Darwin

Hi Everyone,  Well the big day has finally arrived!!  At 8am this morning we collect some fuel and then we will take off for Cocos Keeling Island, 2,000nm away, a third of the way across the Indian Ocean, but half way between Darwin and Mauritius.  From Cocos, it is  another 2,300nm to Mauritius so we should arrive in Mauritius  in about six weeks. We are pretty excited.  We have worked very hard over the last few days, getting everything ready, even though the heat and humidity did everything to get the better of us!   John, our new crew member, is a delightful, very easy-going young man and is very easy to get along with.  He is happy to eat anything, works very hard and is quite happy to fit in with whatever is going.  I think we have been very lucky to find such a pleasant person to crew for us.  He is also pretty brave undertaking such a big trip considering he has never been to sea and knows nothing about sailing.  He is bright and is learning fast so I am sure that by the time he leaves us, he will be a pretty competent sailor.  Last night we went to the markets at Mindal Beach, a Darwin feature in winter time.  We saw aboriginal didgeridoos being played and a whole lot of aboriginal teenagers dancing to them. The guy on the didgeridoos had four electronic didgeridoos was pretty good.  The wind out of Darwin is going to be light for the next day or two.  We will be able to get fuel at Cocos Keeling so we may motor for some of the time.  We cannot motor all the way however, as we only have 1,000nm range.  We will spend two days on Cocos (we hear that there are two restaurants there) and plan to go south of Ashmore Reef on our way there, but may change our mind and stop there overnight if we are tired.  We will not be giving you updates on www.skipr.com as we get closer to Mauritius as we do not want to alert pirates to our position.  Once we arrive there and are out of their usual range, we will feed in all our positions.  Keep well and lots of kisses and hugs to all of you.  Dimitri and Arti.