15 March 2017 Sri Lanka to Uligama, Maldives (Day 1)
Once again, we were up at the crack of dawn. While we were having breakfast and getting ready to sail, we ran the watermaker to top up our tanks. By 07:00 we were on our way, motoring west in very calm seas. The island of Sri Lanka is surrounded by water over 2,000 metres deep and the steeply sloping sea bed attracts lots of pelagic fish and whales. We were lucky enough to see a whale blowing on the surface, but it was too far away to identify – it was probably a Blue Whale, which are common in this area.
It was a frustrating day, with very little wind. Every couple of hours, we’d get a teaser when the wind picked up a few knots, but after ten minutes we’d be rolling sails away and back to motoring.
There was a lot of garbage in the water and, sure enough, around lunch time, we heard a loud rattling noise from the stern as our rope stripper dealt with something wrapped around the propeller. We stopped the boat and I dived down with a kitchen knife to chop off the remains of a large rice sack. The stripper had done its job of cutting the sack allowing the propeller to continue to rotate (and not stalling the engine), but there was still a large amount of sack covering the propeller.
While on the subject of the propeller, after scraping it clean the other day, it’s singing again. We’ve found that at 1500 rpm, it’s quiet, but above that we get the damn resonating sound. In these calm seas, we go along at 5 knots at 1500 rpm, so it’s not too much of a problem, but when we get to a secure anchorage in the Maldives, I’m very tempted to remove the propeller and file on some anti-singing edges.
While I was bored this afternoon, I took my guitar tuner into the aft cabin and I can report that the resonating frequency of our Singing Ringing Propeller is 659.26 Hz which is the high E-string on a guitar.
By the late afternoon, huge clouds were gathering around us and, as the sun went down, we could see many rain squalls. Half an hour later, the dark sky was illuminated by lightning flashes. My 7-10 watch was miserable. The wind was constantly veering and backing by as much as 180 degrees in 10 minutes. The wind picked up to 20 knots at one point, but we didn’t get any more. We had rain varying from light drizzle to a torrential down pour.
Eventually, after a few sail changes, I settled with two reefs in the main and no head sails, motor sailing and easing the main out if the wind was too strong. The lightning continued for four hours and at times was terrifying with huge bolts of lightning leaping from the low clouds and striking the sea. I changed course a couple of times when there was consistent forked lightning ahead of us. Fortunately, the closest strike was ½ mile away (2 seconds from seeing the lightning to the thunder), but it was a tense time.
During Glenys’s 10-1 watch, the squalls moved off north and it was lovely when I got up at 01:00 – I even managed to sail for an hour. Unfortunately, the skies remained overcast, so we didn’t get the benefit of the full moon, although it was just bright enough to see the horizon.
16 March 2017 Sri Lanka to Uligama, Maldives (Day 2)
Today we had very changeable conditions. Dawn brought us grey overcast skies, with low cloud and signs of darker rain squalls around us. By 07:30, we had a 10 knot wind from the south-east, so we pulled out the sails and turned off the engine. Half an hour later, the wind increased rapidly to 20-25 knots from the SSW, putting us hard on the wind and forcing us to reduce sail to 2 reefs in the main and just the staysail.
We had a romp of a sail for the next three hours, but the wind slowly dropped and veered, forcing us to let out more sail and bear away north of our rhumb line. On the plus side, the squalls seemed to be heading north, leaving brighter skies behind. Eventually, we were being forced too far north, so I tacked south-west, started the engine and motor-sailed directly into the 2 metre waves, which was unpleasant, but at least we were heading towards brighter weather.
By midday, we were back on our rhumb-line course, motoring into a 10 knot west wind, with a horrible sloppy, confused sea, which was left over from the morning’s strong winds. As the afternoon wore on, the seas calmed down and the wind dropped to 5 knots from the north-west, finally giving us a pleasant motor-sailing angle.
At dusk, we had clear skies above us and scattered clouds on the horizon, giving us a nice sunset. On my 7-10 watch, the stars came out and I was able to see the Plough pointing north, the Southern Cross pointing south and Orion slowly leading us west. To the north, I could see the loom of lights radiating from India even though the coast was 100 miles away – extreme light pollution.
The nearly full moon came out just before our 22:00 watch change and the rest of the night was fabulous – nil wind, glassy seas, bright stars. What a change from the misery of last night.
17 March 2017 Sri Lanka to Uligama, Maldives (Day 3)
When I dragged myself out of bed at 07:00 this morning, we had no wind at all and we were gliding through a glassy calm sea, which continued all day. I spent the morning reading up on the history and geography of the Maldives - there are thousands of small islands and reefs scattered through the twenty or so major atolls.
