Hello Guys,
I hope you are all well. So far, we are having a great trip. No mishaps and we are slowly instituting a lot of procedures to protect our equipment, so that we do not have any damage occurring – there are no yacht chandlers and shipwrights in the middle of the Indian Ocean!
For the first week, we had little wind. We did a lot of motoring, motor sailing and flying our beautiful big red gennaker. This week the wind has come up. We are very happy about this and are sailing along at around 8kn, However, as always, together with the wind we have a fairly large swell (approx 4m), so life has become a little more difficult, doing everything at a 40 deg. angle – one has to time the opening of a cupboard so that everything doesn’t spill onto the floor as the boat leans.
During our first week, we caught quite a few fish – one Bonito, 3 Tuna and a Mahi Mahi (Dorado, Dolphin fish). Eating fresh fish, directly out of the sea is a great experience, unlike any fish we get in the shops. Fortunately we have John to do the preparation as neither Dimitri nor I would be game to. Today we caught a very large Mahi Mahi and it has made two very large fillets, so again, we will eat fish tonight. Tell the boys that we have taken photos of all the fish and will send them some from Mauritius if we have internet there. We have also seen quite a few flying fish, more and more the further we go into the Indian Ocean. Suddenly there will be a burst of spray nearby and a school of them will burst from the sea and fly away from the boat. Most mornings we find a few on our deck that have landed there in the night, I guess because they cannot see us at night.
We are seeing very few ships, although yesterday we saw an Indonesian fishing boat in the distance. With the binoculars it seemed as if there were a lot of people on board, so maybe another refugee boat…...
Each day, in the Timor Sea, we were overflown by the Australian Coastal Patrol plane. The first day they wanted to know details of who we were, where we were headed etc. Thereafter they were very friendly, telling us that they could see no areas of wind from up there etc. It is kind of sad that they are now out of range, as it was good to know that we were being monitored by them.
Life has taken on a routine – breakfast, a bit of reading and learning French (John is learning Spanish), lunch, an afternoon nap so that we are OK for our night watches, a bit of maintenance, the odd movie and cooking and eating. It is amazing how the day goes! We should get to Cocos Keeling Is. On 27th or 28th, at which stage we will be 1/3 of the way across the Indian Ocean. Cocos Keeling Is consists of a series of small islands, Home Island being where the Malay population live and West Is. where the airport and the shops are. There is no Marina there so we will be at anchor. We will probably stay there for two days and will probably have to take on our diesel and water by jerrycan, so Dimitri and John will have their work cut out (I will do the supervising)! The trip from Cocos Keeling Island to Mauritius is 2,300nm. and should take us around 3 weeks. Hopefully I will be able to get some internet connection there so that I can write more often. The leg of the journey between Cocos and Mauritius will be the longest leg until we reach Europe although it will not be the hardest. I anticipate, with trepidation, the leg between Mauritius and Cape Town as it will be a fast current against the strong South Easter wind. We are planning to stop in Durban and maybe rent a car and go to the Northern Natal game parks so if anyone wants to join us, we would love to travel with you.
John, understandably wants to see South Africa and will do some travelling while we fly back to Sydney for Christmas. It is really good having him on board as he is strong and is happy to do the heavy winching. He is also happy to help with everything else and has a very easy-going personality.
So…. Things are good for us just now. I hope things are going well with all of you. It will be good to see everyone again when we get back to Sydney.
Regards, love, kisses, hugs.
Arti and Dimitri.
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