bay. The wind seemed to have settled in the east, with a strong possibility of continuing to back to north east. Weather reports showed no signs of cold fronts coming up from Cape town, so now was the time to pile on the power and hurry home.
The 0700 sight and radio check on Thursday 21st showed us to be 178 miles out from Richards Bay. Ginseng had 184 and Minuit 189 miles to go. Amiga and Isadora were also very close to us. It was developing into quite a race, against the other boats and against the south wester that must come soon.
The wind did move round to north east and then north It strengthened so that by 1600 we had to revert to tri-sail and working jib, and were broad reaching on starboard tack. The wind speed remained at 25 knots with 35 knot gusts for the early part of the night, but by two in the morning it had swung to north west and was blowing at 40 knots with gusts between 50 and 60. We do not have an anemometer on board, and consistently underestimate the wind speed. So our hand written log for that night shows wind speeds of 25 knots with a period of 35 knots for a few hours after midnight. When I spoke on the VHF radio with Amiga the following morning to ask how they had enjoyed 'the breeze', they told me what the wind strength had really been. I am grateful that we are a low-tech boat, without things like wind speed indicators to scare us stupid. I would rather not know that it is blowing 40, 50 and 60 knots. I will stick with my 25 knots and occasional 35. Senta had sped down wind picking her way through enormous cresting seas, seemingly quite at ease. The whole boat was vibrating from the speed and we were concerned about the consequences of anything breaking on the self steering gear. If this had happened there would have been a spectacular broach and wipe out. So on our watches we sat close to the tiller to take over hand steering if necessary. But Senta did it all by herself, roaring along and at one time surfing down the waves at over thirteen knots. It was cold and wet with a lot of rain and a spectacular lightning show over the land, but an exhilarating sail, to be remembered for a long time.
By 0500 the next morning the wind started to ease and as Sod's law predicts by the time we were 7 miles from the Richards Bay harbour mouth the south wester set in blowing at 25 knots. We had already changed up to full main sail and genoa and had to change again !! down to tri-sail and working jib.
We motor sailed the last seven miles in three hours tacking up the beach in relatively calm water, but an adverse current and crossed the bar into Richards Bay harbour at 1130. Just over ten days from Mayotte and a lot of it against the wind. So we were pleased with Senta's performance.
We were soon cleared in and the next day settled into a marina berth at Tuzi Gazi. We had been away from South Africa for two and a half years and enjoyed every minute of it. Well almost every minute. We had such a good time in fact that we plan to return to cruise further in the Indian Ocean as soon as we can. There is a lot of work to be done on Senta, which we hope to complete by May or June 2000. But if it takes longer, then we may have to delay our departure for another year.
But in the meantime we will enjoy meeting family and friends again and living in the best country in the world - at least that part of the world we have seen. No more news letters until we set off again. We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures.
Chagos to Madagascar June to August 1999
On Tuesday 27 May Senta, rigged with a working jib on the inner cutter stay, and two reefs in the main sail, ran out through the pass from Salamon atoll, Chagos, turned to port and reached in a south westerly direction towards the southern tip of the Malha Bank. We had decided to take this route to avoid any possible rough seas on the bank. Many other boats planned to sail directly to Madagascar across Malha. Another reason for going south was that the south east trade wind would continue to strengthen and we wanted to be able to run off in front of it as this happened. The wind was blowing twenty knots from the south east and the seas were very rough in the gap between Salamon and Perhos Banhos atolls.
Once through the gap the swells became larger, but longer and hence more comfortable. There were however occasional vicious cross seas from the south, hitting Senta from the side and breaking onto the decks. We were broad reaching in 25 knot winds averaging six knots.
We had arranged with Bill on First Choice to give us a weather forecast each morning when he spoke to the other boats who had also left Chagos. He picked up the weather reports from Inmarsat via the electronic gizmos on his boat. This was quite useful in letting us know that there was nothing terrible lurking anywhere. He told us that the winds were going to be stronger where we were in the south. We knew that already and had anticipated it. But we were very grateful for Bill's help. There are no official weather forecasts for this part of the world. There are also no ships, being off the major shipping routes. A very lonely place.
We listened each morning to the other boats talking on the radio net. Our little Sony lets us receive very well, but has no transmitter. It was interesting to track progress of our friends and silently commiserate with them in their problems. Those further north were having considerably less wind.
The covers I had made for the middle and forehatches were working well, keeping the spray at bay and Senta airy down below.
In a rain squall in the early morning of Saturday 29 May the wind steerer broke. Senta rounded up into wind and sat with sails flapping waiting for us to investigate and fix the problem. A bolt connecting the vertical arm of the steering device to the pendulum had sheared and needed welding to fix. I suggested that we try to lash the whole lot together with a light line. This Pierre did and it seemed to work, so we were off again on the sleigh ride to Madagascar. The second thing to go wrong that day was a blocked head. Pierre to the rescue again. We wondered what number three problem would be, but it did not come until the next day.
The wind moderated a little to under 20 knots but by the following day was back with force. The boats further north continued to have less wind. Bad luck number three arrived as a large wave broke over the boat and I got my first total drenching in the cockpit. Weather and seas were very warm so we did not wear oilskins. Drenching meant that we had salt water soaked clothes to cope with down below. Eventually we discovered that the best thing was to go on deck wearing our birthday suits. Our skins are the best oilskins, being completely waterproof and are also easy to rinse.
We had not seen any ships, although Cross Town Traffic and Hi Velocity, further north, reported seeing several. We were obviously further south than the traffic lanes.
Our first three days runs had been 144, 154 and 125 miles; an average of 137 miles per day, or 5,7 knots. Not a bad speed for two reefs in the main and working jib. We had opened the roller furled headsail to Yankee size about twice for a couple of hours, otherwise we had been well reefed down. We continued to angle south westwards and would do so until we reached 12 degrees south We then planned to sail due west through the channel between Saya de Malha and Nazareth banks. We hoped for good current and stronger winds
In the late afternoon of Sunday 30 May, the wind moderated a little. We unfurled the Yankee and kept it up all night. The next morning the seas were much less confused and the wind even lighter. We were considering hoisting the full main when the wind came back even stronger than before, blowing 25 knots from east south east all day and the following night. Our fourth and fifth day's runs were 153 and 161. On the morning of 1 June were had reached our waypoint south of Malha Bank and were now 710 miles from Chagos, with another 750 to go to reach Cap D'Ambre at the northernmost tip of Madagascar. Our average 24 hour run had now picked up to 150 miles.
The seas were pretty rough in the pass between Malha and Nazareth Banks, but smoothed out after we were through. Cross Town Traffic reported on the radio that she had sailed directly over the Malha bank on a rhumb line course to Cap D'Ambre and had experienced no problems or unusual sea conditions. In fact once on the bank in 13 metres of water it was very calm; no swell; only a small chop; and a Korean fishing boat at anchor.
Deja Vu came up on the morning radio schedule to report that she was leaving Rodriguez for Mauritius. Duet and Hi Velocity on the more northerly course to Seychelles were experiencing poorer winds, periodic squalls and an adverse current.
We were now well into the south equatorial current and getting a welcome push on our way. The good winds and current gave us a 179 mile run on the sixth day. This current, which is 700 miles wide, splits when it reaches Madagascar. The northern part bends to the north west and accelerates over the top of Madagascar. We wished to avoid the large seas caused by the current passing Cap D'Ambre and being swept far off course away from Nose Be. So we aimed to hit Madagascar about fifty miles south of the cape and then sail northwards next to the shore, rounding Cap D'Ambre less than 300 metres off the shoreline.
Our sea legs were well established and, in spite of the uncomfortable seas and wet conditions we were able to bath, bake bread and buns, cook warm meals and sleep reasonably well on our three hour off watch periods.
The wind became more easterly and we were sailing too far southwards on a broad port reach, so we gybed the working jib and then ran goose winged directly westwards. This was a good point of sailing. The wind steerer was coping well, except that our lashings chafed through every day and had to be replaced. The seas, now coming from the port quarter and not from the side, were less bothersome. The motion of the boat was easier and surprisingly there was less rolling. Our speed continued to be good and after seven days our 24 hour average was up to 155 miles.
We were spending very little time on deck only popping our heads out every ten minutes or so to check for ships. So we did not see much wild life; one or two birds; no dolphins; but many flying fish on deck every morning. Senta was still very airy down below, the new hatch covers helping to make life reasonably pleasant. Some food supplies were running low. There was no more muesli for breakfast. The rice and pasta were almost finished. We had plenty of canned food, but that gets boring. In the fresh food department we had one onion and four 'oranges' that were given to us by Chris and Louise of Harmony as we left Salamon. They came from a hidden orchard at Perhos Banhos. Unfortunately these were wild oranges and must have been crossed with grapefruit. They were so bitter we couldn't eat them. Louise had warned us of this and said that we should squeeze them add lots of sugar and drink the juice. We dreamed of the meals we would have once we reached Nose Be Loads and loads of fresh fruit and salads, eggs and bacon, meat, cheese, baguettes....
As we approached the coast of Madagascar the wind increased and on the night of 4 June the squalls made us furl the bimini, drag down the double reefed main, as the boom was repeatedly hitting the water, and replace it with the tri-sail. Under this rig Senta romped down the seas at nine knots towards Cap D'Ambre, while we stayed down below, listening to classical music and doing pre-navigation for the rounding of the Cape. The night of 5 June was memorable but tiring. Twenty five to thirty knot winds and rain squalls accompanied us as we ran towards the coast at Diego Suarez. At midnight the moon rose to show us the silhouettes of the mountains and the white foam of the breakers. Senta ran up the coast towards Cap D'Ambre with Pierre on deck keeping watch and hand steering while I navigated every inch of the way as we strove to keep to the fine line between the shore and the rough seas where the current caused rip tides and other uglies. At 0400 we rounded Cap D'Ambre and in the first cool light of morning Madagascar looked quite magnificent. Mountains and hills were very different from the palm-tree atolls we had become used to.
The wind became lighter as we rounded the cape and sailed westwards. We eventually had to resort to motoring as we set a course to sail to the west of Isles Mitsio. We urgently needed sleep which we took in short spells during the morning and early afternoon as we slowly motored down the north west edge of Madagascar.
By early evening the easterly wind returned and strengthened until we were reaching under a pocket handkerchief of jib rolled out of the furled headsail. Some of the squalls were so strong that at one stage Pierre, off watch below, stuck his head out of the hatch and shouted. 'Where is all of this wind coming from? This is not the bloody Falklands!'
No it was Madagascar. In just over nine days we had sailed the 1440 miles from Chagos, at an average speed of over 160 miles per day. A fast, interesting, relatively trouble free but wet and uncomfortable passage. The seas had been ridiculously boisterous, especially with the heavy southerly cross swell giving Senta a curious cork screw motion. Typical of sailing in the south east trade winds of the southern Indian Ocean.
The next morning brought moderate to fresh south easterly winds and we had a glorious sail in calm seas past Isles Mitsio to anchor in the channel between Sakatia Island and Nose Be in the late afternoon. This was a favourite spot from previous visits and well protected from the south east. After a large meal of pasta and canned tomatoes we went to sleep. Wonderful deep sleep, uninterrupted every 3 hours by 'How would you like to wake up? Your watch!', when you felt you had only just fallen asleep.
After a few days rest at Sakatia we sailed round the south west tip of Nose Be to Hellville, where we found three South African boats; Dream Child, Pimpernel and Imberhorne. Liza and Andrew of Dream Child visited and told us that they were permanently stationed at Nose Be doing charter work. They found that it paid well and was a good life style. The going rate was R600 per day per person for full board and overnight stay.
We were invited for tea aboard Imberhorne. Six young South Africans, Quentin, Anita, Paul, Lindsay, Jurgens, Angela and the cat Anna had sold up everything and were on their first step on an extensive world cruise. They knew all about Senta, having read copies of our previous newsletters that a friend had given them.
A few hectic days of checking in, arranging for the broken steering arm to be welded, filling up with fresh water, shopping for fresh supplies and we were ready to start exploring the area. There was as yet no sign of any of the other boats who had left Chagos. Some we knew, from the radio schedule, had stopped at the northern tip of Madagascar and were slowly cruising down towards Nose Be.
Kaskasi, a large Warram, catamaran skippered by Andrew Plaskett (Plastic) from Zululand Yacht Club arrived. It was flying the Seychelles flag, but had come from South Africa on a delivery voyage, .
By Tuesday 15 June we had completed our re-stocking and left Hellville for Russian Bay about 20 miles away. Unfortunately the afternoon westerly wind came through too late for us to reach our destination before nightfall, so we changed course and went to Nosy Kisimani instead. There we anchored in the nook between island and reef just as the sun was going down. We had a quick cup of tea in the cockpit before we were chased below by mosquitos.
We had not taken anti-malaria drugs for over two years, so we had to be very careful not to get bitten. Our hatches all had net screens and we used mosquito repellant on our skins at night. This worked well and although we were in high risk areas with large mosquito populations for most of our cruise, we were seldom bitten and thankfully avoided contracting malaria. We did however carry drugs to treat the disease if necessary.
World Cup Cricket was entering its final stages and we were able to listen to the semi-final and final matches on our Sony world band receiver. The tie between South Africa and Australia in the second of the two semi finals was almost too exciting to listen to, especially as the result meant that South Africa would not go through to the final.
The next week was spent cruising to Russian Bay and then back to Crater Bay on Nose Be in search of our Chagos friends. Fishing was poor and Pierre only caught one bonito trolling from the dinghy in Russian Bay. We don't like to eat this type of fish, so after cutting off a piece near the tail for bait we gave the rest of the fish to the grateful crew of a dhow that had sailed into Russian Bay for the night.
At Crater Bay we found Inomacas, Chelsea Morning and Cross Town Traffic. They all came on board Senta for afternoon tea, coffee and biscuits and a chat about the passage from Chagos. Everyone had experienced a rough, fast voyage and were pleased to be cruising around the sheltered waters of north west Madagascar. They were also revelling in the abundance of fresh food. News of Walt and Maria of Csa Vargo was that they had decided not to return to South Africa, but were continuing eastward across the Indian Ocean to Malaysia.
From Crater Bay we caught a taxi into Hellville to replenish fresh stores. We tried to save some money by taking a 'collective' taxi instead of a 'special'. Never again! We were squashed into a tiny Renault together with eight other passengers. In Hellville we found the small town in a state of excitement. There was a military band and parade and a celebration in the square. This was to mark the arrival of sacred wood at the Queen's palace in Antananarivo. The wood was need to rebuild the parts of the palace burned down in a fire in 1996.
Several day's cruising took us to Nosy Komba to do our washing in the fresh water that runs down into the village's water trough from the top of the mountain.
Anne of Cross Town Traffic had a birthday coming up on 26 June so several boats sailed to Nosy Kisimani for a beach barbeque to celebrate. While making the fire on the beach, Norman of Chelsea Morning found a large lazy boa constrictor sunning himself on the sand right near where we wanted to hold the birthday party. There are no poisonous snakes in Madagascar, but the area round Nose Be has many constrictors. Having been reared in the Australian outback Norman had no fear of snakes. So he lifted the boa up by its tail and placed it in the bushes a little way from the party site. I must admit that I didn't stray too far from the fire that night.
After the toasts to Anne and singing of 'Happy Birthday' and 'For She's a Jolly Good Fellow', I told the others that they were also helping Pierre and I to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary which was the following day. When he heard this, Pierre of Inomacas, was astounded. He shook his head and remarked, "C'est incroyable. It is unbelievable. 40 years!! I would be dead!" At which his wife, Genevieve, playfully hit him on the head with a twig of driftwood an said,"Thank you very much, Pierre!". We spent several days at Kisimani, walking on the beach exposed by the low spring tides, watching dhows sail in the bay, and generally enjoying ourselves being lazy.
We then sailed back to Nosy Komba, where we shopped for souvenirs. After two very rolly nights at anchor we woke early and went ashore to do the washing. We then motored westwards to Nosy Momoko with all sails covered, sun awnings up and the washing hanging on the life lines to dry. With the dinghy towing behind we only needed fenders over the side to look like a typical Vaal Dam cruising boat.
The Nosy Momoko anchorage is well sheltered in an L-shaped corner of the island. The water is clear, holding good and the scenery, especially the mountains to the south, is spectacular. We spent three days here before sailing back to Hellville. We had decided to stay in Madagascar a further month and needed to renew our visas.
At Hellville we found Makaretu with Marie-George, Benoir, Maxine and Morgan(of Chagos penis infection fame) on board. They were all well and we visited them early evening one evening to catch up on news.
We had to wait four days for our passports to be sent to Diego Suarez for the visa renewals. So we hung around Hellville at anchor, watching the comings and goings in the small harbour and going ashore to shop each day.
One morning as we sat at a table on the pavement at the Oasis café enjoying coffee and cream cakes, we were approached by a black man who greeted us in a very friendly manner as if he knew us. I had never seen him before, but soon noticed that he was wearing a baseball cap made from a South African flag. He introduced himself as George, the owner of a small 26 ft boat, which he had sailed from Durban and was now chartering in the Nose Be area. He was making a reasonable living and planned to return to South Africa at the end of the year. We met George several times during our stay in Madagascar, and were impressed with his drive and enthusiasm. Although his boat is really too small for chartering, he had bought several two man tents and camping mattresses. His charter guests were accommodated in these tents which were pitched on the shore in the various bays and islands that they visited.
To our surprise our passports with the new visas for a further two months were ready as promised. The cost was R140 each with a "present' of R20 for the immigration official. We were now able to leave Hellville again and sail to less hectic places. A quick visit to Crater Bay and then a good sail over to Russian Bay, where we stayed for ten days. Several boats came and went, including Mike on Doualla, Patrick and Carolyn on Cockaigne, and Chris and Louise on the motor launch Harmony. Cockaigne had just arrived from Richards Bay after spending 20 months there doing a major refit to their boat.
At the beginning of August we sailed again to Hellville to spend a few days provisioning for the voyage to Mayotte and then on to South Africa. Another trip to Nosy Komba for washing brought us into contact again with Derek and Jill on Ginseng and Andy and John on Sara. It was interesting to hear about their experiences since last seeing them in Chagos. While rowing over to Ginseng I was hailed by a Swedish boat, Galatea. Peter the single hander on board told me that the cholera, which we knew was rife in Majunga, had now spread to Hellville. We would have to be very careful about cleaning fresh produce and the source of our water supplies.
