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
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