We’re only planning to stay in the Maldives for 60 days, so we need to prioritise where we stop. There’s also about 500 miles of sailing between Uligama in the north to Gan in the south, so that’s going to take up some of our time – probably 20 out of our 60 days will be spent sailing between anchorages. If we stop in each anchorage for 2 days then we can only visit 20 anchorages...
By noon, the sun was beating down and there was no sign of any wind, so we went into full “tramp” mode - rolled away the main sail; and then put up the boom awning and uber-scoop. After that, it was much cooler in the cockpit and aft cabin.
Glenys has been having a nightmare with the fresh food that she bought in Sri Lanka. After only one day, she noticed a nasty “rotting cabbage” smell and found that the cabbage bought from the fresh market was starting to go. Dodgy leaves were removed and the cabbage is in the fridge. Bread has gone mouldy in three days, bananas have ripened quickly and grown mould, an avocado went off and she had to throw away three mouldy tangerines. Goodness knows why stuff has gone off so quickly.
During the afternoon, Glenys noticed a brown object in the water - we first thought it was a piece of flotsam. We spotted another object a minutes later, so went over to investigate and found that they were juvenile turtles. They had lots of green seaweed on their backs, so they look like they spend a lot of time floating on the surface. It was almost like they were sleeping because when we came close they slowly roused themselves and swam away – they also seemed to have difficulty submerging – very odd.
We had a nice encounter with a pod of a dozen Short Fin Pilot Whales. They were slowly making their way south-west, but allowed us to get within 50 metres. I have lots of photographs of grey fins barely sticking out of the water – they aren’t the most energetic creatures that we’ve seen.
The lack of wind continued into the evening, so we slowly motored towards our destination – at sunset, we had 85 miles to go. The night was more of the same – motoring and motoring. At least we had a beautiful starry sky, even better than last night.
18 March 2017 Sri Lanka to Uligama, Maldives (Day 4)
At sunrise, Glenys got our first glimpse of land, but it took us another four hours to get to Uligama. It was low tide and overcast when we arrived, and the preferred anchorage is a small 70 metre wide patch of sand in the middle of the fringing reef. We had several attempts to cross the reef, but kept backing off when the depth dropped below 3 metres with bommies sticking up around us. Eventually, we found a way through and anchored in 3.5 metres depth in gorgeous white sand at 07°05.067N 072°55.164E.
We anchored in the middle of the sand patch and I only put out 15 metres of chain to reduce our swinging circle. The anchor slammed into the sand, but we were still nervous about being in the middle of the coral with no clear escape route, so I dropped a second anchor about 15 metres away from the primary anchor, which will help me sleep tonight - I’m such a wimp…
As soon as we’d anchored, our agent, Hammad of Real Sea Hawks, called us on the VHF radio and said that the officials would be coming out in 30 minutes to clear us in. Bang on time, four officers from the Coast Guard, Immigration, Customs and Health came out in a small boat and piled into our cockpit. The agent was very efficient and had the various forms ready for me to stamp and sign. Most of the forms were standard apart from the Coast Guard declaration which lists illegal items. As well as the usual firearms and drugs, other illegal items included alcohol, pig, dog and pork - we are definitely in a strict Muslim country. The formalities were all finished within 30 minutes. The agent might cost a lot of money, but provide a good service - Hammad even brought out two SIM cards, so we were online by midday.
After putting the dinghy into the water and having lunch, we went for a snorkel. The coral inside most of the Maldivian atolls was badly damaged by a major bleaching event a year ago, but this area seems to be only slightly affected. The reef next to the anchorage had healthy hard corals, but not much soft coral. There are also plenty of fish - Cow Tail Stingrays under our boat and I had a curious Nurse Shark circle me.
Later in the afternoon, we ventured into town. Hammad met us at the dock and took us to a tiny cafe, where we had a cup of tea and some “short eats”, which are small samosas and other spicy snacks. While we were there we topped up our SIM cards, so that we now have 4GB each. We stopped off at a small shop, where Glenys bought some of their nice-looking potatoes and some other fruit and vegetables, some of which are grown hydroponically at a nearby island.
We all went for a stroll around the small village, which is laid out on a very rectangular grid. The streets are hard packed sand and the Older Houses are built of Coral Rubble cemented together. Hammad told us that the use of coral is not allowed anymore and they build with cement blocks now. There are 500 people living in the village, but a third of them live away, working on resorts and at the capital, Male.