In order to avoid the dreadful rolling in the north easterly swell at night at Nosy Komba, we sailed around to the south shore of that island and spent two enjoyable days anchored in a delightful bay. We then tried to sail up the east side of Nosy Be and round the top, but this was thwarted by a complete lack of wind. So we returned via the south of the island to Sakatia, where we found First Choice, Gitana and Moonshadow anchored. Most of the boats from Chagos who had planned to visit Madagascar were now in the area. During an enjoyable lunch at the Sakatia Passions Lodge the crews of all of the boats swopped sailing tales.
The last two weeks in Madagascar were spent cruising between Hellville, Sakatia and Russian Bay. In Hellville we noticed that the 80ft ketch Sylvia had a problem with her Red Ensign. The Union Jack at the top of the hoist was upside down! The wide white stripes were underneath and not on top. As the rest of the boat was in absolutely perfect condition and the crew worked all day and every day to keep her like that, I wanted to row over and point out their minor mistake. But somehow I never got round to it.
After final provisioning and check out in Hellville we sailed to Russian Bay as this is a good jumping off spot for the short leg to Mayotte. There we found 12 other boats, quite a crowd in a normally relatively uncrowded anchorage. The first morning there was great excitement as some of the boats had spotted whale sharks swimming in the bay. Dinghies set off to the sharks and some of the crew got into the water to swim with them. They are quite harmless, being plankton eaters, but are very large, up to 12 meters in length. Later that day as Pierre was stepping from the dinghy onto the boarding ladder, he looked down and saw one of them lying in the shade underneath Senta. Although he knew that the creature was harmless, he was quite shaken by being so near to such a big animal, nearly as long as Senta.
We said goodbye to Cockaigne, who would leave in a few days for Mayotte and then on to Kenya, Cross Town Traffic who would cruise down the west coat of Madagascar and then across the Moçambique Channel to Richards Bay, and Fajaro, who was also bound for Kenya.
We then made final preparations and went to bed for a good night's sleep before setting off on the 300 mile crossing to Mayotte on 19 August 1999.
Maldives to Chagos March to May 1999
I forgot to tell you about two 'Banana' experiences at Addu Atoll at the extreme south end of the Maldives. So before proceeding to Chagos......
On arrival at Gan we bought a bunch of about 30 small, fat, bright yellow bananas. While Pierre was paying a vast number of rufiyaas for them, I noticed that each banana had a number written on it in black ball point pen. They started at 163 and went up consecutively, 164, 165,166....etc. to somewhere in the 190's, following the spiral of bananas round the stalk. I asked the young shopkeeper about these numbers. He said, 'We buy the bananas from the Sri Lankans and they number every banana in each hand, starting from one and going up. That way they know how many you have bought when you have to pay.' When he saw the look of amazement on my face he smiled and said. 'Yes, they are rather odd, these Sri Lankans.' We later discovered that the Maldivians love to scoff at and tease their Sri Lankan visitors.
Several days later, just before leaving Gan, we decided to buy a whole hand of green bananas to take to Chagos. There we would be unable to obtain any fresh produce other than coconuts. There were no bananas available in the shop. The young shop keeper arranged to meet Pierre at the dinghy landing the next day and take him on a 'banana hunt' While I waited in the dinghy, the two of them set off on a moped, the shop keeper riding and Pierre clinging on behind. The islands in Addu Atoll are joined together by a causeway which was built by the British military forces when they used Gan as an air base during the second world war. So Pierre and his banana supplier could go from island to island on these causeways in their quest.
And what a search it was. Very few hands were ready for picking and those that were had been earmarked for other customers - mainly family members. At one stop Pierre was invited into the coral-block and palm-frond roofed house. He was given a meal and cool drinks. There was quite a crowd in the house including many children, and although he could not speak the language, Pierre tried to talk, laugh and joke with the children. Everyone seemed fairly subdued and didn't really respond to his attempts to jolly things up a bit. As they departed the shopkeeper explained that someone had died and the crowd was having a wake. The Maldivian custom is to give a meal to anyone who comes to the house during the mourning period. Pierre wished he had known this beforehand. He had been trying to be friendly and happy and could not understand why everyone was so straight faced.
Eventually they found a suitable hand of bananas and persuaded the owner to part with it. Three hours later the moped returned. This time a hot and dusty Pierre was triumphantly sharing the back seat with a large, precariously balanced hand of bananas. His hunting trophy was transferred to Senta by dinghy and hung in the cockpit for the 350 mile crossing from Gan to the Salamon Atoll in the Chagos Archipelago.
On Monday 1 March, just after lunch the wind changed from light southerly to moderate north westerly, so we weighed anchor (still 65 lbs) and set off southwards. The favourable wind stayed with us until after sunset, when it died and did not return until first light. By 1330, 24 hours after leaving Gan we had only covered 75 miles. This looked like being a slow passage. We had several porpoise visits - always welcome and great fun. The porpoises seemed to be so pleased to see us and came racing in to Senta from afar off to do their criss-cross aquatic ballet on our bow wave. We were moving quite slowly, and the dolphins would look at us as if to say 'Can't you go any faster?'. They would play with Senta for about twenty minutes or so and would then leave as quickly as they had come.
The bearing to our waypoint off Speakers Bank, north of Salamon Atoll was 198 degrees. Because of an east setting current, we had to steer 210 degrees to remain on the layline. We had listened to the tales from other boats of five knot easterly setting currents making it impossible to get to Chagos from Gan. So we made an early 'current allowance' adjustment to our course.
Over the next two days the wind backed from north west to south west and we beat slowly towards Salamon. During the night of the fourth of March we heaved to twice to slow down so that we would not arrive in the dark. At daybreak on Friday 6th we were 7 miles away from the pass. We waited a little longer before proceeding. Pierre had just come off watch and needed sleep. We wanted good eyes and plenty of sunlight to spot the coral bommies inside the atoll. We hoped for a gentle passage from the pass through the Atoll to the island of Boddam on the west side, where we would get shelter from the westerly winds. But Salamon Atoll had a different plan for us.
As we were about to enter the pass a large, black, threatening cloud appeared, and we decided to abort the entry. Within minutes we were in driving rain, nil visibility and 40 to 50 knot winds. We furled the genoa and hove to with the single reef in the main that we had been carrying all night. Suddenly there was a loud bang and the main tore from the leach halfway across the belly of the sail. We took the main down, lashed it and then drifted 3 miles in a north easterly direction away from the pass, under a handkerchief sized jib, waiting for the squall to pass. Which it eventually did leaving no wind and a large sloppy sea. We opened up the full genoa, hoisted the broken main to the second reef, above the damage, and motor sailed back towards the pass. There a second squall sent us back out again. Our third attempt was similarly threatened, but we were running out of daylight. We were fairly confident of the route in through the pass and then to starboard into the lee of Isle Anglaise. We would definitely have to abandon our plan to go all the way to Boddam island. All went well and soon we were at anchor resting, reading, eating a little and then sleeping.
We spoke on the VHF radio to two boats anchored at Boddam, Rolf and Utte on Mariposa and Claire and Humphrey on Brumby. They agreed with us that the weather was not right for a cross lagoon trip through the bommies. Conditions remained overcast, rainy and squally for a further three days before it cleared up enough to move from Isle Anglaise.
It was great to be back at Chagos; no bother with checking in and customs and immigration authorities; plenty of space; clean air and sea; beaches; islands; coconuts; fish. We could feel ourselves winding down into Chagos tempo as the hours went by.
Eventually the weather cleared and we could move across the atoll. Pierre hoisted the spinnaker boom as high as it could go and lashed it to the shrouds at 90 degrees to Senta's length. This was to provide a lookout point from which to spot coral heads and other dangers. We then set off, me at the tiller and Pierre standing on the spinnaker boom. To overcome the need to shout at each other over the noise of the engine, Pierre had the handheld VHF radio. I listened to his directions on the boat's main radio with the volume turned up. After a trouble free trip we anchored towards the south end of Boddam in 12 metres of clear water on a broken coral bottom with no bommies near us.
For the next eleven days we worked on deck in the shade of the awnings repairing the mainsail. All of the stitching was done by hand. We had to remove a batten pocket, repair and patch the sail underneath it and then replace it. Luckily we had some good needles, waxed thread, bradawls, a leather sailmakers palm, plus plenty of pieces of sail cloth for patches. In the late afternoons we would break from work and go ashore to watch the volleyball games and chat to people from the other boats anchored nearby.
On the penultimate day of main fixing there was a hermit crab race and pot luck dinner on shore. All of the cruisers pitched up; Veronique, Simon, Vincent and Camille from Archibald (French); Claire and Humphrey from Brumby (Canadian); Anne and Brian from Crosstown Traffic (American); Maria and Walt from Csa Vargo (South African); Genevieve and Pierre from Inomacas (French); Utte and Rolf from Mariposa (German); Pam and John from Nomme de Plume (New Zealand); Claudia and Ditmar from Quo Vadis (French and German); and of course Faith and Pierre from Senta. The food was wonderful and varied; fish and breadfruit curry; rice; goulash; spaghetti bolognaise; noodle salad; potato salad; heart of palm salad; fish cakes; spinach tart; pizza; puff balls; coconut macaroons and brownies. The feasts produced at pot lucks by the cruising community never ceased to amaze me - even in a location such as Chagos where the nearest shop is 350 miles away at Addu Atoll.
Deja Vu arrived on 23 March and it was great fun catching up on the news from Colin and Glynis. The last time we had seen them was at Patong in Phuket, Thailand on New Years Day.
We anchored quite far offshore to allow plenty of swinging room. Each afternoon we motored in the dinghy to the beach to watch volleyball and chat. We had a limited supply of petrol for the two horsepower outboard motor. The wind was usually from the west in the afternoons, blowing from the beach towards Senta. So I made a square sail for the dinghy from a red tablecloth and hoisted it on two small masts made from branches found on the shore. Thus we could sail back to Senta, halving our fuel consumption.
We anxiously awaited the changeover from westerly to the south easterly tradewinds, which had been known in the past to set in accompanied by strong squalls. In preparation we re-laid our ground tackle, attaching a 35- lb CQR anchor and 12 metres of chain to the head of our 65- lb CQR and then laid this all out to 50 metres of chain. In addition we had a 45-lb Danforth anchor on 50 metres of chain on deck ready to let go if necessary. We did not want to emulate Peter and Tina of Vespera, and be wrecked and marooned at Salamon for 18 months.
We helped Glynis of Deja Vu celebrate her birthday by watching the video of Enza's round the world record breaking voyage and eating half of her present from Colin, a Venezzio chocolate icecream log. It had survived in their freezer since leaving Thailand in early January, but didn't last long once the four of us got stuck in.
Towards the end of March two year old Morgan on the French boat Makaretu, anchored at Isle de Passe, fell ill. He had an infection of the penis and the foreskin, once pulled back, would not close forward over the penis again. His parents believe only in homeopathy and did not carry any antibiotics on board. Simon on Archibald is a vet and his wife Veronique is a pharmacist. So in response to a plea for help from Morgan's mother, they set off across the lagoon to Isle de Passe in their dinghy. They administered antibiotics, both oral and cream and stayed with Morgan until nightfall. For several days the state of Morgan's penis was the main subject of discussion after the volleyball game and diagrams were drawn on the sand to explain the problem. Soon the antibiotics did their work and Morgan was back to his usual smiling self.
Colin and Glynis were beginning to make their mark as champion fishermen, vying with Humphrey and Rolf. They caught several yellow fin tuna over 12 kg and one dog tooth tuna of 30 kg. The steaks from these fish fed everyone in the anchorage for several days and were absolutely delicious braaied on the beach over fires made from coconut husks. Long will I remember eating this extraordinary meal watching the full moon rise over the atoll.
On April Fool's day, Ditmar from the catamaran Quo Vadis tried to disguise his German accent and announced, in not very convincing British tones, that Salamon Atoll had been declared a World Heritage Site. All yachts were required to leave the atoll as soon as possible and re-locate to the nearest safe anchorage at Perhos Banhos, about 30 miles away. For a while there were several very indignant cruisers until they realised the joke.
On Easter Sunday the children had an 'egg' hunt on the beach. The eggs were coconuts that the children had previously painted in bright colours and designs. There were nine children at Salamon and they were having the time of their lives. Not to say that the adults weren't as well!
The days rolled by in paradise; some boat maintenance; chats with friends; trips in the dinghy to other islands and beaches; fishing; reading; book swaps; fish braais; potlucks and hermit crab races. Boats kept arriving, some having easy passages and others, like Hippo's Camp encountering 50 knot winds 100 miles out of Galle. Eventually there were almost 50 boats at Salamon, with five of them from Zululand Yacht Club.
Anticipating the coming trip from Chagos to Madagascar in the boisterous south east trades I made hatch covers for the middle and fore hatches. I hoped they would allow us to keep these hatches open in case of spray coming on board and help to keep Senta cool and airy down below. I used cloth from a piece of an old Yankee that we had cut down to make our working jib. The covers were attached to the deck with Velcro strips along the side and front edges and were held up by the hatches, which open facing aft. We soon found that the covers worked well in rain and they have been on the hatches almost continually since I made them.
One day in the anchorage there was excitement when a few boats spotted a red flare. It seemed to come from outside the atoll. Dinghies went across the fringing reef to try to locate the vessel in distress, but could see nothing. Eventually a cruising boat anchored near the reef owned up to setting off an old flare 'to get rid of it'. A simple message to the fleet via the VHF radio would have saved a lot of bother.
Towards the end of April we went for a dinghy ride with Colin and Glynis to Isle de Passe, about six miles away, where most of the French boats were anchored. The main object of the trip was to buy copies of the 'East African Pilot' from the author, Delwyn McPhunn (Poon) who was staying at Isle de Passe with his friend Sylvie in her boat Gavilan. We saw the Lapa, camp and garden made there by Johan and Ingrid of the South African yacht Nicola during their stay in 1998. There are no rats and hence no mosquitos on Isle de Passe and the island was cooled by the onshore south east wind. The only negative factor is the small area for good anchoring and the proximity of reefs and bommies. Colin and Glynis took the dinghy out through the pass and within an hour were back with two 10kg yellow fin tuna, a kingfish and a coral trout. Most of the fish were left behind for the Isle de Passe residents, as they had not caught fish for some time.
Colin and Glynis were preparing to leave Chagos to sail to Rodriguez, Mauritius and Reunion and thence back to South Africa in August. They tried to persuade us to join them and we considered it. But eventually we decided to continue with our planned voyage to Madagascar, Mayotte and back to South Africa in late October.
Andy from Sara organised a dance and party on Sunset Beach starting at five in the afternoon. Andy played the music on her squashbox. There was square dancing and a great time was had by all. We were tired from all the loafing around in paradise so did not go. The next day when asked where we had been, I replied that we were Calvinists and our religion did not allow us to dance, or even be in the presence of other people who were dancing. I am obviously a good liar, because most people believed me and were quite embarrassed until I laughed.
Pagan arrived with Jerry, Manuella, four year old Jack and two year old Jessica on board. There was a problem with the gearbox from their engine. Investigation and help from the engine experts in the anchorage showed that a new clutch plate was required as the inner workings of the old one had completely fallen apart. This was a problem in such a remote spot. But Gallivant, Christine and Trevor Winer's boat had satellite communications and commercial e-mail. So the part was ordered from the USA and sent via an airforce base to Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Chagos archipelago, about 130 miles from Salamon. From there it was brought to Salamon on board the fisheries patrol vessel, the Pacific Marlin. All within a fortnight.
At the end of April the South Africans organised an afternoon of hermit crab racing. For days yotties scoured the islands looking for fast moving hermits, an oxymoron if ever there was one. The selected crabs were decorated in the racing colours of their owners, and training commenced in earnest. When the day arrived excitement ran high. Everyone inspected the competition. Some abandoned their runners and went quickly in search of new ones, if they thought theirs might be too slow. Claire from Brumby would not show her steed in advance. He was kept secret in a large cardboard box. The track was prepared. The sand on the volleyball court area was levelled and swept clean. A circle about 5 metres in diameter was drawn on the sand and the centre carefully marked. The centre was to be the starting point and the circumference of the circle the winning post. A second circle was drawn a metre outside the inner circle. All spectators and crab handlers had to stand outside this outer circle, to prevent interference with opposition crabs. Entry fees consisted of something small and spare to be given away as prizes. Colin was the starting official. He asked the owners and trainers to put their crabs into a plastic basin, which he then turned upside down on the centre spot. After a minute or so to let the crabs turn themselves the right side up the basin was removed and the crabs scattered in all directions egged on by much shouting from their supporters. Claire's entry was revealed and there were shouts of 'Protest!', 'Call the stewards!', 'That's not fair!', 'He is a coconut crab, not a hermit'. But Claire insisted that her large maroon creature to whose back she had attached a small white shell, did qualify as a hermit crab. The judge's decision was final. I was the judge and had received a substantial bribe from Claire in advance, so the entry was allowed. But all to no avail. The large, lazy coconut crab took after Pooh Bear and was a crab 'of very little brain'. He did not catch on to the game and either wandered aimlessly around inside the circle or sat watching the frenzied activity of the other crabs. By the end of the twelfth and final race of the day, he had got the idea and managed to scramble in third.
As May arrived we started to think about leaving for Madagascar. We would wait until the south east trades were well settled and this could happen in mid May. Crews from many of the boats visited us to find out about Madagascar and the best route to take thereafter to get to South Africa. Some boats were not planning to visit South Africa at all, but wanted to go to Kenya, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. They were afraid of the bad weather and the international media reports of violence in the country. We started up a branch office of SATOUR, and changed many minds. We kept up our pro-South African propaganda for the rest of the year and to our delight many of our new friends took our advice and are now in South Africa, saying how wonderful it is.
As the south east trades started to set in they brought more rain. We used our rain catcher to fill jerry cans We opened the cover for the fresh water tank on deck and built a dam of towels behind it. In this way we built up a good supply of water for the voyage to Madagascar.
We had a wonderful surprise one afternoon when Derek and Jill from Ginseng invited us over to their boat for ice cream. We thought they were teasing us, knowing what ice cream junkies we are. But the invitation was genuine. They have a small ice cream maker which runs off a generator and makes a litre of ice cream in about twenty minutes. What a treat!
On Sunday 9 May there was a birthday extravaganza party. Pierre, from Inomacas and Claire from Brumby were having birthdays. There was a bonfire, live music and lots to eat and drink.
