La Reunion Island

Hello Everyone,

 

It is 5.30 a.m. and the sun has just risen out of a calm pink sea behind us.  Ahead there is a large bank of clouds and above it, the mountains of La Reunion are peaking out.  They look pretty majestic, even from 23 nm. away. We are told that it is much more rugged than Mauritius.  This weekend just past, they had a 170km. running race right across Reunion.  Anne, pity you missed it!

 

We had a lovely week in Mauritius.  We ate lots of Creole food, hired a car and went to all the tourist spots and went for a bushwalk with a large busload of Chinese/Mauritian walkers who were absolutely lovely and most welcoming (John found them through his Couch Surfing network).  We were dropped at a village on the far side of the mountains behind Port Louis, climbed one of the high peaks, walked along a narrow ridge to the next peak and then came down the opposite side of the mountains, to a village close to Port Louis.  Although weary at the end, it was a really good day and we have some lovely photos to show you.

 

We will be in La Reunion for a week.  We are told that nobody speaks English there so I guess I am going to practice my French!

 

Keep well and happy

 

Arti and Dimitri.

La Reunion Island

Hi guys. 

We have just got back from a bush walk with a bunch of mostly Chinese Mauritians. We walked about 6hrs up a mountain behind Port Louis. Great fun and great views. Will bring the boat back to Port Louis tomorrow in preparation for departure. 

Arti & Dimitri 

Grand Baie

Hello Guys

Well, fortunately the cyclone has passed to the north of us.  We are getting some strong wind gusts but nothing our anchor cannot cope with.  Today we have some drizzle but it should start clearing up tomorrow.  We are chilling out in a coffee shop catching up on e-mails and eating!  We are now "honorary" members of the local yacht club.  I think I will buy the club burgee to bring home as a souvenir.

We sailed down to Black River and Tamarin Bay to see the dolphins.  They have a pod of about 50 spinner dolphins there and boats go out for people to swim with them.  

The boat has been doing great speeds in the south east trades.  We do around 7 - 8 kn. and sometimes 9+.  Yesterday we were tipping the bottom rail in the water on our way up the coast.

Love and hugs to all the boys.

Arti and Dimitri

Port Louis

Hi Everyone,

Greetings from the beautiful island of Mauritius.  We arrived safe and sound yesterday morning.  I actually sent you an e-mail yesterday but lost it when I tried to send it as I have a very weak signal.
We arrived at around 7.30 a.m. yesterday and then started the round of immigration, quarantine, customs, harbour security, each with about five forms to fill in!  It reminded me of "Yes Minister".  It took longer than it takes to go through L.A. airport, but at least it was all done at the coffee table on the dock and all concerned were very pleasant..  They all wanted our ship stamp on their documents so it was good that we had one made before we left home.

Well, so that we keep getting some excitement in life, the hurricane "ANAIS", the first of the season and extremely early at that, is now heading straight for Mauritius and will be here in about three days.  It does seem to have reached peak strength (100-125 km/hr.) so hopefully it will weaken by the time it reaches us. They tell us that they are going to put all the yachts in the very inner part of the harbour so hopefully we will not get a storm surge.  Nevertheless, we will just have to cope with whatever eventuates.
Today we are going down the coast to a place called Tamarina where other yachtsmen tell us we can swim with dolphins in the wild.  Thereafter we will go and anchor in Grand Baie to the north of us, until the hurricane is imminent.

It constantly amazes me how many people are sailing around the world in small boats.  Yesterday, together with us on the customs dock and not counting the 22 ARC boats who are going to another part of the harbour, there were two boats from U.S.A., one from Canada, one from Britain, one from South Africa and this morning one has just arrived from Italy. On the British boat is an elderly man (late 70's) on his own.  His wife has just gone back to Britain with a terminal illness and he has remained here to keep sailing! Fancy that!  He and his  wife have been sailing since 1991 and have been to 65 countries.

Port Louis is a mixture of first and third world.  There are tall skyscrapers juxtaposed with old buildings which look as if they are beyond repair.  There are people in business suits, winding their way past pavement vendors selling all the cheap, usual trinkets, fruit and vegetables. Genetically the people appear to be mostly Indian and there are not too many people of European descent.  They are all very friendly and helpful.

Well, I will keep you updated on what eventuates here with the hurricane.

Lots of hugs
Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

 

All is well with us and we are just a day’s sail out of Mauritius.  We should get there early tomorrow morning. It looks as if we will be in time to get securely anchored before we experience our first hurricane!!  It is slowly tracking our way and the weather routers think that it may be an issue for us whilst in Mauritius or Reunion.  Our choice is to try to save the boat and remain at sea and ride it out or anchor and risk having the boat drag onto rocks or into other boats!  Great choice hey?  Our choice is to secure the boat as well as we possible can, take what we can down off the outside and get onto land.  If we lose the boat, well hey, it is insured and we live to buy another boat or to cut our trip short and call it a day.