19 March 2017 Uligama, Maldives
We had a day pottering about on the boat, waiting for our Cruising Permit. Glenys jumped in the water and scrubbed our water line, which was looking a little “green”. I checked the engine after our 70 hour marathon and all looks good, which is a relief. I did some admin catching up on emails.
There’s a bit of a fuss because the Maldivian government has recently imposed a monthly fee for anchoring in Hulhumale (near Male), which is $50US/metre. This means that we would be charged $660USD, even if we only stop there for a few days. As one cruiser has wryly said “There’s no anchorage in the world worth $600 per month”. It looks like we’ll be sailing past the capital of the Maldives.
While on the subject of fees, we were planning to stop at the Seychelles for a couple of weeks in July, but we’ve just found out that the Customs in the Seychelles are now charging a $225 "Launch fee" for customs to come out to a yacht entering the main town of Mahe. The clearance fees have gone up from $90US to $315US - a 300% increase. I’ve sent off a whinging email to various government officials in the Seychelles to try to get them to overturn this huge fee, but I suspect that we’ll be avoiding the Seychelles as well.
The Indian Ocean is rapidly turning into an expensive trip. The Andamans cost us $300US with visas and port fees; Sri Lanka cost $450US for agent’s fees, visas and port fees; the Maldives is costing $1,200US in agent’s fees, visas and port fees. That works out to just over $100US per week for clearance fees alone.
Yesterday’s approach to the anchorage over the reef was a little fraught, so I went out in the dinghy with our portable depth sounder and found that there’s a better route into the anchorage even in poor light conditions. I suggest that you line up with the dredged channel into the town’s small harbour and at the first marker pole turn 90 degrees to port, following a sandy channel into the anchorage. It’s easy to see the sandy channel and there’s at least 4 metres of depth all the way into the anchorage (which is 3.5 metres deep). Waypoints would be: 07°04.942N 072°55.161E; 07°04.964N 072°55.203E; 07°05.006N 072°55.194E. Anchor at 07°05.067N 072°55.164E.
The Cruising Permit never turned up. We were told that, being a Sunday, there was a backlog of work at the government office and they didn’t file our application on their computer system correctly, so our agent wasn’t able to pay the fee - we should get it all resolved tomorrow.
Since we were hanging about for the afternoon, I asked Hammad to arrange diesel for us. A couple of hours later a wooden boat turned up with a load of 20 litre containers filled with diesel. The crew very efficiently siphoned the fuel in to our tank through our diesel filter funnel. I’m glad that I used the filter because there was quite a bit of water and dirt in the fuel. The fuel cost $0.89US/litre.
A couple of times during the day, we went snorkelling on the nearby reef and saw a Green Turtle, lots of colourful Powder Blue Surgeonfish and two Blacktip Reef Sharks.
During the day, I had various discussions with Hammad and Assad about the Cruising Permit and have discovered that the document lists the places that we’re allowed to “visit”. After much dialogue, it appears that we are not allowed to go ashore at any “inhabited” islands apart from four places - Uligama, Kulhudhuffushi, Hulhumale/Male and Gan.
Not only is this going to prevent us from having a look around small villages and meeting the locals, but we won’t be able to buy provisions anywhere apart from the four named towns. To make matters worse, we won’t be able to visit Male because of the new high anchoring fees, so we’re faced with a 450 mile stretch of the country between Kulhudhuffushi and Gan, where we won’t be able to go ashore or buy food.
I’ve been told that this has always been the case, but in the past, cruisers have visited towns without any problems. However, Assad tells me that last year a French Yacht sold alcohol to some locals, which the Muslims regard being as bad as illegal drugs, so the Customs have clamped down and don’t trust sailors any more. Apparently, they are actively checking for infringements of the cruising permit and a fine of $2,000US could be enforced.
There’s a Sail Maldives Rally in progress, which started three weeks ago. They have an itinerary that is visiting many inhabited islands where we are not allowed to go. I’ve been told that they have special dispensation from the government to be able to do this. Unfortunately, they are 200 miles south of us and we’ve missed that opportunity.
I’m so annoyed by this that I’ve send a couple of formal emails to Assad, focussing on the provisioning problem and requesting that another dozen towns be included on our Cruising Permit. My logic is that there should be at least one town in each major Atoll, which we are allowed to visit to buy food and supplies. Assad says that he’s going to send the emails onto the relevant authorities - don’t hold your breath.
In the evening, a small fishing boat came into the anchorage and cruised past us with lights blasting away. They had two poles rigged out to either side of the boat, with three guys wearing snorkelling gear hanging onto each pole. Every so often, the divers would let go and swim over the reef with dive torches. I later discovered that they are looking for lobster to sell to the tourist resorts.