Mid May came and went as we waited for steady south east trades. Life at Salamon continued with boats arriving and departing, some for South East Asia and others for Rodriguez in the southern Indian Ocean. All of the yachts anchored at Perhos Banhos left and came to Salamon, as there is very poor protection from the south east at Perhos. We upped anchor and moved to the sand spit between Takamaka and Fouquet Islands to make final preparations for departure.
We were slowly eating through our food supply and would be short of a few items by the time we reached Madagascar. Luckily we still had a good supply of tins. The last days at Chagos were spent fishing, braaing on the beach and chatting to friends, including many new arrivals; Gitana, C'est Cela, Jemain and Argos being South African boats. The snorkelling at Fouquet island is about the best at Salamon and many happy hours were spent drifting in the clear water watching the fish go about their business in the wonderful coral gardens. The parrot fish were plentiful and large.
A census showed there to be 10 South African, 10 French, 7 American, 4 Canadian, 4 Australian, 4 German, 3 British and 2 New Zealand boats.
Our pre-departure check routine revealed that both our Yankee and Genoa foresails had serious chafe damage on the foot. We spent a day hand stitching a reinforcing patch onto the foot of the Genoa, but left the Yankee for another time when we would have access to a sailmaker.
On the morning of 25 May the first boat from Salamon, Chelsea Morning, left for Madagascar. The winds were now right and we stepped up our preparations; over the side to scrub the bottom and check that everything was OK, especially the connections on the self steering gear; final wash of clothes and linen in the fresh water at the well on Takamaka; baking of bread and cookies for the voyage; foresails rigged; awnings down; dinghy - bottom scrubbed and hoisted onto the foredeck; dodgers and jacklines installed; charts checked; GPS's checked; compass checked; grab bags repacked and checked; every shackle, pin and line checked; mast examined from top to bottom; course determined and written down for leaving the atoll... and many other tasks. All taking time and all absolutely necessary if we were to continue to present Senta's best face to the unforgiving sea.
On the morning of 27 May, now as ready as we knew how to make ourselves, we said goodbye on the VHF radio to all at Salamon, sailed out through the pass and turned left on our way to Madagascar. We were sad to leave after nearly three months of paradise.
Sri Lanka to Maldives January/February 1999
Memories of our land tour through southern and central Sri Lanka were soon dispelled as we worked to repair the damage done to Senta's topsides while we were away. In the crowded harbour of Gable she had been moored fore and aft between two large steel buoys. One of the buoys had detached from its mooring and Senta then lay with her starboard side being chipped at by the sharp steel edge of the buoy. Although she was soon rescued and re-moored by some of the other cruisers in the harbour, we were disappointed by the nasty chip and scratch marks on the beautiful new paint job she had been given in Thailand. We worked from the dinghy, floating in the dirty water of the harbour and the clinging heat, sanding, filling and painting. We were entertained by commentary on the cricket matches being played by Sri Lanka in a tri-nations series. The broadcast was transmitted to the whole harbour over large loudspeakers attached to the walls of some of the dockside storage sheds. The English language commentary was easy to follow, but when they switched to the Sri Lankan broadcast, we had to deduce what was happening by the excitement or despondency of the commentator.
We soon forgot the baby elephants at the orphanage near Kegalle; strange meals eaten at odd hours in small dinghy sidewalk stores; miles driven through rice paddies; forests, jungle, tea plantations; and mountains over appalling pot holes; the Sigiriya Rock Citadel that we had driven to but refused to visit because of the thousands of steps to the top and the US$15 fee per person.; the Buddhist temple at the top of the hill where we were drenched by a welcome rain shower; the frenzied, exciting, colourful, energetic and acrobatic dance performance at Kandy; the Sunday morning stroll through the botanical gardens that Pierre called a "true temple" - a serene paradise of beautiful flowers, shrubs and green lawns, inhabited by butterflies and birds; the fresh cool mountain air at Nurawa Eliya with its abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables; and lastly the long drive back to Galle with views of waterfalls, lakes and mountains, through the Ella Gap.
We launched into a hectic, hot job of shopping and provisioning an the dirty, dusty, poverty-stricken town of Galle. Our final parting from Sri Lanka was soured by an argument with customs officials who refused to let our taxi load of groceries past the security gate into the harbour unless we paid a bribe. This under a large official sign that proclaimed bribery as a criminal offence subject prosecution ! We refused to pay the bribe and had to carry our provisions in many, hot, tiring trips from the harbour gate, a half a kilometre to the jetty. The next day, prompted by the supplier of the larger portion of our purchases, I wrote a letter of complaint to the Minister of Tourism. The letter was to be faxed to the ministry in Colombo as soon as Senta had cleared out of Galle. Obviously the supplier was concerned about possible trouble with customs if they heard about the complaint before we left.
On Friday 29 January we sailed out of Galle after having been cleared out by the Navy at 07h30. Our stay had been interesting, but we had tired of squalor and the nightly serenade of depth charges dropped by the navy in the harbour to scare off the Tamil Tiger frogmen. We were pleased to be on our way, next stop Uligamu (pronounced Ooligum) at the northern tip of the Maldives - about 500 miles away to the west. The main shipping route from the east to the Red Sea passes close to the south of Sri Lanka, and our first few days and nights were spent dodging ships, including some unlit navy vessels on manoeuvres. At times we had very little wind - "pathetic" Pierre called it. "Worse than the Vaal Dam on a bad day". On one frustrating day we only managed a 24 hour run of 69 miles. Strong currents, firstly south setting and then changing to north easterly, caused us to have to steer on a substantially different heading to the direction we were actually making - sometimes up to 45 degree differences. We eventually gave up trying to battle the currents and lack of wind, and motored the last 13 hours to arrive at Uligamu at 16h00 on Wednesday 3 February. There we found 17 other yachts at anchor, a lot of whom we had met in Sri Lanka. They had all motored most of the way, encountering and "crabbing" across the same currents that had plagued us. Uligamu is beautiful; the firs of many idyllic Maldives islands we were to see in the coming month. Jewel-like with their emerald green foliage and opal white beaches set in a turquoise sea. It is much less civilised than we had expected. A small, neat, clean village of reed huts lining white sand streets, under tall shady trees. Within a few hours of arrival the "coast guard" came to Senta for a security check and we were then free to relax in the cockpit with tea and a supper of salad while we watched the sunset. Our first feelings were of amazement at the contrast between filthy dirty Galle and spotlessly clean Uligamu.
The next four days were spent swimming, walking ashore, fishing, resting, reading, and visiting some of the other boats. They were all on their way to the Red Sea via Oman, and Uligamu would be their only taste of the Maldives. On Saturday evening the locals held a beach BBQ to which the yachties were invited. Some people were paying US$5 per head to be fed, but the majority of us brought food from our boats to add to the local dishes laid out on the beach on banana leaves and palm fronds. We supplied a potato salad and a Red Snapper Pierre had caught that afternoon. Braaied whole it was delicious.
On Monday 8th March we left Uligamu at first light to run down the Ihavandhippolu atoll and then across Gallandhoo channel into North Thilandhunmathee atoll. Quite a mouthful, these Maldivian names ! Rain showers and wind from the north east gave us a comfortable broad reach to Keylakuna Island where we anchored in 35 metres of water. This was the first deep anchorage, of which we were expecting many in the Maldives, and we used our especially prepared ground tackle - a 23lb CQR anchor, 12 metres of chain and 100 metres of nylon warp. It worked well but we sat anchor watch, 3 hours on and 3 hours off, because we were anxious with our nearness to the surf, beach and reef. The next day saw a 40 mile sail southwards, mostly under spinnaker, to anchor at Dholhiyadhoo Island. We passed a series of green islands sit in an indigo, sapphire and turquoise sea, and trimmed with white lace where the surf broke on the reefs. The anchorage was on a circular rim of shallow water to the south of a boomerang shaped island, well protected from the north and not at all rolly. We had a good nights rest and eagerly pressed on the next morning. There was so little wind we motor-sailed out of the atoll, across Baraveli Channel, into Faadhippolhu atoll and anchored off the resort island of Kareedhoo in 6 metres on white sand in crystal clear water. Two red and white sea planes were anchored nearby. On the beach we saw a few Hobie-cats and sailboards. The resort guests were swimming, snorkelling and sailing. There were no motor boats, water skiers, parasails, jet skis or wet bikes - absolute bliss. We stayed at Kareedhoo a further day planning routes down the atolls. There was plenty to watch from the cockpit; sea planes taking off and landing, local dive boats and passenger ferries, gaily painted with long tillers and bowpieces, attractive and un-noisy, a welcome change from the Thai longtails. Snorkelling was delightful, ultra clear water with lots of fish, big and small; parrots, angels and large orange ones with black dots and lacy fins.
Two more days of wonderful sailing took us down the Faadhippolhu atoll, out across the channel, past Gaafaru atoll and into the North Male atoll. The wind was good and we arrived to early at our planned anchorage, so we continued southwards to a shallow spot marked on the chart. By 16h00 we were in the correct place according to the chart and GPS, but search as we might, we could not find it. the water was very deep, 50 - 60 metres and more. We could not anchor, there were many reefs around us and the sun was setting. We decided to sail out to sea through a nearby pass, rather than stay in the atoll, bouncing around among reefs in the darkness. Luckily, as we neared the Ashdoo Kandu pass from the north west we found a depth of 31 metres and anchored in the lee of the outer reef of the atoll. The wind blew from the north east at 20 knots all night, and we sat anchor watches, checking our GPS position, water depth and anchor warp tension every 30 minutes. we were worried that our nylon rope might be sawn through by some nasty sharp coral teeth. Already tired from a more than 50 mile sail, the interrupted sleep ensured that two bleary eyed cruisers emerged at daybreak to plot a series of waypoints to take us to the Club Med lagoon at Male. One of the legs of the route took us directly over a 1.5 metre reef which was out of its position according to the chart. But the sun was up and we could see it and take avoiding action. We shuddered to think that if we had attempted to move down the atoll the previous night relying on GPS and charts, we would have grounded Senta on the reef. We had made the right decision in staying where we were. Some more spinnaker work brought us to anchor at Club Med, near the Male airport at lunchtime. We were now 174 miles from Uligamu, having one this in 6 stages of day sailing at an average of just under 30 miles per day - all except 5 of which were completely under sail. We had expected little or no wind and had been pleasantly surprised.
We had to go to Male to check in. The anchorage in the open roadstead is very deep (45 metres) and can get rough. We considered catching a dhoni ride (sort of a ferry) from Club Med, but the price was US$20 per person, for a distance of 4 miles ! So we took Senta to Male Town and did our anchoring calisthenics - puff puff - ouch - aching backs. We cleared in a shopped for a few provisions and gifts. Everything was very expensive - SA prices + 50% and more. The customs official told us that everyone in Male was rich from the money made from tourism. We knew what he meant the following day when we sailed across the Vaahdoo Channel to the resort at Velassaru Island in South Male atoll. A snack of a hamburger and coke each, sitting next to the swimming pool, cost us US$26 - about R150 ! We ate and drank very slowly, savouring every morsel and sip. The resort blended well into the typical Maldivian scene of white beaches and turquoise sea. Chalets set back into bush, potted bougainvillaea of many colours and well tended gardens - but an island prison nevertheless. Probably pleasant if it is only for a week and the alternative is the European winter. Another bout of deep water anchoring had to be endured a few days later as we went back to Male to check out, a complicated rigmarole, which had been explained to us by the friendly customs man when we checked in. For those readers who might be interested (especially ZLYC members) this is what you have to do. Others can skip to ***:
Go to the novelty book store and buy a pink form called "Port State Control". It i in the Maldivian language and you will not be able to complete it. There is no English or other language version. But help is available. Take this pink form, and the blue form, which you should have been given by customs at check-in, to the Ministry of Transport. They will help you fill in the pink form, relieve you of Rp200, complete and give you the stamped customs form. Now downstairs to Immigration to have your passports stamped. Then across town to Port Health Control. After that to the Port Authority-Cargo Operations to pay your port dues. A local agent, FIFO, will do all the check-in and check-out process for a fee of US$90, plus all other charges. They try to tell yachts that it is compulsory to use their services, but this is not true.
*** Charts of the atolls south of Male showed them to be potentially more hazardous to navigate, with few visible islands, but many reefs, rocks and bombies. By now we were bored with island hopping and reef dodging so we elected to sail outside the atolls down to the most southerly of the archipelago, Addu. After leaving Male island with its silhouette of tall buildings rising out of the sea, we sailed southwards outside the west side of South Male atoll. Daylight gave way to a terrible night of rain squalls with their short bursts of wind from all directions, followed by no wind and lumpy seas. From midnight we were becalmed for 5.5 hours before first light brought a fresh south easterly. We beat into this until midday when the wind shut off and we sat becalmed in excruciating heat, being washed by the current down a channel we didn't want to go down. Eventually, in the late afternoon, an easterly wind helped us reach up over the east side of Kolhumadulu atoll and down into Veymandoo Channel. The good wind lasted all night as we sailed down the west side of Hadhahunmathee atoll and the rising sun saw us reaching across "One and a half degree" Channel. In patchy wind, assisted by a S.W. setting current, Senta took the rest of the day and night to cross the 65 mile wide channel and reach down the west side of Huvadhoo atoll, visited several times by dolphins. After Huvadhoo atoll, we crossed the Equatorial Channel in typical doldrum weather; frustrating calms and rain squalls bringing gusts of wind, changing directions by 180 degrees in seconds. One rain shower brought us 2 hours of heavy rain. We filled our buckets and stripped to shower in the welcome fresh water. With the equator now behind us, we arrived in the vicinity of Addu atoll with 7 hours to go to daylight. So we hove to set off again when we could see properly and arrived at Gan harbour at 15h30 on Thursday 25th February.
We had traversed the Maldives from top to bottom in just over 3 weeks and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. At Gan we prepared for our next leg to Chagos by filling up with water, LP gas and petrol for the 2hp outboard, and buying a large hand of bananas. We packed away our deep water anchoring gear, hoping not to use it again for a while. We were soon ready to leave and on Monday morning, 1st March we set off to sail southwards 300 miles to Chagos archipelago for our second visit. As we left we though of everyone back in South Africa, getting ready for another in the salt mines and rat race. We wished that, instead, you could be with us - and we carried you all in our thoughts.
Thailand and Sri Lanka November 1998 to January 1999
In mid November 1998 I returned to Langkawi in Malaysia after a 5 week visit home to South Africa. It has been wonderful to see relations and friends, especially Angela, our 13 month old granddaughter whom I have not seen before. It was sad to leave everyone behind, but good to rejoin Pierre and all of our cruising friends at Rebak Marina. I found that Pierre had been busy, and, in spite of an injury to his back, had completed a long list of maintenance work, including having our life-raft serviced. Senta had been surveyed (for insurance purposes) and passed with flying colours. However, during the survey, Pierre discovered that our spare GPS (a Magellan) was not working. It seemed to have lost its marbles and kept flashing nonsense all over the screen. So we ordered a new one, another Garmin from West Marine in the USA, and true to form, it was delivered to us within a week. The price, including air freight, was about 2/3 of what we would have had to pay for it in South Africa.
During the last 2 weeks in November we experienced raining, squally weather and for several days Rebak Island was cut off from the main island of Langkawi. There were several small boat warnings and the ferries did not run. Although the weather was poor it was nothing like that off the SA coast and wave height only reached 1.5 to 2 metres. We finally made our decision about where to go next. The plan is Thailand in December, Sri Lanka in January, Maldives in February, March to August at Chagos and then another decision - Westwards to Madagascar and the African coast, probably Kenya; or back East again to Malaysia.
After provisioning and a final few games of bridge, we left Rebak Marina on 1 December to a send off from many of our friends, including Colin and Glynis Craig of De'ja vu (Zululand Yacht Club) who had sailed into Rebak the evening before. We motored and then sailed to the Butang Islands where, the following day, Pierre caught a great big fish by letting our small purple octopus lure stream behind Senta in the tidal current. There was great excitement, skinning and filleting and the meat lasted for four meals. Two days later we were on our way again, reaching Rok Nok island in a 20 knot rain squall, to find Tri-Chum, a Zululand Yacht Club trimaran, with Roy, Nikki and her mother on board. They fetched us in their dinghy, as we were too lazy to launch ours, and spent several enjoyable hours chatting and updating each other on our adventures, as the daylight faded and night came on. The next day Rok Nok was invaded; a cruise ship dumped hundreds of tourists on the beach - and two Thai navy warships anchored. The trip from Rok Nok to Phi Phi Don was the best sailing we have had so far in these waters. Senta fetched on starboard in a 12 to 18 knot north easterly wind covering the 35 miles in 5 hours. We had a wonderful time, having almost forgotten what fun sailing can be. The wind was still blowing the next day so we upped anchor and ran to Ao Chalong at Phuket, under spinnaker in 4.5 hours, eventually surfing in over the bar at the entrance to the bay. Wow ! Another excellent sail. We could not clear into Thailand the next day, as it was the Kings birthday, so we loafed around, our second favourite occupation. The weather was pleasantly cool, quite unlike the previous December when we had found the heat almost unbearable. After going through the lengthy check in process the following day, we ran Senta around the Southern tip of Phuket to Kata Beach on the west coast. The racing fleet taking part in the Kings Cup regatta were sailing from Kata to Phi Phi Don and we encountered a few of them on the way. We remained at anchor at Kata the next day to watch the racing fleet return, and by the end of the day there were more than 70 yachts in the bay.