 

Something interesting happened yesterday.  Just at sunset approximately ten small squid, around 10cm. long (or 4” for you Americans) jumped onto the back deck of the boat.  We were lucky that John noticed them as by the time we got to them to throw them back in, they were already beginning to discharge their ink and make a mess of the boat.  I would never have imagined that something so small could propel itself all that way up onto our deck.  Even though the flying fish are sometimes very tiny (some around 1.3 cm. (1”) they have fins which are like wings and can actually fly.  I found one of them on my bathroom floor.  It had flown through the porthole, poor little thing.

 

We are excited about getting to Mauritius and doing some tourist things.  We will be able to, unless the hurricane comes right over us, in which case we will be doing all we can to get the boat ready to survive it.

 

Lots of hugs and kisses from us.

 

Arti and Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hello Everyone,

 

Well, we have sighted land.  We are just south of the little island of Rodriguez, part of the ancient landbridge between Africa and Asia.  It belongs to Mauritius, but  is 350 nm from the main island.  It is a small island with some interesting caves on the windward side I believe.  We thought about going in there but the entrance through the reef is very small, as is the anchorage and the only chart available is from the 1800’s!  Needless to say, we would have still gone in if the threat of the developing cyclone just north of us was imminent.

 

Yes, believe it or not, there is a developing cyclone!  It is supposedly too early for tropical revolving storms (TRS – hurricane, cyclone, tornado) as they should only form in this part of the year after the middle of November, but there you are.  It is at present at the level of the Maldives and is going to gradually track our way.  Because of it, we went off our route yesterday and headed further south than we had originally intended.  It is presently about 450nm. to the north of us but still too close for comfort.  (1,000nm is the right distance away). It will track south westward, towards us, but by the time it reaches us, we should be in Mauritis itself.  Hopefully it won’t go straight over Mauritius!  The gods must be looking after Artemis V as if there were no pirates around and we were going through the Red Sea, we would have been right at the Maldives now!

One lovely piece of news for the environment – for the last 4,000 nm., from approx. 1 hour out of Darwin, until now, we have not seen one piece of rubbish in the sea.  Since the ocean covers 3/4 of the earth’s surface, I guess that is good news.

 

We have two days to go.  Tomorrow I will use the last of our saltanas for our muesli so the next day we will just have to eat Pan au Chocolat with cafe au lait for breakfast in Mauritius!

 

All our love

 

Dimitri and Arti

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Conditions are mild- low swell, quite comfortable now. Winds are lighter, so we have slowed and are doing a lot of motor-sailing. The boat is going well as are all aboard. Passed a 600ft vessel last night at 1 mile, on it’s way to Durban. Mum passed a second, going the other way. We find the large vessels are very cooperative and professional at avoiding us, and conveniently, the international sea language is English.

Yesterday passed very quickly-Breakfast, sponge bath, morning tea, read a little, adjust sails a few times, Arti and John crocheting & knitting(Arti is trying to persuade John to do a jumper!), lunch, backgammon, watch movies, dinner, prepare boat & ourselves for night watch.  We are 165 miles from Rodriguez island, and are watching a potential tropical storm developing to the North East, so may run to it if needed.

Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi, It’s Wednesday morning , 7 am Mauritius time We have 650 odd miles to go,should arrive on 14th, hope customs work on Sunday, or we are stuck on board until Monday! Arti and John are having their beauty sleep, and so I am doing the report. Seas are calmer, we sailed most of yesterday, wind died and we motored through the night. At 3 am Arti was on watch, and heard a conversation in a strange language (not French), detecting two radar shadows ahead and became concerned about pirates. We are, in theory, in range if they use a mother ship, as they have done in the past. It is unusual for large ships not to have AIS on (Automatic ship identification), so she went “silent”. Our AIS  was put off, as were our lights  and she called me. The radar detected a ship on our path, so we changed course and silently motor-sailed past. At 6 miles we saw their lights, they were a large vessel, showing lights. They wouldn’t be able to see us on radar, as we are fiberglass, and it was too dark to see us at that range, with no lights. They are probably innocent, but we aren’t taking any chances. They are now 25 miles behind us, so we are safe, but will wait before putting AIS on as we can still pick up their VHF transmissions (AIS works on VHF). I don’t think they are pirates as they didn’t say “ARRGH, ME HEARTIES” and Arti says “nor did anyone mention the name Jack Sparrow. Bit scarry Pa.” !