We left the following day on the first leg of our planned cruise up the west coast of Thailand to the Similan Islands and Surin Island a few kilometres south of the Burmese border (Burma is now called Myanmar). We beat northwards all day finally anchoring well north of Sarasin Bridge near Thai Moang where we spent a very uncomfortable night rolling in the swell to seaward of the breakers. We left at 05h00 the next morning and broad reached in the NE wind across to the northernmost of the Similan Islands, Ko Bangu, where we picked up a buoy laid by the marine conservation authorities. There we were joined by several dive boats, a cruise ship and a large ferry, all sheltering from the strong wind that had started to blow. Two days later the wind lessened and we reached south to Ko Miang where we picked up a buoy in the lee of a small reef and group of islands in the clearest water we have seen in Thailand. Many Thai navy ships were anchored in the gap between Ko Miang and the island further south, or were tied up to the other buoys near us. I did some snorkelling, the first for long while and found the water to be beautifully clear with lots of multi coloured fish, but no coral, only granite rocks and white sand. In the afternoon we took the dinghy to a beach backed by shady trees and covered with fine soft white sand. A group of young Thai people were pulling and pushing a heavy longtail boat up the beach on wooden log rollers. Pierre helped and I watched. The next day we lazed at anchor all day and at 17h00 set off to sail the 50 miles to Surin Island, planning to arrive at first light. At first the wind was perfect. ENE 15 knots allowing us to fetch towards Surin on starboard tack. During the night the wind gradually increased to a screaming gale we estimated to be 40 knots. Our wind charged made a noise like several rockets taking off as it whirled around in the wind. We reduced sail until eventually we were beating at 60 degrees into the wind with no mainsail and a storm jib piece of our roller furled headsail. Not the most efficient sail but Senta crashed her way to weather at 5 knots, making it very uncomfortable and wet for her crew. First light showed Surin Island dead ahead and by 08h30 we were snugly anchored in a sheltered bay near the marine park headquarters between Ko Surin Nua and Ko Surin Tai, in company with the Thai navy again ! We were both very tired, neither of us having slept at all the previous night. So we relaxed in the cockpit admiring the scenery. Several inflatable dinghies full of snorkellers passed by and shouted to us "Hello and welcome to Thailand !". An official forestry vessel came up and gave us a large bag of small squid in exchange for a packet of Oreo's. We didn't know how to cook the squid so we used them for bait for a while, with no success, and then threw them away when they started to stink. During the day the bay was peaceful with only Senta at anchor and a police boat tied to a nearby mooring. But as the sun began to set the fishing fleet moved into the bay to raft up to other boats which had come from the mainland to collect the catch. Buckets full of fish were passed across from boat to boat as the fishing boats rose higher out of the water and the boats from the mainland sank lower and lower. By first light in the morning, most of the boats were gone, the fishing boats out to sea and the other boats back to civilization to sell the catch. We heard the BBC reports of the USA/UK air strikes on Iraq and were glad that we were sailing under the South African flag and not the Stars and Stripes or Union Jack in this Muslim part of the world. Tired of the fishing boat activity we motored around to the next bay further north where we tied up to one of the red buoys laid by the conservation authorities. We were on the edge of the coral reef in 11 meters of water. Pretty soon the tide went out, the wind started to blow onshore, and we were now in 2.5 metres floating just above a large coral bommie. So we dropped the mooring and returned to the "fish market" bay. At 07h30 the next morning, while lazing in our bunks and drinking our usual early morning mug of Milo we heard a hail "Senta !". We rushed on deck to find Mariposa, with Rolf and Utte on board, motoring in. They had left Patong the previous morning and motored all the way as there was no wind ! A lazy day at anchor for us again, as we watched the sea gypsies come by on the way to a bay south of us to reef walk at low tide. Their boats are long and narrow, made of wood and have little thatched cabins amidships. The sea gypsies live on these boats for a lot of the time, only going ashore to stay in primitive villages during bad weather. Several items of maintenance were done during this time including: hand stitching the seams in the cockpit bimini cover, which had split in the strong wind coming in to Surin; replacing the anchor light bulb - which involved a trip to the top of the mast for Pierre; and patching up a section of anti fouling paint which had blistered off the starboard bow.
Christmas was now only 5 days off and we decided to stay at Surin until after the festivities. We had to pay a mooring fee of 380 baht (R50). This was collect by a young Englishman from the VOS (Voluntary Overseas Service) doing a stint with the Royal Thai Forestry Service. He had only been at Surin for 2 weeks and had a year and 50 weeks to go. Lucky him ! We went with Rolf and Utte in their dinghy to the park headquarters for lunch. There we saw, anchored in the bay, a 4 masted sailing ship, the "Andaman Princess". Several tourists from the ship were roaming around the park HQ. We ate a good lunch of Thai food at the open air restaurant, watched by a beautiful "clown-face" monkey. He sometimes ventured down off his perch on the roof to steal food from neighbouring tables, but was quickly chased away by the staff. The fishing boats again came a'marketing that night and by the next day we were fed up with the hustle, noise, smell, smoke and pollution of the water with oil and plastic bags. So we upped anchor and moved again to the lovely peaceful bay to the north. Mariposa joined us. This time we didn't tie up to a buoy, but anchored on sand in 15 meters, a way off the fringing reef. A dinghy trip to and walk on the beach yielded a long section of thick bamboo which we gave to Rolf to make ashtrays, and a small black fender for our dinghy. Then back to Senta to swim over the side and clean her topsides, followed by an hour of snorkelling in the clear water, good coral gardens and lovely fish. Utte says she saw a shark and she and I wanted to get out of the water, but Rolf persuaded us that the shark, if there was one, was probably in India by now, being more scared of us than we of him. Surin is a wonderful peaceful place, indescribably beautiful, thick evergreen rain forest right down to the high water line, beaches that can be visited at mid tide, newly washed by the clear water, bird and monkey cries, gentle climate, not too hot and with cooling breezes. We could stay a long time, but unfortunately our visa for Thailand expired on 8 January and we would have to leave Surin soon after Christmas. Rolf caught a fish trolling from his dinghy and we had a lunchtime fish braai on the beach. Mouth watering delicious fish, potato salad, rice salad, and pancakes. A peaceful, shady meal under beautiful spreading trees, with a spectacular view of the bay across the light blue and green shallow water over the reef. The beach under foot was soft, white talcum powder. We left Mariposa in this northeast bay as they were due to leave from here for Sri Lanka and we sailed around the north of Surin Tai to a bay on the south east corner. There we had to anchor in deep water - over 35 metres. We did not use our 65 lb CQR and 10mm chain as we would not have been able to lift the weight again. Instead we rigged a 45lb Danforth with 12 meters of chain and 100 meters of warp. This worked well and we will probably use this ground tackle in the Maldives where the anchorages are very deep. We spent a quiet Christmas day at this anchorage accompanied by one dive boat and one fishing boat. In the evening Pierre made a special Christmas dinner of ham, fruit cocktail, creamed mushrooms, carrots and peas in mayonnaise. All from tins but delicious all the same. And there was enough left over for another similar meal the following day.
On boxing day we reluctantly left Surin and motored, drifted and sailed for 24 hours to anchor at Ao Bang Tao of the west coast of Phuket. After a days rest we filled up with diesel and water from a barge anchored in the bay and then motored/ sailed south to Patong under genoa and sunshades. We were trolling as usual without much hope or enthusiasm when inside Patong bay, we unexpectedly caught a big Barracuda. This yielded 3 kilograms of fish steaks, so we ate like kings again. For 3 days before new year's eve we watched yachts arrive. Patong in THE place to be on new year's eve. Colin and Glynis arrived and we had a long chat with them. On new year's eve, Pierre as usual went to bed early, but I stayed up and woke him to see the famous firework display with which Patong welcomes the new year. It is deservedly renowned with 15 minutes of continual bursts of light and colour along the water front. A sight really worth seeing. New year's day was spent resting, doing some last minute provision shopping and attending a braai on board de ja vu. Noel and Sandy from Storm, a Richard Bay catamaran were also there. The weather was unkind and a squall and torrential turned the braai into a "fry". But enjoyable nonetheless. We stayed at Patong until 5 January watching the vast fleet of yachts that had gathered (>100) slowly dissipate.
Having gone to Ao Chalong by Tuk Tuk on 4th to check out we set sail for Sri Lanka on 5th and ran westwards all day under spinnaker, only taking it in at sunset. Winds were light for the first 24 hours and we only covered 89 miles. This light wind continued for 3 days, slowly increasing so that our 2nd and 3rd days runs were 100 and 110 miles, mostly under spinnaker. On the 3rd day Pierre noticed the engine water intake pump leaking, so he serviced it, replacing the seals. This cured the leak. While this was going on I sailed Senta through a pod a spouting whales. There were about 20 of them and I steered a slalom course carefully through them. One whale raised his tale, then his head and chest. The pointed and white bib looked like a killer whale (Orca) to me. I told Pierre this and he muttered from deep in the engine "Oh no ! Those are dangerous !" I willed Senta quickly and quietly away from the large creatures, heaving a big sigh of relief when I could no longer see any tell tale water spouts. We sailed past the Nicobar Islands by way of the Sombrero channel at the end of the 3rd 24 hour period. Thereafter the wind increased and we started to make real progress. We had clear skies, night and day, with the waning moon rising later each night extending the periods of really dark night until on the last night we almost no moon. Our days runs continued to improve - 134, 129, 147, 156, 157 miles and then - 8 days and 8 hours after leaving Patong we anchored in the outer harbour at Galle, Sri Lanka. An excellent passage - fast, uneventful, pleasant and satisfying. After a good nights rest we were inspected by the Sri Lankan navy and allowed into the inner harbour, we were met by Rolf and Utte from Mariposa, who helped us to tie for and aft to 2 buoys. The day was spent clearing in via the agent Don Windsor and then preparing Senta to be left to her own devices while we joined Rolf and Utte on a 4 day inland tour or Sri Lanka. We were to be joined by a young Swiss couple, Suzi and Jannie from the yacht Isola. The next morning we set off in a dark blue hiace with our driver Asanta. We drove slowly NW up the coast road towards Colombo and branched off to travel inland to the elephant orphanage near Kegalle. Here, baby elephants, orphaned for various reasons are cared for by the nature conservation authorities, until they are old enough to be sent to work or returned to the wild. Being a long weekend, the place was crowded with local visitors. The baby elephants are fed milk by bottle at midday in a large pavilion. The crowds watching were lined around the area three deep, all jabbering and shouting. I felt confused and unhappy and the babys were also very distressed, trumpeting for their food and upset by the crowds. I watched as one of the babys was 16 x 2 litre bottles of milk. I got tired of watching and walked away so I am not sure how much he drank in total. Away from the feeding area there were herds of adolescent elephants grazing on lush green grass amidst tall palm trees. A lot more peaceful. Adult elephants were working in the park, moving logs and clearing away rubbish. Lunch way a mediocre affair at a "restaurant" where the rip off artist owner tried to charge us 5 times what the meal was worth. But Utte sorted him out, refusing to pay anything more than a reasonable price. More driving over pot-holed roads through rice paddies, jungle and forest brought us to the Innamaluwa Inn, our first nights stop. On the way we had stopped to but 2 large clay pots of curd/yoghurt. These made a delicious supper for the 6 of us and then it was early to bed after a long day. The accommodation at the inn and our subsequent stop overs was very basic, but clean. A fan in the room and shower/loo "en-suite" cost R85 per couple. The next day we drove to Sigiriya, and ancient city built on top of an enormous flat rock/hill. This is apparently a world famous tourist attraction. But we looked at the price US$15 per person, and the thousands of steps to climb to the top and decided to skip it out. We looked at the rocky citadel from afar, examined the postcards and left. A short drive brought us to Dumballa where a fairly stiff climb brought us to a Buddhist temple built into the rock at the top of the hill. We were tired, hot and dusty but were refreshed and washed by a heavy rain shower as we walked down the hill to our waiting driver. At our lunchtime stop at Malale, Jannie persuaded us to try one of the many small cafe/bakeries. A tiny little shop, almost a hole in the wall, selling bread, cheap sweets and colddrinks. But walk through the shop and you will find a room with tables and chairs where the locals eat. Ignore the dirt, dark, flies and table napkins made from square of newspaper. The food is good; a large bowl of rice and many side dishes of vegetables and fish, the people were friendly and the price cheap - R27 for all 6 of us to eat and drink. During our afternoon drive we stopped at a wood carving factory and a spice garden. There a knowledgable young man, fluent in English, German, Italian and our course Singhalese, told us about all the different herbs and spices as we wandered through the gardens. Among the information he gave us, was the fact that there are 48 different types of banana growing in Sri Lanka. That night was spent at the Lake View Guest House in Kandy, where, as in the John Cleese sketch of the hotel in Torquay, you could see a tiny corner of the lake if you lean really far out of the window. Early in the evening we went to a performance of Sri Lankan dancers given by the Kandy Club Dance Ensemble; vivid costumes in red, green, gold, silver - energetic acrobatic dancing, exciting rhythmic music, professional choreography ending with a firewalk over red hot coals. A wonderful experience, shared with hundreds of other tourists. After an excellent dinner at a Chinese restaurant recommended by Asanta we retired for the night, happy after a successful, enjoyable day. We were beginning to form our impressions of Sri Lanka; gentle, friendly people - but desperately poor; houses very basic, almost slum-like; lots of dirt and litter in the streets; roads in shocking condition with pot holes, broken verges and extremely narrow; almost no private transport like cars or motor bikes - only buses, mini buses and Tuk tubs (3 wheeled taxis). Fresh produce is plentiful and road side stalls sell all types of fruit and vegetables as well as the large clay pots of yoghurt. At the start of the next day Asanta took us to a temple. We all refused to go in because we would have had to cover our knees with long trousers or skirts. Also it was one temple too many ! So we went instead to the Kandy Botanical Gardens which Pierre called a "true temple". A serene paradise of beautiful flowers, plants, shrubs, trees and lawns. We spent several hours there and could have stayed longer, but the mountains beckoned. We drove onwards and upwards over narrow, winding, atrocious roads, through hills and hills of tea plantations, stopping at a tea factory where we drank delicious real "Ceylon" tea. A stop at a view site was spoiled by pestering children begging for sweets, pens, money and trying to force us to buy their bananas. Asanta explained this bad behaviour: "These are Tamil people", very scornfully. We stopped for the night at the Victoria Inn in Nurawa Eliye, 6500 feet up in the mountains; 430 kilometres from Galle. A long drive back the next day. The roads were even worse with giant pot holes and wash aways. Road repair was being done by hand, and not very well. Our driver, Asanta, said a prayer over the steering wheel every time we set off. A good idea in view of the state of the roads. The last day was spent driving down the mountains, past waterfalls, stalls selling vegetables and flowers and very poor, dirty, run down towns. We then headed for the coast back to Galle. The total distance covered in 4 days was 862 kms and the total cost of the tour including mini bus hire, hotels, food, pocket money etc was R875. Well worth it and very interesting. Unfortunately, when we arrived back at the harbour, we found that one of the buoys to which Senta had been tied had broken its chain. Senta had dragged, bumped into the buoy, now floating free and damaged her newly painted top sides. But she had been rescued and re-moored by people from a yacht called "Lionheart". We were very grateful because the damage could have been much worse. In fact, now, after several days of painting, filling and sanding Senta looks much better. We will now spend a few more weeks exploring Galle, stocking up on Fresh vegetables and fruit, perhaps a train trip to Colombo, and then off again - this time to the Maldives.
Langkawi, Malaysia and Thailand October 1998
No, we haven't got lost or sailed off the edge of the world. Ingrid has rapped my knuckles, told me that my last newsletter was in February, to stop being lazy and to start writing. So here goes.
February
We planned a cruise down the Malacca Straits to Singapore and then over the top of Borneo, Irian Jaya (part of Indonesia) and Papua New Guinea to Australia - or Oz - as it is known in this part of the world. We scrounged and borrowed close on 150 charts, had them copied, and spent 3 weeks cataloguing them and checking that we had the whole cruise covered. We then decided not to go! Contributing factors to this decision were the lack of wind in the area, the simmering Indonesian political situation and reports of pirate activity and attacks on some yachts north of Papua/New Guinea. But the most significant factor was the lack of wind. We would have had to motor for a considerable part of the way - and we HATE motoring. So we decided to stay in the Malaysia/Thailand area until the next NE monsoon starting in November, and then decide whether to carry on eastward to Borneo, PNG and OZ, or whether to make our way back across the Indian ocean visiting Sri Lanka and the Maldives which we had left out on our voyage eastward.
March
The first two weeks of March were spent doing a leisurely circumnavigation of Langkawi Island, and its attendant, more than 40 other small islands - a total distance of about 80 nautical miles. We found good anchorages opposite luxury hotels on the north coast at Pantai Kok, Datai Bay and at Kemarong Point. We were accompanied some of the way by Canadians Doreen and Mike on their yacht St Leger. Mike is a retired Canadian Mountie. It is interesting that on a fairly large percentage of the American and Canadian boats that we have met, the male part of the crew is a retired policeman or defence force officer. The reason is that after 25 years of service, not matter what age the have reached, they retire on full pay, inflation linked and with free medical treatment anywhere where there is a US defence force base. So for them cruising is definitely an affordable life style, especially with the currently strong US $.
The beach hotels round Langkawi are beautifully designed, blending easily into the surrounding landscape, and are of a high international standard - 4 to 5 star South African equivalent. But they have some big problems with the sea. Firstly, no waves, so no surfing or picturesque crashing of water on rocks or sea-shore. Then there is garbage pollution. The sea abounds with cast away flip flops, other types of shoes and every sort of plastic container imaginable. Each high tide deposits an unsightly mess on the beach in front of the hotels. At Kemarong point the hotel sent out a tractor each morning at first light, towing a beach sweeping/vacuuming device to clean up the water front before the hotel guests arose. On the north east corner of Langkawi we went into 'Hole in the Wall', a narrow entrance through high cliffs into a sheltered mangrove lined river. A perfect hurricane shelter - except you don't have hurricanes here. We found it to be very hot and breathless and mosquito plagued, especially at night. So we left the next morning and sailed south to spend 2 days at Charong island before moving on to anchor in Bass harbour at Kuah, the main town on Langkawi. The name Langkawi means brown eagle and a significant feature on the waterfront is an enormous concrete eagle, painted to mimic the colours of the many hundreds of brown fish eagles that soar over the mountains, islands and sea of Langkawi. Many of the sailing instructions and notes from other yachts say to 'anchor underneath the eagle' - so we did.
During the second half of March we sailed to Penang, a busy commercial island port about 8 miles off the mainland of Malaysia, 70 miles south of Langkawi. We put in an overnight stop at the marine park on Pulau Payer - Pulau means island in Malay. Instead of anchoring we tied up to one of the steel boys provided by the marine nature preservation authorities. We don't really like to do this as you can never be sure of the condition of the mooring block, chains and shackles, but we had no choice, as otherwise we would be anchoring on coral, which is not good from a holding point of view, and it also kills the coral. Our sleep was interrupted twice at the change of tide as Senta rode up to and started banging holes in her topsides on the heavy steel buoy. At Penang we anchored just past the yacht club and ferry terminal a couple of hundred meters offshore from a Chinese stilt village, consisting of ramshackle wooden dwellings built on wooden platforms supported on stilts over the tidal mud flats. There is no convenient dinghy landing spot and the tidal currents run very strongly, so we used the services of a local sampan to get to and from the shore. A South African couple Johan and Ingrid on 'Nicola', whom we had previously met in Chagos, were also anchored there and on our first trip ashore, they showed us around Georgetown, the business centre of Penang. And what business! Every little nook and cranny housed an active entrepreneur selling something: take away foods, jewellery, watches, engine spares, flowers, cosmetics, computers and peripherals, CD and tape players, radios, clothing, pirate CD's - anything you can think of. And the tiny shops stayed open till late at night. We spent a week in Penang sight seeing at museums, churches, temples, mosques, art gallery and just strolling through the town watching the people and tourists go about their business. A highlight was a ride up Penang hill behind Georgetown in a combination cable/railway train, called a 'mountain railway'. The track is so steep, about 30 degrees, that the railway cars are built at an angle so that it is possible to sit or stand upright in them. The trip, to nearly 800 meters above sea level, took over half an hour, but it was worth it for the fresh, clean, cool air and a view only slightly spoiled by the haze.
The trip back to Langkawi was unusual in that we were able to sail most of the way, doing 70 miles in 17 hours in light winds and 6 hours of a counter current. After checking in at Kuah we sailed to the Fresh Water Lake, where we anchored in a sheltered cove near a ketch flying the South African flag. We rowed over in the dinghy to visit, say 'hello' and also to tell them that their SA flag was flying upside down - an international signal for a vessel in distress ! The boat was 'Spirit of Adventure' sailed by Richard and Jean from Durban. They had left SA in July 1997, arrived in Thailand in September 1997 and plan to stay here a long, long time - maybe forever. On the way back to Rebak Marina we stopped for a few days at Pantai Tengah where we went ashore to visit Underwater World, a first class sea and fresh water aquarium. In the shark section the viewing walkway has tanks on either side and overhead, so it is quite scary standing there with large sharks swimming all around you.
April/May
Early April was spent loafing around Rebak and preparing for our second trip to Thailand, which was done in short hops, stopping at Butang, Rok Nok and Phi Phi Don islands. At Rok Nok Pierre developed an infected throat that got rapidly worse, so that by the time we reached Phi Phi he could not swallow any liquids or antibiotic tablets. I was considering ways and means of getting him on to a ferry to Phuket and into hospital, but he said to wait a while and after being really ill for 4 days he slowly started to recover. The last week in April and 3 weeks in May were spent at anchor in and around Phuket, shopping, walking ashore and chatting with friends. We met up again with Barry, Robyn and their young son William, whom we had previously seen at Rebak. They were boat sitting a trimaran, 'Lizard of Oz' for a friend of theirs and hence getting a free 3 month holiday in Thailand. Part of the deal was that Barry and Robyn had to clean and antifoul the Lizard's bottom. We spent one enjoyable (?) afternoon on the beach at Ao Chalong helping them with the antifouling. We had cleverly stayed far away during the scrubbing, scraping and cleaning phases. It was the end of the dry season and everything was dry, dusty and dirty. The two sources of freshwater at Ao Chalong had run dry and there was no rain. Luckily Senta's tanks carry about 800 litres of fresh water so we had no problem, but some of the other boats seemed to be getting a bit concerned. We spent a few days at Boat Lagoon, a marina north of Phuket town, to see what it would be like as a haul-out venue. We were unimpressed. Far too snobbish, expensive and a 'take it or leave it' attitude. So we looked at Ratanachai Slipway Company, the commercial shipyard where the local fishing boats go for their annual haulout and maintenance. This was much more to our liking so we made a booking for early September.
At the end of May we sailed back to Langkawi. On the way at Phi Phi Don island I decided to start a course of penicillin to cure a urinary tract infection that didn't seem to want to go away. The first tablet I took caused a violent allergic reaction with extreme overall body itching, difficulty breathing and dizziness. So no more penicillin for me - ever!. The infection was cured by drinking megalitres of fresh water and some potassium citrate solution prescribed by the doctor at Langkawi hospital. A few days before our return to Langkawi we anchored in a large well protected bay at the south end of Ko Lanta. Here the dry season ended in spectacular fashion with a 35 knot squall and so much rain that we could not see more than 15 meters from the boat. We were pleased that we had dug in our 65 lb CQR anchor, had 40 meters of chain out in 8 meters of water, with a further 40 meters of chain to let out if needed - which it wasn't. Our next stop was at Ko Phetra, a sheer cliff-faced island, like a 20-storey block of flats. We anchored on the east side as this was the SW monsoon season. But at 0300 a strong wind came up from the south east blowing us back to within spitting distance of the cliff face. We sat anchor watch until first light, when we hauled our anchor up and got out of there - fast! A very patchy sail/motor lasting 14 hours brought us to Datai bay on the NW corner of Langkawi at 1830. We were hot and tired and went early to bed after large mugs of tea, some chocolate biscuits and a banana each for supper - hoping that we would not have any more anchor dramas in the night. The joys of cruising!
When we reached Rebak marina a few days later we found it to be crowded, 96 boats in a marina with a maximum capacity of 120. Many boats had come from Thailand to escape the customs authorities who were clamping down on yachts overstaying the maximum time allowed of 6 months. In Malaysia, although people have visas of 2 or 3 months depending on nationality, the boats are welcome to stay forever.
June/July
June and the first half of July were spent in the marina, generally loafing, doing boat cleaning and maintenance, learning to play Majong, an ancient Chinese game, preparing equipment and supplies for Senta's haul out in September and planning a 2 week land tour of Malaysia and Singapore. Yachts that we know came and went, including a couple who had left Thailand in January, sailed to India, Maldives and Chagos and then returned to Rebak - a total distance of 4 500 miles in just over 4 months. A bit too rushed for us.
On July 13 we left on our Malaysia/Singapore tour carrying a small back pack each. The first leg was a ferry ride to Penang. The 70 miles took just on 3 hours averaging over 20 knots in air conditioned comfort, aircraft type seats and an 'in-flight' movie. We stayed overnight in Penang and after a morning browsing in the well stocked bookstore at Lifestyle in the Komtar building, we left on a bus bound for Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. The last 1,5 hours of the 6,5 hour trip covered only 60 km over an amazingly winding road climbing up 1500 meters through dozens of hairpin bends. Luckily it was dark so we couldn't see how close we came to disaster. Pierre, who was sitting in the window seat, says that many times the back of the bus swung out over deep chasms as we curled around the bends. After checking in at our aptly named 'Cool Point' hotel we had a dinner of 'steamboat' at the Mayflower restaurant. We were accompanied by Sue and Steve (yacht Pilgrim), friends from Rebak who happened to be on a similar tour. Steamboat is a sort of oriental fondue. Slices of pork, beef, chicken, calamari, sea bass, prawns, mussels, eggs, noodles and 9 different types of vegetables are all supplied raw and have to be cooked yourself as required in a pot of boiling soup. There are two compartments to the soup pot, one with chicken soup and the other with spicy tom yam soup. We revelled in the cool, crisp mountain air, something we had feared we would never feel again, so accustomed had we become to hot, muggy, steamy tropics. The next day we hired a taxi and visited a tea plantation, Buddhist temple, bee farm and butterfly/insect farm. Most interesting were large stick and leaf insects, so much like the foliage that the couldn't detect them until they were pointed out by the guide. The mountains and hills of the Cameron Highlands are intensely green, cloaked as they are in either luxuriant, short, stubby, hand-mown tea bushes or towering, dense rain forest in which still dwell the 'Orang Asli' or original aboriginal people, many of whom have never made contact with modern civilisation - lucky them!
A 5,5 hour bus ride back down the winding mountain pass and then through acres of palm plantations brought us to the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur. The city is at the junction of 2 rivers and about 20 miles from its sea port of Kelang. The name Kuala Lumpur means muddy estuary, but the city certainly belies its name, being a beautiful modern garden city with pockets of Penang type Chinese commerce and old British style colonial buildings. The railway station was built by the British and to quote from the Lonely Planet volume on South East Asia 'is an example of British colonial humour; a Moorish fantasy of spires, minarets, towers, cupolas, arches etc.' The tallest building in the world, the twin Petronas Towers now owned by the Sultan of Brunei, dominates the KL skyline. You can visit the Petronas building but can only go as high as the ground floor - big deal! Close in height, however, is the Telkom communications tower from the top of which we had an excellent view of KL and surroundings. A walk through the Chinese night market and a visit to the national museum were two highlights. At the museum in the section devoted to Sarawak and Sabah provinces on the island of Borneo we saw back packs for carrying babies. These are decorated with beautiful bead work and tiger teeth. An odd number of teeth denote a girl baby and an even number a boy.
After KL we set out by bus again to Melaka through, by now pretty boring, fields of palm trees. Once there we soaked ourselves in the history of the place, visiting several museums; the Stadthuys - a large pink town hall built in typical Dutch colonial style; the bright red Christ Church built of pink bricks brought from Zeeland in Holland and faced with red lacerite; an old Portuguese sailing ship; the remains of a Dutch East India fort; a replica of a Sultan's wooden palace. Strategically placed as it is at the start of the narrow east end of the Mallaca straits, the town has been occupied in turn by the Chinese, up to the early 1500's, then the Portuguese, Dutch and British. We especially remember our Sunday morning walk round the village green where the local children and some tourists took rides in the traditional bullock carts decorated with bright ribbons, bells, flowers and shells.
From Melaka we took yet another bus to Singapore where we booked into Hotel 81 Gold in the heart of the red-light district The only accommodation we could afford; it was very tiny but air conditioned with TV and clean. Singapore is just the place to go mad (from the madding crowds) and bankrupt in a very short time. We were impressed with their MRT (mass rapid transit) train system and used it to get around quickly and reasonably cheaply. We really enjoyed an almost day-long visit to the science centre with its exhibitions from all branches of science - biology, medicine, information technology, mathematics. There were many "hands on" games and experiments to try, including some involving virtual reality. Fascinating stuff.
From Singapore we took an overnight "sleeper" train up the length of Malaysia to Khota Baru in the North Eastern corner. Because of its route this train is known as the "Jungle Train". We saw some of the jungle in the early morning before arriving at Khota Baru, and the jungle was dense and exactly "jungle" like. You would need a jumbo sized weed-eater to cut through that greenery. Khota Baru, the centre of Muslim culture and religion in Malaysia is dusty and dirty. It is also the place where the Japanese landed during World War II, 30 minutes before the strike on Pearl Harbour, and then proceeded to sweep the British troops down the Malaysian Peninsula, through Singapore and into the sea. In doing this they made considerable use of the railway line over which we had just travelled. We went "museum-ing" again, and at one of the museums we were the major attraction for hundreds of school children on a field trip. Some of them shyly asked us to pose with them for group photographs. Particularly interesting was the visit to the war museum. We had planned to return westwards across Malaysia towards Langkawi by bus, but opted instead for an air flight in a Fokker 50, over dense jungle to Alor Setar. A short ferry ride the next day, brought us back to Langkawi and Rebak marina. It had been 2 weeks of an interesting and enjoyable tour through Malaysia. At Rebak we found 6 Zululand Yacht Club members in residence; Rolf and Utte from Mariposa, Lothar and Marai from Pizzaz and Sandy and Noel from Storm. So we all had a reunion celebration with a lively, laughter and cruising-story-filled dinner at the marina restaurant.
August/September
August was spent preparing for our trip to Thailand to slip Senta. I also spent time teaching 7 other yachties to play bridge. By the end of the month we had two reasonable bridge tables going every second afternoon, sometimes playing for 5 hours at a stretch.
We took Senta to Phuket in Thailand in an overnight motor/sail of 33 hours. A long time but far less tiring than our previous two trips when we day sailed, anchoring each night. At Phuket Senta was hauled out of the water at Ratanachai shipyard. We were overawed by the professional care that the staff took with the haul out/haul in processes, using divers to check that Senta was correctly placed on the cradle, and a plumb line to ensure that the mast was exactly upright. Three weeks of hard work saw Senta returned to the water to the sound of hundreds of 'good luck' fire crackers, with re-sprayed topsides and a new antifouled bottom. Several other maintenance jobs had also been done including an attempt to 'tighten up' a slightly loose rudder shaft, which clunked in the bearings in a seaway. We faithfully followed the instructions in the West system book on fibre-glass boat maintenance and repair. This called for polishing the rudder shaft with automotive wax as a release agent, drilling holes through the rudder shaft housing and bearings and injecting a mixture of epoxy resin, colloidal silica powder and graphite powder into the gap between the rudder shaft and the bearings, All seemed to go well until, after leaving the epoxy to cure for 24 hours, we could not move the rudder. We eventually freed the shaft by tying some long planks to the rudder blade to use as levers. Some sharp horizontal pushes on these levers broke the shaft free from the newly epoxied bearings. But the grip of the bearings was so tight, and movement of the tiller so difficult that we could not even consider sailing like that. We tried without joy to drop the rudder out of the bearings and then consulted, via a young Thai lady interpreter, with the manager of the shipyard workshops who spoke no English. Pierre had done some drawings of the problem and our attempted solution. With much discussion, explanation, translation and reference to the drawings the situation became clearer and clearer to the workshops manager. As Pierre held the syringe and illustrated how we had injected epoxy into the bearings, the manager gasped, rolled his eyes and held his head in his hands. His body language clearly spoke to us, 'Can you believe these occidental imbeciles - to put epoxy in their bearings !'. He sent us his expert on recalcitrant and stubborn rudder shafts, who with the help of a long piece of strong Thai hardwood and a large steel mallet, and rotating the shaft from side to side with our long plank levers, managed to get Senta's rudder and shaft out of the bearings and down onto the ground. A long morning of sanding by Pierre and we were able to raise the rudder into place, and it swung freely. Maybe too freely again, but we won't really know until we take Senta into some waves again.
Ratanachai lived up to its name and one night we were visited by a large four-legged long-tailed rodent. We sprayed it with insecticide, growled loudly at it and locked away all of our edibles. After a few hours it left obviously deciding that Senta was not a rat-friendly boat. It was a unique and interesting experience living and working in the shipyard in company with dozens of local Thai fishing boats undergoing their annual haul-out and maintenance work. In a quiet corner of the shipyard stands a Buddhist shrine, at which the fishermen leave offerings of fruit, drinks, eggs, chickens etc. The dozens of stray dogs who roam around the shipyard seem to know that the food is meant for the gods and not them, and leave it alone in spite of the fact that they must be hungry, having to scrounge for their own food.
After the boat maintenance we did a bit of skipper maintenance and Pierre visited the Phuket international hospital to have some skin cancer spots removed. The excellence of the service and treatment and low price were a delight to experience, and now after 3 weeks the scars are almost invisible. After the simple operation we had tea in the hospital coffee shop and read on the notice board some letters from grateful patients. Most were in Thai which we could not read, but one was from some one in India who said that they were so pleased to have 'come to Phuket half a man and returned home a real woman'. We then realised that we had heard elsewhere that Phuket is a world renowned centre for sex change operations. Thank goodness Pierre had not remembered this as he lay on the operating table and was confronted by the scalpel wielding surgeon. No wonder the stitching was so good and healed so well. They are obviously well skilled at human sewing.
We are now back at Rebak making lists, doing maintenance (again !) and trying to decide where to go next - on to Borneo and Oz or back across the Indian ocean.
Who knows. By the way we have heard, and tend to agree with the definition of cruising, as 'boat maintenance in exotic places where you cannot buy the spares you need'.
I have decided to take advantage of a special promotion by Air Malaysia on flights to South Africa and will be spending about a month at home during October and November, so will see some of you then. Pierre prefers to stay with Senta and carry on with the maintenance work. I have no argument with that.
Langkawi, Malaysia and Thailand February 1998
23 September to 23 November were two months spent at Langkawi, Malaysia. We had to replace some broken rigging and repair the cracked cylinder head in the engine so we spent the time at Rebak Marina, where we had easy access to faxes, telephone etc. The rigging problem was easily sorted out. Pierre drew up detailed specifications of what we needed, faxed these to WesMarine in the USA, together with our credit card details and within two weeks the rigging was delivered to our boat in the marina. An what's more it all fitted perfectly. We were very impressed with the service. The engine repair was a different story. We sent a fax to Volvo in Sweden describing the problem, and received a reply within 24 hours detailing the part numbers we needed and the name, phone and fax numbers of their agent in Kuala Lumpur, through whom we should order the parts. Oh boy ! We thought this looks like another example of excellent service - but we were wrong ! We faxed our requirements to the agent. For 3 weeks we phoned and faxed to chase progress. We were told they were "working on it" and "sourcing the parts from Singapore". At the end of the three weeks we were asked to send our requirements again as they had lost our original fax ! After a further three weeks the parts arrived. In the meantime we had made contact with Terry, an Australian, living on his yacht at Rebak, who agreed to help us with the repair. He did an excellent job, explaining to us all of the time what he was doing and charging a very reasonable fee.
While all the "waiting for parts" was going on we spent the time making and chatting to new friends in the marina; shopping - clothing and melamine crockery are particularly good and cheap; waiting for the haze from the Indonesian fires to clear, which it did only after we had been in Langkawi for 3 weeks; sewing - I made new curtains and a sun awning for Senta and saloon cushion covers for Nereid, a friends boat; and being ill - Pierre had a bad attack of some kind of fever which left him with a urinary tract infection and an inability to pass urine. By the time he asked for medical help he could hardly walk. The marina staff were very helpful, bringing a ferry to Senta, taking us to the main island, and then in a marina car to the Langkawi hospital. There we were charged R3, Pierre was attacked with a catheter, and after a few days rest and lots of medicine he started to recover. In the meantime I had an attack of gout in my big toe - the first in three years - and hobbled around for a few days.