 

Today we will need to motor about 60 miles then should be able to sail. The temp is cool now, sea was 27 degrees celcius, now 22. John has promised  us crumbed Mahi Mahi for dinner. Last night we had an Irish breakfast as dinner—Mashed potato with shallots, onion and bacon in it and whole egg cooked in a hole in it. It was very tasty!

 

Love to all,

 Dimitri & Arti

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Well, today is a lovely warm day with mild seas and scattered clouds in the middle of the Indian. 800 odd miles to go only. Wind will be behind us for next 150 miles ie a days sailing so we are motor sailing & will motor latter when it is dead astern. Yesterday Arti delighted us with a sultan cake, and dinner of Mahi mahi in ginger & shallots with couscous! John must be getting bored, he is getting knitting lessons from Arti. Turns out to be very good at it!

I never told the story of John and the large (1.2  meter) Mahi mahi. We were having dinner, when his reel went Whirr, so he went to the stern and started to fight the fish. We were going 8.5 knots, to fast to bring him in so Arti and I let out sail to no avail. We then hove to, ie turned the boat thru the wind without changing side of sails. Boat of course leaned the opposite way from usual, and everything down bellow went flying. Bang, crash, but we slowed to 3.5 Knots. Meanwhile the fish is leaping out the water, fighting John furiously, and took all his line down to the knot!. As  we slowed the fish caught up  to the boat and went under us , but after much effort John had him at the transom. My net was far to small, so John played him till we got the gaff and brought him aboard! Very exciting, so we delayed dinner till we filleted and froze him. No one minded cold dinner or tidying the boat after that.

 

I love watching John stagger around the boat—he looks like a cartoon of a drunk as he lurches across the cabin,but always reaches his handhold.

Arti & Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

  

Overnight we went  over the Indian Ocean basin.  Do you know that some areas of it are 6,000m deep!  Awesome to think that there are 6km. of water under us.  I wonder how big some of the creatures are down there!  One yacht once reported being stopped dead in the water and when one of the crew looked out of a porthole (portlight for our USA friends), he saw a huge sucker stuck to it.  That must have been an awesome giant squid to have been able to do that. I hope we don’t meet one of them! 

 

Today the swell is smaller 2.5-3.0m so I have once again undertaken some baking (either I have gone nuts or the sailing is doing me some good as my kids will tell you that I never bake!) and am making a sultana cake for morning tea.  Together with coffee frappe it should be quite good.  Tonight I am also going to use a recipe (yes kids,I am actually going to use one!) to cook some of the Mahi Mahi we caught, in the dream pot.

 

Today we have perfect sailing conditions – gentle breeze of around 12-15 kn., small swell, sunshine, no humidity.  Life doesn’t get much better than this!

 

Keep well and keep smiling.

 

All our love

 

Dimitri and Arti

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi everyone,

Well we reach a milestone today,halfway to Mauritius. All well aboard, but rugged conditions. I did early morning shift, sailing in 20-25 knot winds, when a squall hit us  Drenching rain, wind shift to dead behind & increased to 30+ knots (which means all sails swing violently from side to side, and would break fittings if not attended to), so I took us off course, sailing to the wind and called all hands up to the deck.Rather than go off course, we decided to motor, as we still have plenty fuel.All this 1/2 hour before dawn. Motoring exaggerated our side to side motion, from the waves, as the sails normally hold us over to one side on a lean, dampening our motion. Arti jammed herself across our bed to stop herself falling off, and I actually had a short nap while bracing myself across the cockpit (waves come every 10 seconds), amazing to be able to do that asleep! Anyway, wind shifted a little off to the side after 3 hours, so we put up sails again, & were comfortable again, but within 1/2 hr it shifted behind us again. We are now motor sailing which tends to bring apparent wind to the side, and getting away with it. I thought trade wind sailing would be easy, but to-day we will have our work cut out. The sea is a dark blue to-day, overcast with dark black & grey clouds around us, but sunshine and blue sky well to the north.Wave & swell are about 4 meters high, and have been for last two days. Should ease to-morrow .

John and I have a backgammon competition, first to win 5 games, every afternoon. Up till now the boats bucking hasn’t stopped us, but occasionally dice or pieces end up thru hatch in the kitchen! We are evenly matched! Arti has started crocheting to-day, & we are reading ARTEMIS FOWEL books, & watching Merlin TV series. We all keep busy.