December 1997
After the engine was fixed we went for a short 3 day sail to the "Fresh Water Lake" and back. This is an island South of Langkawi, in the centre of which is a cool green lake of clear fresh water. We then stocked up the boat with duty free goodies - beer, wine & chocolates are particularly cheap - and set off for Phuket in Thailand where we were scheduled to meet Ingrid & Phillip on 12 December. Our first stage was a one day sail to the Butang Island group, Thailand territory, but unoccupied except by a few fishing camps. There we stayed for four days, enjoying the peace, quite and clear water. On our last day a four masted sailing ship, a barquentine, sailed in for the day. Their passengers were taken ashore for a barbeque and the ship sailed out again after sunset with lights strung from the masts, looking like a fairy ship. Our next sail was to Ko Rok Nok. "Ko" means island in Thai. We sailed half of the 42 miles in a reasonable wind, but this died at midday and we had to motor the rest of the way - a good test for the recently repaired engine. At Rok Nok we anchored in a channel between 2 islands in 12 metres of water so clear we could see our anchor and chain on the bottom. Lots of colourful tropical fish swam around us. White beaches lined both islands which were heavily wooded. On one small beach under a large tree the fishermen had established a shrine which was surrounded with offerings of flowers, fruit etc. We stayed here for 2 days during which several yachts came and went on their way to Phuket or Langkawi. On Sunday 30 November we left Ko Rok Nok and sailed the 35 miles to the north end of Ko Lanta Hyai. Here we anchored in among hundreds of fishing buoys in shallow water in a bay well protected from the north east. Just as well, because 2 hours after anchoring we were treated to a 50 knot rain squall blowing from the shore. Our anchor was well dug in, so we stayed in place. There were no other yachts in the bay when we arrived but we were joined by 3 others later in the evening and the following day. We noticed that even though there was a good sailing breeze, the yachts all arrived under motor. This we were to see again and again during our time in Thailand. Very few people actually sail. Wether it is because they are too lazy or don't know how we have yet to discover. After a days rest at Ko Lanta Hyai we sailed to Phi Phi Don, the most popular tourist island in the Phuket area. Bedlam and mayhem !! Dozens of ferries bringing hundreds of tourists from the mainland; high speed motor boats taking customers out to diving launches and a large barge of which people went parasailing; other motor boats towing long yellow inflatable sausages to which screaming tourists clung; zillions of longtail boats taking tourists everywhere. A "longtail" is a local wooden narrow boat powered by an industrial small petrol engine to which is connected a long pipe with a propeller at the outer end. This pipe can be dipped into the sea when the longtail wants to move forward. Quite an ingenious idea and the boats have very good sea-kindly hulls - but the engines have all had their silencers removed and even one boat makes an incredible noise, especially when the sound bounces off the tall sandstones cliffs. So what with the incredible noise, lumpy water from all of the to-ing and fro-ing and air pollution from petrol and diesel fumes we thought we had sailed straight into the jaws of hell. It was only after tourists started to leave in the late afternoon that we began to realise that Ko Phi Phi Don is really able to live up to its reputation of being one of the three most beautiful islands in the world. The next day we left really early to miss the chaos and sailed the 30 miles to Ao Chalong on the east coast of Phuket. After checking in we spent the next few days sailing up the west coast of Phuket, stopping at - Nai Hairn, where the Kings Cup Regatta was due to take place in a weeks time; Karon Beach - quite, few tourists, long beach; Ao Patong - the tourist mecca of the west coast - just like Phi Phi Don - but not quite so terrible ! We halted our northwards progression at Ao Bang Tao (Ao = bay in Thai). This was close enough to the airport for us to meet Ingrid and Phillip. Here we had the enjoyable experiences of encountering some elephants grazing in a field along the road side when we walked into the nearest village, and also seeing a baby elephant playing on the beach on a couple of afternoons. He had been brought down to the beach by his keeper to play in the waves and entertain the young guests at the hotel and holiday resort.
After picking up Ingrid and Phillip from the airport in a hired minibus, we sailed / motored to Patong, Nai Hairn and Phi Phi Don. The later to show them how awful it is - why should we be the only ones to suffer ? Then on to Phi Phi Le, where the snorkling was good until I saw a shark. After this we sailed to Ko Dam Hok, a beautiful anchorage between 2 islands behind a sand spit. On the second day there, we were joined by a Concepta 65, "Paradise Blue". The skippers girlfriend is a South African, so they came over to say hello and invited us on board. A space age yacht, easily sailed single handed. All sail and other controls are push button hydraulic. Below decks are fully air conditioned. The saloon has a complete electronic entertainment centre; surround sound, pull down screen for laser movies, Karaoke ! Phillip visualised a group of Japanese businessmen sitting down below doing Karaoke while the skipper sailed the boat on his own through the raging gales ! Five generators, an HP file server, several computers, electronic charts, washing machine, 100 litres / hour water maker and ice maker. Lovely boat but not for us at $ 1,75 million. After visiting Laem Nang beach west of Krabi, another madness of tourists, longtails and noise, we sailed north to anchor in a quite bay at the north end of Ko Yai Noi. We spent 2 days here before taking another 2 days sailing to Ko Racha Yai, about 20 miles south of Phuket, where we spent Christmas day. Our lunch at 3 in the afternoon at a small restaurant on the beach consisted of a large grilled fish shared by Pierre and Phillip, an omelette for me and a spicy chicken dish for Ingrid. We then turned north again, stopping at Ao Chalong where we saw John Reed from Wind Magic; Ko Phanak where we took the dinghy on a scary row through a dark tunnel into an island lagoon; and eventually stopping at the marina of Yacht Haven on the north coast of Phuket. Here Ingrid and Phillip had a day to relax, wash, pack, and join us in a farewell dinner at the marina restaurant before catching their plane the next day for Bangkok and South Africa.
January 1998
We sailed back to Ao Chalong to check out of Thailand, but had to wait there for a few days as the Thai immigration / customs officers were closed for the new year holidays. While at anchor there we watched a comedy of errors involving a small Italian yacht, "Geronimo". She had tied up to a buoy in the bay and all of the crew had gone ashore. While they where away, the large fishing boat, whose buoy Geronimo was tied to arrived. The crew of the fishing boat moved Geronimo to a nearby mooring, tied her up and to make sure she was safe, also dropped her anchor. When Geronimo's crew arrived back after a good lunch ashore, they started their motor, untied the rope attached to the buoy and tried to motor away - not realising that the anchor was down. They went one way and then another, reverse and forward - but no joy - the anchor kept pulling them up short. They peered over the side and transom, to see what the problem was. Eventually someone climbed over into the water, with mask and snorkel to check the propeller. Finding no problem there he slowly swam forwards to find that the boat was securely anchored. There was some gesticulation and queries about which fool had dropped the anchor. When no one would own up the skipper called for the anchor to be pulled up. Halfway up the anchor flukes caught in the mooring buoy's chain and wouldn't come any further. There was further shouting and heaving until eventually the anchor came clear, leaped out of the water and nearly took off the head of the guy in the water. We nearly laughed ourselves sick, especially as the whole episode was accompanied by exciting Italian chatting and hand waving. After leaving Ao Chalong we took 10 days slowly sailing back to Langkawi, arriving on 14 January. Since then we have been provisioning, doing small boat maintenance and acquiring charts for possible future destinations.
We leave in a few days for Singapore where we will make a decision about our next cruising ground. More news then from Singapore (if we get safely there) through the ships, adverse current and no wind).
P.S. 10 March - we have decided against going to Singapore because of the possible problems with haze from Indonesian fires and also Indonesian civil unrest. We will hang out in Malaysia / Thailand for a while.
Chagos to Langkawi, Malaysia September 1997
26th to 31st August
Our last week in Chagos was very busy. In between our own preparations we found time to soak up some of the Chagos paradise atmosphere. We also helped a Canadian boat, Demelza, that arrived with a broken forestay. The upper swage above the roller furler had parted. They stay and furler were brand new, having been installed in Australia 3 months before. Their new Sobstad genoa had split most of its glued seams. Not a very good advertisement for the Australian boat service industry. Luckily Erya on Alawanka is an experienced sailmaker and double stitched all the seams in the genoa. We all managed to get their forestay and foil back up, but not strong enough and they planned to only use their inner stay on the downwind run to Seychelles.
About 8 Garfish set up a nursery under Senta. Hundreds of baby fish were hatched and the adult garfish stood sentry guard, day and night to keep the babies under Senta's hull and ward off attacks from marauding tuna, who dashed in at high speed, gobbled up a few small garfish and then returned hurriedly to deeper water. This underwater life and death ballet went on all day and night for a over a week before we left. I wonder where the nursery was moved to when we left.
In our pre-departure checks we located two major problems. Firstly our starboard lower shroud had a stranded wire just below the upper swage. We made a new stay from our port runner, a turnbuckle and a sta-lock fitting we had in our spares kit. We were expecting the wind to be on our starboard side for most of the 1800 mile, as the crow flies, journey to Malaysia. So we felt safe in sacrificing our port runner which we hoped to be able to replace later. The second major problem was that the crack in the number one cylinder head was now much bigger and really feeding seawater into the engine at quite a rate. We did what we could with Pratley's putty and prayers to the patron saint of diesel engines. The last three days were spent baking bread & scones for the voyage, beach BBQ and visits from the crews of the boats sailing Westwards. We told them all about Madagascar, Zanzibar, Mayotte, Kenya, Tanzania, the Mocambique channel and Richards Bay. By Sunday 31st we had done everything and now had no more excuses for staying.
Monday 1st to Friday 5th September
We made reasonably good progress in the moderate SE wind, keeping South of the Rhumb??!!! line and by Friday had averaged 110 miles per day, but the wind was becoming light and fitful.
Saturday 6th September
Light Easterly all day forcing us Northwards. This died to nothing at 17h00 and we dropped all sails. We sat rolling around until a light SW wind came through at 20h30. We ran goose-winged with the genoa poled out all night until the calm returned in the early hours. We crossed the 80deg.E meridian, the magical number below which one should not cross the equator, with still 29 miles to go to the equator.
Sunday 7th September
Very poor to no wind most of the night then a fresh NE came through at 05h00. The 06h00 sight showed we had crossed another meridian, 81deg. with the equator still 11,6 miles to the North, though it is very possible that we may have crossed & re-crossed i during the night, with our doldrum dodging manoeuvres. Pierre had been troubled by a tooth ulcer for a few days and this started to affect his ear, which became very painful. We started treatment with a course of anti-biotics and eardrops. The whole day was spent hunting catspaws, and in the middle of the day we drifted across the equator. the night was spent lying a-hull with all sails sown to stop them slatting.
Monday 8th to Friday 12th September
The wind continued very light to almost nothing, but what there was came from the East, forcing us northwards away from the rhumb line to Sumatra. The nights were scattered with rain squalls, during which we had to furl the genoa for a few minutes while the wind increased to 25 knots, then followed by calms which had us slatting around in the waves left over from the squalls. By Friday we were within 200 miles of SRI LANKA. We heard on the SSB radio that a massive high pressure had moved up the Malacca Straits and into the top of the Bay of Bengal, effectively nullifying all signs of the south westerly winds that we should have been getting. A very tired swallow arrived on board on Thursday and spent the night sleeping on the curtain rail above the galley counter. On Friday morning he left in the direction of Sri Lanka after a couple of test flights away from and back to Senta. Before each flight he perched on my head as if to say "goodbye and thank you". I hope he made it to dry land. On Friday night a light SW wind arrived & we could start on our way again. During the early hours of Saturday morning a green flare emerged from the water about 1/2 a mile of to our starboard side. Our books tell us that this is the signal from a submarine that has just fired a test torpedo and might want to surface. We didn't see the sub, but the night was very dark & we would be very unlikely to see anything so low on the surface of the sea.
Saturday 13th to Tuesday 16th September
The wind continued light to moderate SW and we made progress at a rate of just under 100 miles per day towards our destination of Bass Harbour, Kuah, Langkawi in Malaysia. After 2 weeks of our voyage, when we had hoped to already be at Bass Harbour, we still had 725 miles to go. This was turning out to be a very frustrating, tiresome trip. During the afternoon of Monday 15th a fishing boat came towards us from our port quarter. He should have easily passed behind us, but deliberately altered course to cross less than 6 metres in front of us. He then turned to his starboard to resume his previous course. Ralph of Arjemand had previously told us that the Indonesian fishing boats do this in order to offload their bad luck onto you. If we hadn't known this we would have been terrified. As it was we were pretty scared, but all turned out OK except for our accelerated pulse rates.
Wednesday 17th September
Rain squalls in the early morning from the NW, then turning SW helped us on our way. In the early afternoon we came upon a Chinese cargo vessel, Sea Diamond. She had engine problems and after passing us she stopped directly in our path several miles in front. The wind was blowing 25 knots and we surfing down the waves under double reefed main and small jib. It was great fun having the boot on the other foot and tearing down on a motor vessel. The captain got a bit itchy and called us on channel 16. He said he was unable to manoeuvre and asked us to keep clear of him. We gladly agreed to as we would undoubtedly come off worst in any collision. He later chatted to Pierre, asking him about us, our destination and where we had come from.
Thursday 18th & Friday 19th September We now had the task of crossing the very busy shipping lane carrying traffic between Malaysia, Singapore, China etc and the Red Sea and Africa. We saw out first ships at 21h30 on Thursday night. In the early hours of Friday morning a rising barometer brought a line squall and blinding rain just when we were in the middle of the shipping lane, with a possibility of ships coming from both sides. Pierre sent out a radio message to all ships, followed by a Securite message warning of our presence, giving position, direction and speed. The nearest ship responded saying he could see us and wishing us a good voyage. He emerged out of the rain about 2 miles away. We ship dodged all morning and then at about midday after we had seen the last of the ships we sailed into a tide-rip, 30 miles northwest of Rondo Island, which is just north of Sumatra. The pilot and charts warn of these rips up to 20 miles from Rondo. We had allowed a 10 miles safety margin, but it wasn't enough; probably because we were going through at equinoctial spring tide. It was very frightening. Senta was running with the wind and waves into a current/tide sweeping out of the Malacca Strait. The waves were vertical, standing and breaking, 2,5 to 3 metres high, with only about 6 metres between the waves. This picture sketched from horizon to horizon, with no way out other than to carry on. We had to hand steer to hand steer to keep Senta's transom into the waves and stop her from being rolled over. It was nail biting, hard, concentrating work. Pierre steered for 2 hours, I took over for another 2 hours & Pierre did another hour before we were through the worst. This was a scary and threatening episode. If anything had gone wrong with the steering mechanisms, or the helmsman losing concentration, Senta would have rolled side on to the waves, probably been rolled over, dismasted and sunk. We had all hatches closed and secured, and were pooped with waves coming on board from astern. In future we will do everything to avoid sailing through a tide-rip, including sailing a detour of several hundred miles. It is just not worth the risk.
Saturday 20th September
A strong SW wind sent Senta racing downwind under a double reefed mainsail and 1/2 a working jib rolled out. We were now 240 miles from Kuah. During the night we saw no ships, no porpoises, no nothing - just the occasional mini tide rip to remind us of our scare the day before. - and the loom of some light houses at Sumatra.
Sunday 21st September
124 miles to Kuah, wind very light SE. In the morning a school of porpoises came by doing aerobatics. High leaps, double somersaults, triple rolls, showing us how happy they were to see us. We were still troubled by many mini tide rips and were in an area of very confused seas. The wind remained light easterly all day, and a dragon fly landed on the deck in the afternoon, the first sign of our coming landfall.
Monday 22nd September
Wind very light again as we approached the Butang group of islands north of Langkawi. By midday these winds had disappeared into the smoke haze from the forest fires in Sumatra. We slowly drifted along being bugged by many fishing boats who deliberately went out of their way to come straight at us making us tack away as we were obliged to keep clear since they were in the act of fishing. We initially wanted to anchor at the outer Butang islands that night, but got nowhere near in the light winds, so we carried on through the night.
Tuesday 23rd September
We made VHF radio contact with Nereid and Arjemand, boats we had known in Chagos and also Mariposa, one of our Zululand Yacht Club friends. They were all in a Marina at Rebak Island, just off the Southwest corner of Langkawi. The visibility was extremely poor because of the haze, so we decided to join them in the Marina. A very wise choice as this is a lovely, well run marina and reasonably priced. Friends were waiting at the walkon to take our lines and soon we were settled in. After a short sleep we went for a swim in the very large, very well designed swimming pool and then a dinner of local Malaysian food at the marina restaurant.
The next day, Wednesday, was taken up with a ferry boat ride to the mainland, a taxi ride to Kuah for checking in through immigration, customs etc and some shopping. Langkawi is a duty free port and so most things are much cheaper than in South Africa. We now have to arrange the repair of our engine and the replacement of our port runner, starboard lower shroud, as well as the rigging spares used. We will then have 2 months to explore and enjoy the Langkawi area before moving northwards to Phuket, Thailand in December.
Seychelles to Chagos June to August 1997
20 to 22 June 1997
We remained in the sheltered anchorage of Anse Lazio on Praslin island. It blew strongly from the south east and rained buckets of water. We pitied the tourists and Sunsail charter clients who had spent thousands of dollars on their trip to paradise. They were getting seasick sailing between islands that they could only view through a misty veil. We had plenty of time to wait for things to get better. This waiting time was used to re-pack heavy items on the boat, moving them aft to lighten the bow. Hopefully this would prevent Senta scooping every wave on board during the coming up-wind leg to Chagos. On Saturday morning we rowed ashore and cut each other's hair. A small stream dribbled down the granite rocks behind the beach. We built a dam with rocks and sand and soon had a small pool of fresh water to rinse off in after our haircuts. Back on the boat we listed 21 things to do before leaving Seychelles.
24 to 27 June 1997
A rough five-hour sail took us back to Mahe. A welcome letter from Ingrid greeted us. We then completed the check out procedures, bought some T-shirts and fishing tackle and filled up with diesel and water. A USA warship from Diego Garcia docked in Port Victoria, presumably to give the crew some R and R. She looked very festive, decorated with flags during the day and coloured lights at night. There was a party on board on Friday night and a fireworks display. We could have had grandstand seats except we were below in our bunks getting our last full night's sleep for quite a while.
28 to 30 June 1997
Senta left Port Victoria at 0730 on Saturday morning, beating into moderate seas and a 15-knot south easterly wind. She was rigged as a cutter, with the yankee on the forestay, jib on the inner stay and a single reef in the main sail. This proved to be an effective rig, reasonably fast in moderate winds. By furling the yankee we could quickly reduce the sail area to that able to sustain 30 knots of wind and more. The beat continued into wind varying from fifteen to twenty-five knots. It sometimes lifted us towards Chagos and sometimes headed us away. All we could do was follow the wind, cheering when we were lifted and cursing when we were headed. Luckily we escaped the dreaded 'mal de mer'.