 

Love to all, Dimitri & Arti

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

 

Well yesterday started as a quiet, usual day out here and I spent a few hours mesmerized by the beautiful wave formations.  The swell was quite large, around 4m. and the waves would rise up behind us and look as if they would swamp us.  the back of the boat would lift up, the wave would go under us and we would surf down the other side.  I was wishing that each of you could be teleported here for a half hour or so just to have a ride (especially Gwen and Harry)!

Just as we started having dinner yesterday evening, the fishing line began to run.  We stopped the boat as we had something really big on the line.  Well, it turned out to be a 1.2m. Mahi Mahi and when we brought it inside, it took up the whole of the kitchen bench.  It is going to make five BIG meals for each of the three of us.  We weren’t finished  packing the fish away when suddenly the generator stopped running.    It was overheating and after checking all the water intake lines, we decided that the impeller had come to the end of it’s life.  It was late so we decided to leave that job to the morning.

 

This morning, 6.10am. John was up on watch and Dimitri and I were asleep in our back cabin.  All of a sudden we were both catapulted out of bed and ended up on the floor on the opposite side of the cabin.  Even the mattress came with us!  So, who needs an alarm clock?  Tonight I will sleep in a fore-and-aft berth!  Since we were awake, I got up, only to find that one of the boys had left one of the saloon hatches slightly open and all our books on one side of the cabin were wet.  I spent an hour drying them off as best I could and have now given up to write to you. 

 

The boys have pulled the impeller out of the generator and it is indeed the culprit.  It is in about 20 little pieces.  The trick now is to get the new one in.  They are about to do it so tomorrow I will let you know the outcome. John was a great help, retrieving many tiny impeller pieces from the heat exchanger small tubes, and doing all the work.He actually enjoyed it!

 

We have a pretty wild sea out there today with the wind gusting to 30 kn.  It is forecast to remain like this for the next few days so the seas should build....

 

Love and hugs

 Arti and Dimitri

 

p.s  Generator is working again!!

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hello Everyone,

 

Well, we had a good night.  The seas are still quite large but have moderated somewhat to about a 3m swell.  The wind is also less, approximately  20kn. so it is a little easier to move around this morning.

 

To me, the boat has taken on a life of her own.  I have become quite attuned to her and just by listening from below, I know whether she needs to be reefed, needs more sail etc.  As the wind comes up, it whistles in her rigging and she begins to hum each time she accelerates down the face of a wave.  It sounds as if she is singing as she dances along in the waves.  Sometimes, however, it almost sounds as if she is a little old lady with a sore back, moaning she she climbs a wave.  The other consistent noise is the sound of the autopilot which we hear in the back cabin.  That sounds as if she is breathing – rather like a large beast’s breathing, something like a whale out of water, and it is quite reassuring that she is “still alive” and going along happily.

 

Today looks as if it will be a beautiful day and if we do not rock too much, I am thinking of maybe baking us a cake.  I tried my hand at muffins the other day and made 3 doz. chocolate muffins which were much appreciated on board.  I am sure my little boys would have enjoyed them!

 

That’s all from the Indian, south-east of India.

 

Regards

 Arti

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

 

Well yesterday was a day that made another chapter for our book (as Jan K. puts it)!  In fact, it was an excellent day, as in the end, everything turned out well.

 

The morning started, during my morning inspection, with me finding a bolt lying in the scuppers.  Then the hunt began to find where it had come from.  In the end it turned out to be from the furler of the staysail (same problem that we had going to New Caledonia, where the bolts from the headsail furler ended up in the Pacific!).  How it did not roll off this bucking deck or go down one of the deck drains, I do not know.  Anyway, Dimitri and John went forward – strapped on of course- and refitted it and tightened all the other bolts, which were also working their way loose.  It was quite a feat for John seeing as he has been feeling seasick for the last two days.  So... that turned out really well seeing as we do not have any spares  (hope they have some in Mauritius).

 

We had drained the bilge the day before yesterday as we could hear the bilge pump working intermittently (which it does not usually do) and had noticed that there was quite a bit of water in it.  We put it down to the spray coming over the front and getting into the anchor locker and also some rainwater getting down the mast.  Yesterday we could hear the bilge pump working again so had a look into the bilge again.  It was again full of water!  We have a small 12V electric bilge pump that Dimitri rigged up just before we left Sydney so we used it to completely empty the water.  To our surprise, the bilge didn’t empty and we discovered that water was pouring in through one of the pipes.  We traced the pipe back and found that it was coming from the locker where the prop shaft gland is and to our horror found water pouring in between the gland and the prop shaft.  We tried tightening all bolts etc. to try to stop the flow of water, to no avail.  In the end, we wrapped Glad Wrap around it (Dimitri had been told by someone that it works) and it slowed but did not stop the flow.  We got onto the Sat Phone to Alex who managed to speak to the service department at Island Packet Yachts, and to our pleasure, the fix turned out to be relatively easy (for once in our lives, when we needed things to go right, as usually small jobs turn out to be much more difficult than anticipated, not the other way around).  We had anticipated having to slip the boat on the other end to fix it as the prop shaft has to come off to replace the gland.  So..  the leak has been stopped which means we will not have to bail the bilge every hour for the next 10 days!  In the end, it turned out to be a pretty good day!  Alex, thank you so much for all your help!