1 to 4 July 1997
Several rain showers in the late afternoon of Tuesday 1 July killed the wind completely. We were left to flop around in the sea. In the early hours of Wednesday, fed up with the lack of wind we started the motor, which ran for an hour before packing up with a loud clanking noise. Oil was seeping out of the nuts on the top of the number one cylinder rocker box cover. Just great! Now we had no wind and no motor. At dawn a light southerly breeze appeared and we started drifting on our way again. During the morning Pierre took a look at the motor. Miraculously he managed to repair it. A bolt that holds the valve rocker shaft housing onto the cylinder head, and the rocker bow cover on, had sheared. Luckily we had a bolt of the same dimensions as a spare part for our self steering apparatus. Pierre managed to alter it appropriately with a hacksaw and file and the engine then ran with no clanking noise. We let it run long enough to cool the fridge and then let it rest. The light wind died and the calm continued. This was meant to be a wild thrash to windward and here we were, frustrated, irritable, slopping around in the sea. I amused my on-watch hours by spitting into the sea to decide, by our movement compared with the spit bubble, if we were moving forward or backwards. Eventually at 1030 on Friday 4th a bird landed on the dinghy on the foredeck. A half hour later the wind came back blowing 20 to 25 knots from the south east and we could get back to the business of beating to Chagos.
5 and 6 July 1997
Beating, beating, beating. Wind oscillating between east and south, with rain showers in the afternoon and evening upsetting the pattern.
7 July 1997
Monday morning. No traffic jams to contend with. Just an endless succession of grey crests to climb. A grey, cloudy sky and occasional rain showers. Senta continues to eat away the miles.
8 July 1997
The wind died in the early hours of the morning and we had light to no wind until midday. We used the motor to help us along after an argument. I wanted to motor, but Pierre said that he was afraid to in case something else broke. I replied that, if so, we might as well unbolt the engine from its mountings and throw it in the sea. It was an expensive, heavy, nonpaying passenger. At midday the wind came back from the east and we were 116 miles from Chagos. We sailed southwards hoping to escape the area of rain squalls and calms and get back into the SE trade wind belt. By far the major part of the 1000-mile journey was complete, but the remaining miles were being won with difficulty. Not many boats other than Senta have such a good windward ability in both light and heavy winds, and against a choppy sea.
9 and 10 July 1997
We sighted Peros Banhos, the NW atoll of the Chagos archipelago at 1500. By 2100 we had 27 miles to go to the pass into the Salamon atoll. The last night of the voyage was enough to test the patience of saints - and saints are what we are not. Light variable winds, rain squalls and gusts, thunder, lightening, torrential rain and wind from all directions. By doggedly sticking to the task we achieved our objective. By 0600 on the morning of 10 July we were hove-to five miles off the pass into the lagoon at Salamon. At 0800 we had our anchor down in the shallow water of the pass. So. We had made it to Chagos, in spite of the doubts of some cruising folk we had met in Seychelles. Bill, a Frenchman off 'Eclipse' had raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, shrugged his shoulders and said 'Chagos? Against the wind! Maybe. Maybe not.' The visibility remained poor all day with sky to sea rain curtains. We remained where we were and did not try to cross the lagoon to a more sheltered anchorage in the lee of Isle Takamaka. The lagoon contains many coral heads and the sun must be high and behind you to move safely there. In the afternoon we were visited by Ralph and Connie of the American yacht, 'Arjemand', which was anchored at Boddam Island. They were on the way in their red inflatable to explore Isle de Passe - in the rain. They told us that Chagos used to be inhabited by people working the coconut plantations, under British control. When the British leased Diego Garcia, the third atoll in the archipelago, to America, a term of the lease was that there should be no local inhabitants. So the British relocated the whole population, most of whom had lived here for hundreds of years, to Mauritius. Resettlement on a grand scale. Must be where the Nats learned it. We understand that the British fisheries officials sometimes collect the post from the yachts here - so we hope to be able to send this letter off, courtesy of her majesty - Queen of England. We look forward to four to six weeks playing in paradise. And then on to Addu Atoll in the Maldives. 11 to 14 July 1997 No postman yet so the tale continues. On Friday 11th, with the sun shining, we could see the coral heads. We motored across the lagoon to anchor on a sand spit between Takamaka and Fouquet islands. We launched the dinghy and fitted it with oars, rowlocks and its tiny two horse power motor. In the afternoon we motored over to the beach for a picnic of coffee, biscuits and pickled fish with an Australian couple, Phil and Julie. They and their boat 'Illawong', were due to leave the following day for Malaysia. Phil showed us how to open a coconut, of which there are hundreds lying on the beach. There was another boat anchored nearby, Free Poland'. On Saturday afternoon the skipper rowed over to Senta in a small child's inflatable boat. He told us that his big dinghy had been punctured by a shark that he had caught a few days ago. Hope we don't catch any sharks. We had hooked a small tuna, trolling on the cross lagoon trip from the pass, and cut it up for bait. With this bait we caught two other fish. One orange and silver fish, good for two meals, and a whopping big pink fish with powder blue polka dots from which we got four meals. At this rate our supply of tinned food will last a long time. We have however also lost three hooks, one with a steel trace, to something much larger, probably sharks. All this fishing is done by dropping a line over the transom and letting it stream back in the current.
13 July 1997 - unlucky number
We went for a beach and reef walk on Isle Fouquet. While walking on the seaward side of the island, close to the line of bushes above the reef, a small white eel darted out and bit Pierre on the back of the ankle before slithering back into the sea. The wound bled a lot but Pierre managed to walk about one kilometre back to the dinghy. Once back on board Senta I stopped the bleeding with a pressure bandage and the attempted to close the deep, 2-cm long wound with sterri-strip dressings. I smothered the wound with Podine ointment, covered it up with sterile lint and a crepe bandage. Pierre was the more comfortable and lay in the saloon with his feet propped up on a cushion reading a John le Carre novel. After the initial shock of the wound the leg began to pulse. Pierre suffered the excruciating pangs of eel bite all that day and well into the night, before he could sleep. I started him on a course of antibiotics just in case of infection.
14 to 16 July 1997
Lots of rain fell so that I could do all of the laundry that had accumulated since Seychelles. We were boat-bound for four days because Pierre was unable to walk. It will be another few days before he can get around. Just as well that he has several weeks to recover. We could not sail with his leg like this and would have had to postpone any earlier planned departure. Talk about 'Serpent in Paradise' Our anchorage here on the sand spit between Takamaka and Fouquet islands is very sheltered. Through the gap between the two islands we have a view of the sea breaking on the weather side of the reef All of the other boats in the lagoon, about ten of them, are anchored at Boddam Island. They are on a lee shore, exposed to the SE trade wind, which blows continually at between ten and twenty knots. According to Richard, from 'Free Poland', it is very unpleasant there, and you get very wet when going ashore in the dinghy. There are some shore-side attractions at Boddam, including a club house, volley ball court and fresh water well. Most of these have been built and are maintained by passing yachtsmen. Another negative to the Boddam anchorage is the coral bottom and numerous coral heads (bommies).
17 to 29 July 1997
The rainy weather stopped and we have had lovely, sunny days with the occasional rain shower at night. Pierre took his first walk ashore on Monday 21st, more than a week after the eel bite. He wore white milking boots to keep the foot dry and carried a big, big stick to ward off other eels. But we didn't see any. We did see lots and lots of rubber sandals and shoes washed up on the beach. It is hard to imagine where they all come from. On a walk on Takamaka island, in a clearing in the coconut plantation we found a fresh water well covered over with a sheet of plywood and a piece of carpet. Nearby was a sign that the water was polluted and should be boiled for 30 minutes before drinking. At the bottom of the sign was the grand title 'British Indian Ocean Territory Authority'. An Australian humorist had made another sign on a stone that read in mock-pidgin English. 'Sweet wate belong u me spose u bugger up we killum u ded'
On Monday 21st a new arrival proved to be Jonathon, a French sloop we had last seen in Madagascar in 1996. We had drinks on board, fruit juice for us and rum for Thiery and Njiwa, and snacks of fried coconut, while we told each other of our travels since we had last met. Thiery is French and Njiwa has Italian parents, but was born in Kenya. Her name means 'dove' in Swahili. We are still trying to learn how to open coconuts. It takes us about a half hour with hammer, cold chisel, lots of grunts and curses to open one, whereas experienced people open them in under five minutes. Pierre says I must tell you of the beauty here: the clear water; yellow, green and brown coral reefs; white beaches; green islands topped with coconut trees; cooling SE trade wind. But there are some things that are not so good. Like Monty the moray eel who lives at the end of the stone pier on Boddam island. His body is as thick as a strong man's thigh and no one knows how long he is. They have only seen his head as it comes out to catch the fish heads and tails thrown away as the cruising people clean their fish catch. We heard of a young lady who tried to feed Monty by hand. His mouth closed over her hand and stripped all of the flesh off. She had to be taken to the US base at Diego Garcia, over 100 miles away for treatment. After spending two weeks at Takamaka we sailed/motored the three miles to Boddam Island to join all of the other cruising boats. The trip was hair raising as there are many reefs, coral heads and rocks that are only visible when the sun shines. There was much cloud about and each time the sun went behind one we were running blind. Boddam is an interesting island to explore. There are several ruins of buildings from the old coconut plantation days. The passing yachtsmen have made several comfortable shore based camps and a clubhouse out of the ruins. There is a well of fresh water and some rain water tanks for drinking water. Ten boats anchored here, including Senta. Everyone gathers ashore at 1600. More energetic folk play volleyball on a court marked out in a clearing just behind the beach. Others sit around chatting and swopping information about anchorages, good places to stop, eat etc. The view from the shore is entrancing. The ten boats gently move in the small waves, the multicoloured lagoon, blue and white sky - all framed by the beach and palm fronds. We have decided to give Addu Atoll in the Maldives a miss, as the anchorage is in 40 meters of water. And the authorities only let you stay for 72 hours anyhow. A few days ago a British Nimrod aircraft (used to be a Comet) flew round and round the Salamon atoll for about two hours doing an aerial survey to update the admiralty charts. As he was leaving, he called up the yachts on VHF radio, apologising for disturbing the peace. I replied that he hadn't disturbed us. We had enjoyed watching him flying and he had a beautiful aircraft. The pilot sounded quite pleased as he said 'thank-you'.
30 July to 25 August 1997
30 July was Humphrey's birthday. His boat is 'Brumby'. So a public holiday was declared. No work - only play all day and a beach party 'pot luck' and bonfire at night. Each boat brought their own special food preparation to the party. There was pasta, pizza, barracuda casserole, shrimp canapés, fresh bread, heart of palm salad, chocolate cake and coconut/raisin pudding. A real five star feast. After the meal the bonfire was lit and the effects of the meal worked off by wild dancing round the bonfire.
We met Johan and Ingrid and their mad dog Tina from the yacht 'Nicola' Tina loves riding on the bow of the inflatable, standing with her ears and tail flying back in the wind. I don't know how she keeps her balance. She has a piece bitten out of her tongue and several other nicks on her body from her favourite pastime that is herding small sharks in shallow lagoons. She has some Border Collie in her, hence the herding instinct.
We stayed at Boddam Island for a week but it is a lee shore and too uncomfortable, getting soaked in the dinghy each time we went ashore. So we motored back to Takamaka. Our days have been spent snorkelling, exploring the islands, reading, loafing (we do much of that) and getting Senta ready for the next stage of our journey - about 1900 miles to Langkawi in Malaysia. We have had to fix a few engine problems and a stranded lower aft shroud, among many other small jobs. Someone here told us that cruising is really boat maintenance in exotic places. How true! We plan to leave Chagos on Sunday 31st or soon after that. I hope that the British will collect this letter before we leave. Otherwise we will post it in Langkawi in mid September.
28 August 1997
The Brits are here. Letter going off today.
Madagascar and Seychelles May and June 1997
8 to 11 May 1997
After dropping anchor in Russian Bay we showered, ate, slept, rinsed our sea-water sodden clothes and generally loafed and rested. Local fishermen had established a fishing village on the NW shore There was considerable coming and going of fishing canoes called piroques, and sailing dhows. I swam under Senta and wiped her hull clean. There was remarkably little fouling, but a good crop of goose neck barnacles aft between the rudder and the keel. I quickly got rid of those nasty speed reducing beasts. On Sunday 11 May we sailed slowly over to Hellville on the island of Nosy Be. Hellville gets its name from a French governor, Admiral d'Helle. Not because it is hellish! It is really quite a pretty and interesting small sea port. On the way we trolled for fish with a lure given to us by Martin Steyn as a farewell present in Richards Bay. It is a horrible green fish with red popping out eyes, but it swims just like a real fish. In no time we had hooked a 4-kg mackerel, We cleaned, gutted and cut it up into steaks. Some we fried for lunch and the rest went into the fridge to provide four more tasty meals.
12, 13 May 1997
We spent Monday 12th and the morning of Tuesday 13th checking in through the Port Captain, maritime authority, immigration and customs. Although we flew the yellow 'Q' flag and called the harbour authorities on VHF channel 16 we got no response. So we launched the dinghy and rowed ashore. For those who are interested, particularly at Zululand Yacht Club below is a list of the formalities and the related costs.
Immigration Passports with visa (3 months) R180 per person Port Captain Port dues payment and receipt R 78 per month Maritime Authority Cruising Permit R 25 Health Pratique clearance (yellow fever) R 53 Customs Lodge Ships registration papers no charge Maritime Authority Clearance paper on exit R 5
13, 14 May 1997
After the official paper chase we drifted slowly round to Anse du Crater ( Anse = Bay). There it was extremely hot and uncomfortable. So we upped anchor and motored and then sailed in the afternoon westerly breeze back to Russian Bay. 15 to 20 May 1997 It was a lovely, lazy time at Russian Bay: reading, baking bread, walking on the beach, fishing with no luck and doing small boat maintenance jobs. Jijna, the Hong Kong ketch visited for a few days. Just before they left I rowed over to say 'hello'. Hans and Ella from Austria, the owners and Rudi, the permanent skipper, were on board. They gave me a crayfish, already cooked, which they had left over from a crayfish feast. This I took back to Pierre for his lunch.
The second boat to arrive was 'Perlimpinpin', a French yacht with a family of four on board. Frederick, Anna, Martin aged three and one-year-old Alice. After chatting to them I spent the afternoon reading on the beach where I was bitten and stung by multitudes of sand flies and 'no see-ums'. The bites became very red and itchy and lasted for over a week. After several applications of calamine lotion they eventually went away. On the morning of the 20th Pierre had his first extremely successful attempt at making bread. In the afternoon we sailed ten miles east along the coast to Nosy Kisimani, and two days later to Nosy Momoka. There we anchored in the corner of an L-shaped island very close to the shore. Pierre tried his luck at trolling for fish from the dinghy. His technique is to tie the 150 lb breaking strain line to the dinghy seat, and tow a lure about 150 meters behind the dinghy. I was watching through the binoculars as Pierre rowed slowly along the shore. Suddenly the dinghy came to an abrupt halt. Pierre quickly shipped the oars and started pulling in the line. The dinghy was dragged backwards into some mangrove bushes overhanging the water. There Pierre had a tremendous battle with the bushes, the fishing line and the fish. He eventually won and landed a lovely big, fat, pink fish. Again we had delicious fresh fish for several meals. On the following day Pierre was again successful with his dinghy rowing/trolling and brought home a 2-kg slender silver fish with lots of large teeth. Our fridge was now well stocked with fresh fish. On Saturday 24th we sailed across a wide bay to Ankifi Point in a good northerly breeze. Here several holiday cottages and hotels dot the mountain side and there were two other yachts at anchor. On Sunday night there was a strong on shore wind and plenty of rain. In the morning I collected 60 litres of rain water from the dinghy and stored it in buckets and 2-litre cooldrink bottles. This would be used later for showers, clothes and dish washing. There is nothing quite like the feeling of bathing and washing your hair in fresh rain water.
27 to 30 May 1997
We sailed to the north side of Nosy Komba to fill our water tanks and do our washing, The water is available from a communal tap and water trough on the beach, under a big tree, next to the school house. The Nosy Komba residents observe their Sabbath on Tuesdays and it is taboo to take water or wash clothes on this day. We knew about the washing ban, but not about drawing water. I saved the washing for the Wednesday morning, but Pierre started filling the jerry cans with water in the late Tuesday afternoon. A young man interrupted him, turned off the tap and said 'Non. Sabbath.' As Pierre was almost finished he turned the tap back on and continued. There were no unpleasant repercussions and the locals probably just wrote us off as ignorant foreigners. On the 29th and 30th we sailed back to Hellville, filled up with Diesel, bought fresh provisions of bread, eggs, paw paws, naartjies, bananas and cheese. We then checked out through immigration, customs and the port authority.
31 May to 5 June 1997
We left Hellville at 0730 and had to motor 40 miles to the north of the Mitsio islands before the wind arrived. Then it came through extremely strongly from the NE - on the nose. The whole of that night and the next day we beat round Cap d'Ambre the northern most point of Madagascar. The head wind was strong and the seas were turbulent. We were both sea-sick. With the calm departure from Hellville we had forgotten to plug the anchor chain pipe and soon water was pouring down into the bilges with each wave that came aboard. To stop the water rising over the floorboards we had to pump every half hour. This miserable, uncomfortable situation continued until midday on the 2nd. The wind abated slightly and we ran Senta off before the waves for a short while. Pierre crawled onto the foredeck and plugged the anchor chain pipe. It was much better not having to pump so often. Things slowly improved as we approached and passed the Farquhar Islands. St. Pierre's is one of the islands in this group. By Tuesday 3 June the sea sickness was gone but we were in need of sleep. We managed to eat our first meal since leaving Hellville - sweet corn and viennas - cold straight out of the tin. We were now well into the SE trade winds, fetching on starboard tack in 20 knot winds. Midnight saw us 60 miles south of Alphonse and St. Francois islands. Senta continued to make good progress and in the final 24 hour period covered 165 miles to reach Port Victoria on the island of Mahe in the Seychelles at 1700 on Thursday 5 June. There we anchored in the outer harbour near the light house to await the customs and immigration officials. We had our first good look at Mahe, heavily wooded granite mountains with steep cliff faces. As the sun set and darkness set in lights sprinkled the mountainsides. The SE wind kept us cool and we had a long peaceful sleep after a quick shower and a hot meal.
6 June 1997
The pilot launch loaded with officials arrived at Senta just after 0830. They were efficient, helpful, friendly and within a half hour the formalities were over. We were spared the usual entomological spraying at a cost of R200 because the health official had run out of insecticide spray. Luck for us!