 

We are now pretty much exactly half way across the Indian Ocean.  Over the last 24 hours we have not seen any shipping – I guess the ships we were seeing earlier were on a direct route between South African and Singapore/China.  We are having perfect sailing conditions 24 kn. wind and we are moving at around 8 kn.  The swell is still quite large – around 3.5 – 4m. so it is a roller coaster ride at a 45 degree angle and everything we do becomes a challenge.  Try cooking on a bucking horse sometime!

 

Hopefully today will be uneventful as we prefer no news rather than too much excitement!

 

Hugs and Kisses

 Arti and Dimitri.

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

 

It is 6.30am here and I have been snuggled up against my pillow in the cockpit, with a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise.  Funny thing about that – sunrise never seems to be as spectacular as sunset.  The colours all seem more washed-out, although it is still very pretty.  The sea has moderated somewhat since yesterday and we are not being thrown around quite as much. 

 

We had a busy night as, surprisingly, there is quite a bit of shipping here.  I guess that, as we are on a Great Circle Route, the ships are using much the same coordinates as us.  We have our radar and AIS (Automatic identification of ships) alarms set, so everytime something comes within 9nm of us, the alarms go off and, of course, wake everyone on the boat.  As Dimitri says, the upside is that if something does go wrong for us, there would be help nearby for us, within a few hours. 

 

We still have a good wind this morning and are travelling around 7kn.  The swell is on our quarter (back left) and therefore is fairly comfortable.  The forecast is for it to remain like this all across the Indian, with some stronger winds later during the trip, although thankfully, no cyclone activity.  We have now done 425nm since we left Cocos Keeling Is. so now there are only 1,937nm left to Mauritius.  At this rate we should get there on 15th.

 

I am reading Jessica Watson’s book about her circumnavigation.  She has the most amazingly positive outlook on life and is an absolute inspiration.  I think everyone should read it, not so much for her story, but for the lessons we could  learn about how to deal with life in general – thanks for the book Helen, it is great.

  

Many hugs and kisses

 Arti and Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Mauritius

Hi Everyone,

Day 3 at sea again, and just a short description of life at sea. Before departure a crappy job, unblocking a toilet pipe—turned out to have a large stick in it, must have been there since manufacture of boat—what a mess, now sorted. Arti spilt coffee and washed a carpet yesterday! We haven’t caught any fish, discovering that our swivel has rusted and we lost our favourite ie  most successful lure! We have a beam sea of about 3 meters with waves of 1 to 2 meters, so we rock wildly, leaning over all the time, making meals very interesting to prepare & eat! We have fresh produce now, a real joy! Mum makes great food out here! We all muck in & help, trying to let Arti rest her sore shoulder. John used to be a “fry chef” & is very handy in the kitchen. No one has been ill, we all cope well with the movement.

Night watch is interesting and fun. It’s cooler, and it pleasant sleeping in the cockpit with the wind on your face, even if frequently waking. We use radar, AIS, and watching at night. Last night we came close to a 780 Foot Japanese ship- without asking, they diverted course to avoid us.  The full moon make it look like daylight when our night vision is “on”. It’s cloudy and cool, and rain will be welcome as it cleans the boat af all the encrusted salt. You only need to wipe your hand on a surface, shake it over you food, & hey presto, Indian ocean sea salt!

Arti & I pass the time reading,  watching Merlin & All creatures great & small, John watches movies & practices guitar.

I have had a wind shift & need to adjust sails, so bye for now.

 

Love to all, Dimitri

At Sea - On route to Muritius

Hi All,

We had a really shitty job yesterday.  The back toilet blocked once again and didn’t come right over 24 hrs. so yesterday we had to disconnect the inlet pipe to the pump.  You will never guess what came out of the pipe – a 2cmx2cmx35cm piece of wood!  It must have been in the pipe when they initially connected it up or how else would it have got there.  The pipe has a sharp right angle just below the toilet bowl.  Anyway, while we were doing the job, guess what spilt over, all over the locker.  It took us ages to clean, the locker still smells but the blowies had a field day.  Hopefully the problem with that toilet is solved now.

Arti & Dimitri