We were then allowed to move in to the inner harbour and anchor at the Seychelles Yacht Club. There we were hailed and welcomed by two South African yachts; 'Meshugga', a Mayotte 47 ft catamaran and 'Indigo', a Simonis 54 from Cape Town. After anchoring and launching the dinghy I rowed over to Indigo to speak to JJ, the young crew member, whom I had last seen in Madagascar in 1996. In the afternoon we rowed to the yacht club where we discovered that our Zululand Yacht Club membership entitles us to reciprocity and one month's free stay at the yacht club. There is a pub, canteen serving relatively inexpensive meals, hot showers, a large shady patio and a good view of the yacht anchorage. The manager, Jean Renee, made us feel very welcome. After walking to the bank to cash some traveller's cheques we returned to the club for a late lunch of toasted cheese sandwiches and ice-cream - R56 for the two of us. Purchases in Seychelles are expensive. On top of that there is a R45 a day fee payable to the port authorities for the privilege of being here. The dinghy fleet at the yacht club is quite active and on Friday evening eight Optimists, two Lasers and two sailboards turned up for a race in the outer harbour. They raced again on Saturday and Sunday when they were joined by about ten 420's.
7 June 1997
We walked into Port Victoria to buy fresh provisions and send off some postcards. The supermarket is fairly well stocked. Prices are about 50% higher than in South Africa. After shopping we strolled to the Sunsail charter boat jetty. There we saw a fleet of eight Clipper class yachts that are racing around the world in an event called CLIPPER '96. The crews were very busy getting ready for the start of leg five of the race on Sunday from Seychelles to Durban, taking Madagascar to starboard. They expect to have quite a rough passage.
Sunday 8 June 1997
We went on two bus rides around Mahe' The bus fare is six rupees, about R5.60, which you pay when you get on the bus. It doesn't matter how far you go. So you can take a complete round trip of the island, arriving back at the main bus-station in Port Victoria for R 5.60 Very good value for money. Just about the only thing that was in Seychelles. Being Sunday, the locals were dressed in their Sunday best, visiting relatives and going to church. 90% of the population is Roman Catholic, and obviously good church goers, as the busses were packed. Mahe is mountainous and the busses roar up and down the steep slopes in second gear. There must be some really good bus mechanics on Mahe to keep the vehicles going. We drove on roads with magnificent sea views and shaded by lush vegetation. Mahe is like one huge garden, with the kind of shrubs and plants that I battled to keep alive in pots, here growing as large as trees. Port Victoria is a clean, pretty, well-kept town. The streets are decorated with red, yellow and green flags and everywhere there is a happy, friendly atmosphere.
9 to 14 June 1997
On Monday 9 June we sailed to the western leeward side of Mahe and picked up a mooring in Bay Ternay. Pierre trolled from the dinghy in the evening and caught a small fish for supper. The water was clear so I swam and gave Senta's bottom a wipe down. Multitudes of various coloured fish swam round me while I worked. I had just climbed back on board when we received a nasty surprise. An outboard powered launch came up, told us that we were in a national park and the charge for staying there was 50 rupees per person per day. We paid over 100 rupees - about R96 and immediately left for a hard beat down to the south west part of Mahe where we anchored in the well-protected bay at Anse de la Mouche - the bay of flies. We remained there for five days, during most of which time it rained on and off. One morning the dinghy was so full of water that it was just about sinking. So again I filled our buckets and 2-litre Coke bottles.
We walked ashore every day and on one stroll found a small shrine to the Virgin Mary. It was well maintained with a statue of Mary, decorated with artificial and real flowers and a candle burning at night.
Sunday 15 June 1997
Tired of the rain we decided to escape and sailed the 40 miles to Bay St. Anne on Praslin Island in seven hours going well reaching across the SE trade winds under single reefed mainsail and working jib. Bay St. Anne is not the ideal anchorage being on the windward side of the island. It is extremely shallow and the entrance is not well marked, with a narrow channel between two sandbanks and a shelf of rocks. But we made it in OK and anchored off the jetty to watch several sailing ferries go to and from the nearby island of La Digue. The ferries are in tip top condition, all painted white with yellow and orange trim and awnings. They are handled with great skill by the Seychellois boatmen. Monday 16 June 1997 We rowed ashore to check in with the police as required and to buy some fresh bread. Praslin is fairly quaint but not nearly as pretty as Mahe and is much more litter strewn. Plastic bags and Liquifruit containers line the streets - quite ugly!
17 June to 20 June 1997
Tired of the rough anchorage at Bay St. Anne we sailed round the east side of Praslin to anchor at Anse Lazio in Chevalier Bay on the north west corner of the island. This is a beautiful, well-sheltered bay with clear water and a picturesque beach onto which the gentle swell breaks. Several Sunsail charter boats shared the anchorage with us. As the time to leave Seychelles drew near we started to contemplate our next passage - a one thousand mile beat to Chagos, a British owned archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The US navy pilot book and Ocean Passages for the World told us that we could expect head winds of fifteen to twenty-five knots for the whole of the trip. We decided to remove the genoa from the foil on the forestay and replace it with the yankee. We will also rig the inner forestay and carry a working jib on it. We have discussed what to do if we find the beat to windward to be too tiresome and have charts to enable us to re-route to Sri Lanka or the Maldives if necessary. An American, Bob, on his yacht 'Allegra' has told us the frequencies on which the yachts with ham radios or SSB communicate. As we now have a Sony SSB receiver we are able to listen to the inter boat chit chat. One of the first things we heard was a request for yachts in the Seychelles to be on the look out for a 35-ft Beneteau yacht stolen in April from Eritrea in Ethiopia. There is a $ 6ooo reward for information leading to the recovery of the yacht. So we are keeping our eyes peeled. But if we see the boat we will keep well clear as the suspected thief is armed with a Magnum 357 and 50 rounds of ammunition. It is very unlikely that the boat is still here, but it could be further east on the route we are planning to follow. ( Note: A year later in Malaysia we learned that the boat was in Seychelles while we were there and soon after we left it was recovered, although the thief escaped from custody and has disappeared.) After a day or two of sunshine the rain has followed us, so we can now take our showers Seychelles style. Up on deck, clothes off, shampoo in hand, lather all over and wait for the rain to wash you clean - lovely!!
We will stay here at Anse Lazio until 25 June, when we will sail back to Port Victoria to fill up with fresh water, diesel and fresh provisions. We plan to check out on 27 June and set out on the long beat to Chagos on 28 June.
Richards Bay to Russian Bay, Madagascar May 1997
The six months since our return from Kenya in November 1996 were spent preparing Senta for a second cruise into the Indian Ocean, this time planning to travel further east to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Friday 25 April 1997
We cleared the Richards Bay harbour entrance at 0830 after a send-off from some early birds at Zululand Yacht Club. Senta reached out on starboard tack in a sloppy swell and a light SW wind, encountering enormous steep, toppling seas on the edge of the Aghullas current. These were left over from the strong SW wind the previous day. One of the waves leapt on board, drenched me in the cockpit, and went straight down the main hatch where it landed in Pierre's quarterberth. In the afternoon the wind changed to SE and we beat slowly up the coast for six hours, not going very far. When the NE wind arrived we tacked onto port and started to make good easting. We were both feeling a bit queasy from the rough seas, but Stugeron did its job and we soon felt better. We were too tired to look for the Hale-Bopp comet after sunset, but were treated to a lovely moonlight night and great sailing.
Saturday 26 April
By 0600 we were 75 miles offshore on a latitude halfway between Richards Bay and St. Lucia. The NE wind strengthened and at 0800 we took in 2 reefs in the main and furled the genoa down to working jib size. Senta spent the rest of the day beating into the NE wind, dozing and trying to establish our sea legs. We didn't eat too much other than dry bread rolls and apples. Although we had seen a few ships the day before, there were none now. The wind blew at 20 knots all day, moderating from 2100 and at 0330 on Sunday morning we shook out the reefs.
Sunday 27 April
The day was spent beating into a light NE wind. In the afternoon we were passed by 'Star Japan' who gave us a weather forecast predicting that conditions would remain the same. I wasn't so sure because some cirrus cloud in the evening warned of coming bad weather.
Monday 28 April
Pierre fitted the external aerial to the new Sony world band radio receiver and we heard the weather forecast at 1100 telling of a SW gale coming up the coast. By 1300 we had Senta ready for it with storm jib on the inner forestay and three reefs in the main sail. The front came through at 1430 accompanied by gusts, lightening, rain and thunder. The wind blew gale force all night. We ran before it with 'Hilda', our pink wind steering vane, doing a wonderful job of keeping Senta on track with her stern to the waves. We didn't get much sleep because of the violent motion. The gale force wind was interspersed with severe gusts, which Pierre called 'the furies'.
Tuesday 29 April
The GPS fix at 0545 showed that we had run for 85 miles in a northerly direction. We gybed onto starboard to make easting. We were getting too close to the influence of the adverse Mozambique current. Senta was tucking herself in under the west side of Isle Europa while we really wanted to go to the east of it. By midnight we had made 36 miles to the east. The seas were very rough with waves toppling. In the afternoon a wave came on board from astern, gave me another free sea water bath, flew over Pierre's head in the galley and landed on the port saloon berth, having left water behind in the port quarterberth. We must rinse and dry everything once the weather clears.
Wednesday 30 April
Well what can one say about running in a gale? The one good thing is that we made progress in our desired direction. Otherwise it was wet, cold, boring and tiring. We had difficulty sleeping and no sooner did you fall asleep than your three-hour off watch period was over. You then had to leave a warm berth and take ten minutes getting dressed in oilskins, boots and harness. This sounds like a long time, but you fell over every two seconds. Just as you wanted to pull up your pants, a 2-hand job, the boat would lurch and down you would go. Thank goodness we have good oilskins and our white milking boots are just what we need to ensure dry feet. Nature tried her best to make up for the discomfort with a beautiful dark blue and white sea, light blue sky, clouds in all shades of grey from white to almost black and wonderful rainbows under each rain cloud. These rain clouds brought an extra spurt of wind to help Senta dance her way towards Isle Europa, now 180 miles ahead. Some of the best sailing ever and we had to do nothing other than hold on and gasp in wonder. Some of the surfing down the waves was fantastic with the green and white water hissing under the hull and Senta roaring downhill.
Thursday 1 May
By 0600 the wind had completely abated and the seas were getting quieter, although there was still a big swell running. We shook out all of the reefs and continued, goose-winged, on port tack in a light 5 knot SW breeze. A navigation warning on Durban radio asked for a lookout to be kept for a fishing trawler with 10 crew members on board now two weeks overdue on a voyage from Durban to Majunga in Madagascar. After sunset we had a magnificent view of the Hale-Bopp comet. In the middle of the Mozambique channel with no lights in sight and far away from the dusty sunset sky over Africa, the comet was clearly visible to the naked eye and majestic through binoculars.
Friday 2 May
We were now about half way to Russian Bay on the NW coast of Madagascar near to Nosy Be. 'Nosy' means island. Our sea legs were established and we had settled well into our daily routine. During the previous night we had passed Isle Europa to starboard and, 3 hours later Bassas d'India to port. Senta was now broad reaching on starboard straight to Isle Juan de Nova. The evening watch gave us another grand view of Hale-Bopp and later in the night the dolphins performed their 'silver streak' dance, with their long bodies glistening with phosphorescence as they darted towards and away from Senta.
Saturday 3 May
The swell from the SW gale had gone down and we had a smooth ride. Towards late afternoon the wind strengthened and we took one reef in each of the main and the genoa. There were a few short rain showers in the night.
Sunday 4 May
At 0600 we changed course to the north as we were closing with the Madagascar coast too quickly. We boomed the genoa out to starboard and ran goose-winged for the gap between Juan de Nova and Cap St Andre. At 0900 the GPS fix showed us to be 855 miles from Richards Bay and 418 miles to go to Russian Bay. During the night we made several course changes necessitating gybing the main boom and the polled out genoa. We did a couple of unnecessary gybes because of a navigation error when 08 minutes of longitude was read as 00 minutes. An easy mistake to make with the GPS figures in the half-red light at the chart table.
Monday 5 May
We took the whole day and half the night to round Cap St Andre. This was such a lengthy process because the cape is surrounded by a large area of shoals, the Pracel Bank. The Sailing Directions describe in horrifying detail the dangers of these shoals for the unwary sailor, so we gave them a very wide berth.
Tuesday 6 May
Broad reaching in a 20 knot southerly wind. This is really Senta's idea of FUN! But it is a bit disconcerting for us when our 'home' stops being a dignified decorous lady and behaves like a two year old toddler toboganning down a snow slope on a tin tray. The southerly wind slowly died back to 12 knots, but kept us going well all day and through the night.
Wednesday 7 May
The following wind blew from light to non-existent all day and night and shock-horror, we had to motor for a few hours. Our navigation showed that we would arrive at Russian Bay in the night, which we try never to do, so we plotted and sailed a very wide rounding of Nosy Aranje into the Nosy Bay area so as to reach Russian Bay in daylight.
Thursday 8 May
Isn't it wonderful when a plan comes together? Our dawdling, elongated course used up the night and at 0830, exactly 13 days after leaving Richards Bay we sailed in through the Russian Bay entrance. We spent the day loafing and dozing. Pierre was especially tired, having stood watch from 0300 to 0600 and then stayed on deck for the landfall. Russian Bay is as beautiful as we remember it from our previous visits in June of 1996. We shared it with only one other yacht, 'Jinja', a ketch from Hong Kong.
Our total distance sailed from Richards Bay was 1487 nautical miles. The GPS rhumb line distance is 1274. We averaged 114,38 miles per day and feel that we have done well. Reflecting on the trip we made 3 mistakes.
- not closing our main hatch in the Aghullas current and hence letting a wave jump down below
- ditto in the big following seas of the SW gale
- the navigation error reading 0 instead of 8 from the GPS display
None of these proved serious and I gave us a 9 out of 10 for the success of the voyage. Our watch keeping worked well and we were both rested and ready for any emergency that might arise. We are becoming more and more certain that our own well being is a critical success factor in any cruise. After all the two most important pieces of equipment on board are our selves.
So now on to Hellville on Nosy Be island for the Malagasy check in formalities. Then some messing about in this area before we set sail again for the Seychelles.
Friday 25 July, the day of our planned departure from Salamon, started off windless and overcast, so we didn't leave until mid-day when a light SE wind started to blow. After hoisting the anchor I sailed Senta backwards and forwards near Deja Vu as Pierre tied down the dinghy and packed the anchor away near the shrouds. We always like to keep the ends of the boat light on a sea passage, to help Senta handle the seas better. As we said goodbye, the Deja Vu crew, who were getting ready to leave the following day, took photos of Senta in her 'Go to Sea' dress. We ran towards the pass with reefed main sheeted hard in to slow down. Even so, because of the poor light, we passed close to a bommie and had to do a rapid turn to starboard.
We were both feeling well: no sea sickness in spite of the violent motion and we were eating a little. Not much sleep though as sail handling in the squalls and calms whittled away the time available for rest. The morning 15 knot SE wind slowly died until at lunch time we were bouncing around in the calm between three minor rain squalls like a ball in a pin ball machine. Our second day's NTNR (Noon to Noon Run) was a disappointing 65 miles.
The next morning the wind had backed further to the ESE and we beat northwards at 40 degrees. Our desired course was 80 degrees, so we were a bit miffed, but the wind had worse in store for us. Our noon sight showed us to be 376 miles from Salamon, with an average day's run of 94 miles. The individual figures were 125, 65, 87 and 99. Progress was exhaustingly, painfully slow. On our previous voyage from Salamon to Langkawi at the same time of the year, our average daily mileage after four days out was 132.
A light 5 knot SW wind joined us for an hour at 0730. Then it was sails down again. It was very hot, but the solar panel gave us plenty of power to run fans and the inside of the cabin remained reasonably comfortable.
The morning radio schedule told us that MC Duck and Maloya had left Addu bound for Phuket and that Tramontana and Papagena were to leave Chagos in a few days. So Salamon was slowly emptying and the boats moving eastwards. There was much studying of weather forecasts, faxes and GRIP files, whatever they may be. But as Colin commented they have little meaning near the equator and he encouraged the boats to pick a day and leave. The actual weather is never like that forecast. And that seems to be the case, as the general gripe of the weather forecast addicts goes something like this, 'The forecast said 12 knots SE and we got 25 knots NE' I believe that some people use these modern electronic weather facilities as some sort of a crutch - an excuse not to leave, or a false encouragement to do so and something to blame if things go wrong. We prefer to look out of the hatch and study the skies and horizon.
After mid night we set full main, and after Pierre had set and tweaked the sails we had a wonderful six hour run at 7 knots. The wind became lighter at dawn and our speed dropped to 5 knots. The sun was rising earlier and earlier and night time was coming too fast, so we put our clocks one hour forward to be more in tune with the actual sun time.
Early next morning we poled out the genoa to starboard and ran off goose winged before the SW wind steering 60 degrees on our desired course of 57 degrees to the Nicobar islands, now just over 500 miles away.
Deja Vu's report the next morning showed that she had crossed into the Andaman sea south of the Nicobars with no problems from rough seas, so we decided to do the same. At this stage we were about two days behind them. As she is a fast racing 50 footer, we were reasonably pleased with our progress.
Senta leapt from crest to crest, sometimes almost airborne in the aerated breaking water. I estimated the sustained wind strength at 40 knots with gusts of 50 or more. But I usually underestimate by 5 to 10 knots, so the wind could have been stronger. Also I was estimating apparent wind speed and our down wind boat speed of 8 to 10 knots could be added to my estimate to arrive at the true wind speed.
I nipped down below and switched on our navigation lights. Still the following ship came closer on a course directly aimed at our transom. Back down below again I used the VHF radio to call the pursuer giving his approximate position, our exact position, course and speed, telling him that he was on a collision course and asking him to keep clear, to show me either his red or his green light, but not both. Immediately a voice came back asking me to go to channel 67. Once there the voice said, 'This is an Indian varship, Please identify yourself.' The Nicobars are Indian territory, so I guess the warship was doing his job. He had obviously picked us up on radar and wondered what his mysterious craft was doing approaching without lights. He had probably been calling us on VHF for some time, with no response. I told him our boat name, nationality, last and next ports of call and number of persons on board. The voice spoke in a good educated English accent, except for the V instead of a W. He was very polite, thanked us for our co-operation, didn't chide us for running without lights, told us he would not collide with us, but would pass slowly to starboard and wished us a successful landfall in Langkawi.
After a short but welcome sleep we woke to a visit from Colin and Glynn from Deja Vu when we chatted about our passages and commiserated with each other about the calms and squalls that dogged the earlier part. A long lazy lunch ashore was all that happened that day, apart from lots of loafing and napping.
The day to day life in Salamon atoll was livened up by several interesting events:
