22 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 1)
It rained a little last night, but we woke to good weather, with a thin layer of cloud and a 10-15 knot South-east wind. With an eight day passage ahead of us, we didn’t bother to set the alarm, but we were still up at 07:00 and pulled up the anchor an hour later. Despite rather poor light, we safely negotiated the various reefs in the atoll and crossed the fringing reef without any problems.
For the first 30 minutes, we were in the lee of the atoll, so with 12 knots of wind and flat seas, we had a lovely start to the passage. The seas soon picked up to 1-2 metres and the wind increased to 15-20 knots from slightly south of south-east. This put us on a close reach with the wind at 60 degrees on the port bow, so the motion became bouncy, but we managed to sail at around 7 knots for most of the day. “Hokulea” left just after us, but being a 53 foot catamaran, they soon overtook us and disappeared ahead.
We took the western route around the Great Chagos Bank, so our course started off at 235 degrees and gradually changed to 200 degrees as we skirted the reefs and islands. Fortunately, the wind backed during the day, so we remained at 60 degrees on the wind.
Just before sunset, we had 18-22 knots of wind and we were screaming along at 7.3 knots with a reef in the mainsail, a full genoa and staysail. This was far too exciting for overnight, so we completely rolled away the genoa and had a much more relaxing motion at 6 to 6.5 knots. It was a clear night, with lots of stars, but unfortunately, there was no moon.
After midnight, the wind dropped to 10-15 knots, so we had to unfurl some of the genoa to maintain 5.5 to 6 knots. The waves also decreased a little, making it a very pleasant sail.
23 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 2)
Just after dawn, the wind picked up to above 20 knots, so we rolled away the genoa again and pulled out the staysail. By 10:00, we’d cleared the south-west corner of the Great Chagos Bank and were able to try to steer south.
The general trend in the weather for this passage is for the winds to increase by 10-15 knots as we head south – by the time that we are approaching Rodrigues, we are expecting the wind to be SSE at 25-30 knots. Our strategy is to make sure that we have a downwind approach to our destination by aiming for a waypoint 150 miles east of Rodrigues (19°S 66°E).
Rather than heading along the rhumb line to this waypoint, we want to hedge our bets and keep well east. We‘re planning to sail directly south for a couple of days (to 12°S 70°40E) and then, as the wind and waves increase, we’ll bear away 10 degrees for another two days (to 17°S 60°E). That route should put us in a good position for a downwind run to Rodrigues.
In the morning, we struggled to head south, only managing a course of 190°, but the wind backed a little in the afternoon and we were just able to sail a course of 180° with the wind at 45° apparent. Now that we’ve become used to living at a 20 degree angle, it was quite pleasant beating into the 15-20 knot winds with lovely blue skies. We occasionally had a big wave slap into the bow, sending a wall of water along the decks, but we were able maintain 6 knots during the day.
We encountered our first squall just before sunset. The wind picked up to 25 knots, so we reefed the genoa, but it was very short-lived, nothing like the huge squalls we encountered in the ITCZ. In fact, the last two days has been the best sailing weather that we’ve had for months. The wind had been so consistent that we didn’t bother to put in our usual extra reefs as night fell.
However, during the night, we passed through a number of squalls, which gave us variable winds from 12 to 28 knots and some rain patches. On her 10-1 watch, Glenys rolled away the genoa and pulled out the staysail, which together with a reef in the main, gave us a good sail plan to weather the lulls and the stronger wind patches. As the night drew on, the wind slowly backed, so that we were able to lay a course of 180° with the wind at 70° apparent.
By the end of my 1-4 watch, the wind was consistently 20-23 knots, so I put a second reef in the main and we still screamed along at 7 knots with the wind at 70° apparent. Glenys had 28 knot winds on her 4-7 watch, so she had to reef the staysail a couple of times. It’s getting tougher.
24 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 3)
Daylight revealed grey skies and confused waves. There was a 2½ to 3 metre swell from the south-east with 1 metre wind waves coming from different directions, churning up the surface of the water. During the morning, we maintained our 180° course with 20-28 knot winds at 70 degrees apparent, so we were able to bash along at 6 to 7 knots.
The ride became much bouncier and we were taking more water over the deck, with occasional loud bangs as waves hit our port side and sent water hurtling over our sprayhood and bimini. We have Glenys’ new dodger fastened low on the guard rails and the port side flap zipped onto the bimini, so for the time being we’re keeping most of the water out of the cockpit.
Last night, I could hear an intermittent groaning noise, which I suspected came from the block on the running backstay. It’s very unsettling to hear a new noise and, in the dark of the night, my imagination ran wild. In my mind, I saw the running backstay breaking, causing the mast to collapse, stranding us in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I didn’t sleep very well.
When I got up, I greased the bearings in the block and retied a piece of bungee cord holding the block up. Thankfully, the noise has stopped and I suspect that it was just the bungee cord rubbing on the rope of the running backstay.
A little more worrying is that the front lower shroud on the leeward side of the mast is loose. I tightened the shroud before we left Chagos, but it’s still wobbling about when we bash into a wave. I suspect that the mast is “panting” and bending forward when under load. When I look up the mast, I can’t see any serious problem, but something is compressing or bending causing the shroud to go loose. I’ll have to sort it out when we get to Rodrigues, but in the meantime all I can do is to worry.
During the afternoon, the skies cleared and the wind dropped to a more pleasant 18-22 knots, but veered by 20 degrees, putting us hard on the wind again and forcing us onto a course of 190°. The wind stayed stable into the night, so I amended our planned route.
We’re now heading for a waypoint at 15°S 69°40E, which leaves us on this course of 190° for another 2 days. We’ll then head for 19°S 66°E, which will put us on a course of 220° for 2 days when the winds are stronger and then it’s downwind for a day to Rodrigues. I’m glad that we adopted the strategy of heading directly south for as long as we could – I think that trying to sail the rhumb line would give much tougher legs at the end of the passage where the winds are historically stronger.
The night stayed free of squalls, so we had a star filled sky – it would have been lovely, if we weren’t heeled over at 20 degrees and being thrown around by the 2½ metre seas.
25 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 4)
At dawn, the sky looked like the depths of Mordor – dark and forbidding. The wind veered by 20 degrees, so Glenys headed 20 degrees downwind, rolled away the genoa and pulled out the staysail, bracing herself for the storm. The wind picked up by 3 knots and it rained a bit, then the wind dropped – a damp squib.
After breakfast, the wind dropped to 15-20 knots and the waves settled down a bit, so I tackled the sloppy rigging. We ran downwind and I tightened all of the lower shrouds by one full turn each and tightened the cap shrouds by ½ turn. It seems to have sorted out my wobbly lower shroud. The job took 20 minutes, so we only lost 2 miles of our precious easting.
During the day, we crossed the line of the Great Circle route from South Africa to South-east Asia, so we had dozens of big tankers and cargo ships crossing our path. However, we only knew they were there from their AIS signals, we didn’t actually see any ships.
Life’s very tedious at the moment. The motion is so chaotic that all we can do is read, eat and sleep (repeat three times a day). We don’t feel seasick, just bored. This morning, we started talking about living in a house on dry land – there must be a Freudian reason for that...
In the afternoon, the wind remained at 15-20 knots, but veered a tiny bit more, so that we could only just hold a course of 195° across the ground. We had one strange event, where we went under a cloud and at the other side there was no wind at all. We bobbed about, becalmed, for 15 minutes until the wind came back and then we were off again at 5-6 knots.
I’ve been having a SSB radio chat with “Jackster” every evening at 17:00, giving them a position report – it’s nice to know that other people are out there. Dave & Jacqui are enjoying themselves so much that they’re going to extend their Chagos permit for a further week - they’ll catch us up in a couple of weeks.
Yesterday, I sent an email to our friends Graham and Karen on “Red Herring” giving them our radio schedule and I was delighted that they came up on air – we’ve not seen them for 18 months. They’re in Cocoas Keeling and will be leaving for Rodrigues on the 30th May. It’s a 2000 mile passage, so we should be seeing them in the middle of June.
The night was very pleasant with a 15-20 knot wind and mostly clear, starry skies – unfortunately no moon. We went through a few patches of light winds every so often, but they only lasted a few minutes, presumably after clouds went over. The waves were less rough than previous nights. Ships continued to trundle across our route and Glenys called one up in her 10-1 watch to check that he’d seen us. He’d already spotted us on AIS, but immediately did a course change to stay well clear.
26 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 5)
At 07:00, we’d sailed 570 miles with 530 miles to go – over half way, Yahoo! By staying hard on the wind for 4 days, we’d done most of the hard work and could now look forward to easing the sheets and hopefully have a more pleasant run down to Rodrigues.
It was a lovely morning with fluffy clouds in a blue sky. After breakfast, the wind was 15-20 knots and we were managing to hold our desired course of 190°. Unfortunately, the wind started to drop and, by lunchtime, we only had 10 knots of wind. To make matters worse, the wind also veered so that we could only hold a course of 215°. We pulled out all of our sails and bobbed along at 4-5 knots. The strange thing was that the sky above us was solid blue, but we could see cumulus clouds miles away surrounding us. It was like we were in our own private high pressure system.
When I went for my afternoon nap at 13:30, the wind had returned to 15-20 knots and backed to south-east so that we could hold a course of 195° again. As the afternoon wore on, Glenys watched the approach of a bank of clouds with a high, grey stratus layer. This turned into a dark line of clouds bringing 25 knots of wind as it passed over, forcing me out of bed when I heard Glenys reefing sails.
We were still 20 miles from our next turning point, but with the heavier winds, we bore away and head on a new course of 220°. Unfortunately, this 20° degree change wasn’t enough to put the wind abaft the beam, but at 70-80° apparent it was much better than being hard on the wind. As the front passed overhead, we had lashing rain, so we zipped the various rain panels onto our bimini and prepared to hunker down for the night.
The next five hours were miserable with the wind strength varying from 5 knots to 25 knots and the direction swinging between north-east and south. The seas became very unsettled, it kept raining and, as night fell, it was as black as the ace of spades.
We had a rain shower at 18:30, after which then dropped to nearly nothing, so we turned on the engine and motored for an hour. There was an ulterior motive for this – we wanted some hot water. It’s been getting steadily colder as we head south and it’s becoming tough to have a cold shower at night. It was cold enough on my 7-10 night watch to wear a fleece jacket.
At 20:00, we had 25 knot winds from the south-east for 10 minutes. Then within 1 minute, the wind backed 60°, dropped to 12 knots and then slowly continued to back until it was from the north-east! I had to steer south to make sure that the main didn’t gybe. Finally by 21:30, the stars peeked out and the wind settled back to 15-20 knots from the south-east. By the time that I went off watch at 22:00, I was sick and tired of reefing and adjusting sails.
Glenys’ 10-1 watch was even worse. The wind would drop to 10 knots, so we were hardly moving and then go up to 28 knots, so she had to run down wind and reef the staysail. Finally, at 00:30, she was hit by lashing rain and 35-40 knot winds. The wind veered by 30 degrees and was so strong that the autopilot wasn’t able to overcome the weather helm and the boat luffed up.
I leapt out of bed when I heard her shouting and the sails flogging in the gale force winds. It was mayhem in the cockpit. I dashed behind the wheel, turned the autopilot off and managed to turn the boat downwind. Unfortunately, the boat turned too fast and before I could blink, the main sail crash-gybed.
Fortunately, I’d put a preventer on the boom, which slowed down the gybe a little. I crash-gybed the main back to port tack and ran with the wind on my port quarter, switching to the autopilot which steers better than I do. The 35 knot winds and rain continued for ten minutes before gradually backing and dropping down to a more manageable 20-25 knots, allowing us to resume our course of 220°. Glenys went to bed and I started my 1-4 watch.
It was nice for the first 30 minutes, with 17-22 knot winds Then I felt a strong gust and rain pelted down. I dived for the wheel and steered west, heading downwind as another 30-35 knot system hit us. For the next hour, I stood behind the wheel with winds between 25 and 35 knots, helping the autopilot in the bigger gusts. When the wind finally dropped to 20-25 knots, I went on deck, put the fourth reef into the main sail; and returned us to our course of 220°. Thirty minutes later, we had another 30 knot spat, but with the heavily reefed main, the boat felt a little more in control.
It was very frustrating because there was no moon and it was pitch black. We couldn’t see anything outside the cockpit and had no indication of an approaching squall. There was seconds between the first gust and the gale-force winds. Once running downwind, we had no outside reference to steer towards and had to rely on our instruments.
At the start of Glenys’ 4-7 watch, it was obvious that this horrible weather was here for a while, so I rolled away all of the main sail, leaving only a reefed staysail. It meant that we were only sailing at 4-5 knots, but at least we were heading in the right direction and wouldn’t need to keep running downwind every time the wind increased. Glenys had similar conditions for her 3 hour watch, with 22-35 knot winds and growing seas until dawn.
27 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 6)
At dawn, the sea was a churning cauldron, with 4 metre waves and breaking white caps as far as the eye could see. Winds of 25-35 knots were whistling through the rigging and the skies were grey and dismal. We were on a beam reach, so the waves were hitting us side-on, occasionally tipping us over beyond 45° and sending walls of water over the deck. Fortunately, the bimini side flap and the new dodger that Glenys made recently are doing a sterling job of keeping water out of the cockpit.
Every morning, I’ve been getting a High Seas weather forecast from Mauritius (Saildocs: “send Met.8s”). We’re in Area 8/3 and today’s forecast was “20 knot ESE winds, locally gusting to 30 knots. Seas moderate to locally rough. A few showers. Visibility moderate in showers.” There was no mention of any troughs or other weather features in our area. The GRIB files showed ESE 20-22 knot winds for the next two days and then dropping to 17 knots. We resigned ourselves to another two days of discomfort.
During the morning, we had a few 35 knot spats with one recorded at 40 knots, but sailing with only the stay sail kept us moving along without having to do any sail changes. The GRIB file forecast showed the rain to be patchy in the area, but it looked like it might get better overnight. The high wind had definitely been associated with rain, so we hoped for a steadier night.
My unintentional gybe last night has bent one of the stanchions on the starboard bow – the preventer runs from the front cleat, outside the guard rails to the end of the boom and my gybe pulled the preventer rope onto the stanchion - it’s now got a 20° bend. I don’t think that the stanchion is any weaker, so it is doing its job holding the guard rails. I might leave it bent, I think that it adds character to the boat and is a talking point – “No shit, there we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean...”
The strength of wind constantly amazes me. I think that I read somewhere that the force of the wind on the sails doubles for each increase of 5 knots. I can believe it , the sound of the wind definitely doubles for every 5 knots. At 20 knots, it seems a bit noisy. At 25 knots, it’s a roar. At 30 knots, the bimini starts to flap and shake. Over 35 knots, the wind is whistling through the rigging and we start to shout at each other.
Unfortunately, in high wind conditions, the wind doesn’t steadily increase. Instead, it tends to leap up by 15 knots, so a 20 knot (a bit noisy) wind suddenly becomes a 35 knot gale. Combined with a sudden increase in breaking white caps on the waves, it all becomes a bit scary.
In these heavy conditions, our autopilot has been working overtime and using a lot of battery power. When I checked this morning, I found that our domestic batteries were down to 12.3V, so I had to run the engine for a hour to charge them. With the lack of sunlight, our solar panels are not producing any charge and I can’t run our KISS wind generator because I know that it overheats in winds over 25 knots – very annoying.
Around lunchtime, a patch of blue sky appeared on the horizon ahead of us, giving us hope of better weather. Unfortunately, the hole soon closed up and the 35 knots squalls continued to plague us throughout the afternoon. After 24 hours of being battered by noise and motion, we were feeling tired and despondent.
There was no sunset, just a gradual dimming of the already grey skies, but there was some optimism as the clouds seemed to be a little thinner. On my 7-10 watch, the gusts never exceeded 30 knots and stars started to appear. By 01:00, we had 18-25 knot winds, which had backed to ESE. We were still on a course of 220°, so we finally had the wind behind the beam at 110° apparent. In the pitch black of the moonless night, we couldn’t see the waves, but they felt smaller, without any walls of water breaking across the deck.
Despite the improvement in the weather, we still had a couple of 30 knot sessions, so we continued sailing with only the staysail for the rest of the night. Our average boat speed was less than 5 knots, but we had a favourable 0.5 knot current helping us out. After being hammered over the past 36 hours, it was nice to have a more relaxed sail without the worry about heavy squalls and big waves.
28 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 7)
At dawn, we had 90% cloud cover – a grey start to the day. The seas had reduced to 3 metres, but were very confused with wind waves coming from several directions over the prevailing south-east swell. The wind was ESE 20-25 knots so, with our course of 220°, we were on a slightly broad reach. We had 260 miles to go, so we’re aiming to arrive early on Tuesday 30th, which will be an easily achievable average speed of 5.5 knots.
Our initial strategy for this route was to approach Rodrigues from the east, because there was a possibility of encountering strong south winds. However, today’s weather forecast is for the ESE 20 knot winds to continue for the next 3 or 4 days, so after breakfast, we turned 20° degrees to starboard and headed directly for Rodrigues on a course of 240°. The end is nigh.
The morning was very relaxing, the wind was over our port quarter at 130° apparent. We had a ½-1 knot current with us, so we continued sailing with only the staysail and still achieved an average speed over the ground of 5.5 knots. Our motion has changed from being constantly heeled over to gently rolling, with the occasional monster roll when a big wave catches us.
It was nice to realise that we’ve just completed the hardest part of our route to Madagascar. The next 1,500 miles will be split into shorter passages between 2 and 5 days long and thankfully, it will be all downwind. Over the next four months, we will visit Rodrigues, Mauritius, Reunion, Ile St Marie in Madagascar, Mayotte and finally the north-west coast of Madagascar. At the beginning of October, we’ll be preparing for the passage to South Africa, which is another difficult 8-10 day trip, but that’s a long way in the future.
Glenys was definitely feeling more relaxed because for lunch she produced Quezadillas and fresh Coleslaw. How has she managed to keep carrots and cabbage? – it’s been five weeks since the last time she was in a shop. The rest of the day was very pleasant with a nice sunny afternoon and clear starry skies for our night watches.
At 01:00, I recalculated our ETA. We turned onto this course 17 hours ago and since then we’d done 100 miles over the ground – an that’s an average of 5.9 knots. That’s fast with only our staysail out, so we must have a strong 1 knot current pushing us along. We had 150 miles to go and at our current speed would arrive at three o’clock in the morning.
It’s not a major problem to arrive at night because there’s an easy approach to the outer bay in Port Mathurin, but we don’t like to anchor at night if we can avoid it. There was no chance that we could get to Rodrigues by sunset tomorrow (8.8 knots for 17 hours), so I rolled away some of the staysail and tried to slow down to 4.8 knots to arrive at 08:00. The sailing is very pleasant at the moment, so we don’t mind a few more hours at sea.
29 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 8)
First thing in the morning, we had blue skies with fluffy white cumulus clouds, steady 15-20 knot ESE winds and 2 metre waves. The wind was forecast to drop a little more, so we let out the reef in the staysail and rolled along with 120 miles to go.
It was a lovely day apart from one small shower, after which the clouds disappeared completely. We drifted along at 4 knots through the water and still achieved 5 knots over the ground – it seemed wrong to be sailing so slowly in these excellent conditions, but there was no point in going any faster and arriving in the dark.
In the settled conditions, I put out two fishing lines and had a walk around the deck to check everything. The bent stanchion looks solid enough, but I’m worried that it might break if I try to straighten it, so I’m going to leave it bent and will get a new one when we get to South Africa. There’s a small tab on the stay sail that has come loose and will need re-stitching.
Our radar reflector, which was attached to the starboard intermediate shroud by cable ties and self-amalgamating tape, has been ripped off in the gale force winds. Its purpose was to increase our radar reflection signal, so that big ships can see us easier on radar. However, now that we have an active AIS transponder, I’m not sure whether I’ll bother to replace it.
The only other damage is that our ensign is looking very tired - the edge is in tatters. Obviously, 36 hours of 25-40 knots winds was the final straw.
Glenys has done a sterling job of managing our garbage since we left Gan five weeks ago. She’s been separating our rubbish into three categories – Food Scraps, Degradable Item and Plastics. Food Scraps go overboard every night. Degradable Items like glass bottles, cans and paper are stored until we’re at sea and then thrown overboard when we’re far away from land and in very deep water – we make sure that cans and bottles will sink.
Plastic is rinsed free of smelly food and then forced into an empty coke or other drink bottle. Where possible, rigid plastic items are cut into small pieces and pushed into a bottle. After five weeks, we have only seven bottles of compressed plastic and a single carrier bag of rigid plastic. It helped that Glenys diligently removed as much packaging as possible from the food that we bought in Gan.
Looking back at our route, I think that we had it about right. If there were very light winds in Chagos, then I would take the eastern route around the Great Chagos Bank and take advantage of the 10° improvement in the course to steer. However, in 15 knot SE winds, the western route is 40 miles shorter and having a comfortable run for the first 24 hours is a big bonus allowing you to regain your sea legs after 3 or 4 weeks at anchor in Chagos.
I was very happy with our strategy of heading south until 12°S; easing the sheets a little down to 17°S; and then heading for a point 150 miles ENE of Rodrigues. If you ignore our bad luck in encountering the stormy weather, we did most of our upwind work in the lighter winds above 15°S. By staying well east of the rhumb line, we had insurance against the strong south winds that can plague the seas around Rodrigues. Our final two days on a broad reach were idyllic.
In the afternoon, a fish hit the blue and white lure on our fishing rod. I rushed to the back of the boat, but had to watch helplessly as the line screamed out of the reel. I slowly increased the tension on the clutch, but whatever had hold of the lure was very big and the line kept screaming out. When the fish had taken 90% of my 500 metres of line, I had no choice but to tighten the clutch more and inevitably, the line snapped. Whatever it was, it was too big for us to handle.
At sunset, we had clear blue skies, but the wind had dropped to 10-15 knots, so we were running with a full genoa to maintain our boat speed. A myriad of stars came out as night fell and best of all; we had a new moon shining for a few hours. On my 1-4 watch, I ran the generator and water-maker for a couple of hours to fill our water tanks. Other than doing that small chore, the night was very peaceful.
30 May 2017 Chagos to Rodrigues (Day 9)
When the sun came up, we could see the hilly island of Rodrigues, which was only 10 miles away. I called up the Rodrigues Coast Guard, who took our details and instructed us to proceed to the Inner Turning Basin and await clearance. Normally, yachts are allowed to go alongside the commercial dock, but a huge cargo ship is in port, so all the yachts are anchored out.
We dropped our anchor in Port Mathurin at 19°40.74S 063°25.16E in 10 metres of water. Thankfully the holding seems to be good because we have a drying reef about 20 metres behind us and there are local fishermen walking about searching for Octopus, which is a local delicacy.
The Coast Guard and Health officials soon arrived in an inflatable dinghy and started our clearance procedure. They were very friendly and chatted about the island and our trip to Rodrigues. The people look very African and normally speak a kind of Patois. They speak French fluently, but their English is stilted, so it was a little hard to understand them.
After they had left, we dropped the dinghy into the water, tied up to one of the orange tugs at the dock and met the Customs and Immigration officers at the gates to the commercial port. Customs had over a dozen forms to fill out, but they kindly saved us some time by getting me to sign almost blank forms and they filled in the rest of the details after I left. Immigration was simple and they’ve given us a 60 day on-entry visa for Rodrigues.
Rodrigues is part of Mauritius, but when we leave here, we’ll have to clear out and then clear back in to Mauritius. Immigration will stamp us out of Rodrigues and we’ll get another 30 day entry stamp in Mauritius - very strange.
Our next stop was a bank to get some Mauritian Rupees and then to a government cashier to pay a clearance fee of 1407 Rupees ($40US). Armed with our receipt, we found the Health Department above the market, handed over our receipt and they gave us our official clearance document.
Having completed our inward clearance, we bought a SIM card for our tablet. The internet access is very poor, but it’s better than nothing - at least we can get emails. We bumped into George and Mairy from “Ngalawa” and have lunch with them at a road side eatery. They had a faster trip than us, but it sounds they had a tough time in the middle as well.
After lunch, we were feeling a little shell-shocked, so we gave up exploring the small town and headed for the supermarket. We were hoping for a big supermarket, but it’s a small, rather chaotic place. They have the basics and some interesting French products, but the cargo ship only comes in every two weeks, so I think that they suffer from the usual small island shortages.
We bought three bottles of wine, a case of beer, three baguettes, cheese and various other essentials. Staggering back to the boat, we ripped open a can of beer and Glenys laid out a smorgasbord of cheese and cooked meats, which we grazed until we fell asleep at half past seven.
31 May 2017 Port Mathurin, Rodrigues
The big cargo ship left at midday. The main anchorage for yachts is a small dredged area just off the commercial dock, which is intended for ships to turn when approaching and leaving the dock. Consequently, we had to get out of the anchorage this morning and anchor outside the entrance channel in the large, more open Outer Bay. We anchored at 19°40.08S 063°25.85E in 15 metres of water on good holding sand. There was a little bit of swell getting over the reef, but we didn’t roll too much.
We jumped in the dinghy; went to visit “Hokulea” and, over a cold beer, we exchanged passage stories. They also had a rough trip, but didn’t have the really bad weather system and only saw 30 knot winds. They are a 50 foot catamaran and were doing 12 knots at times, so they only took 5½ days while we took 8 days.
The cargo ship left at one o’clock and then there was an undignified rush back in to the inner basin as eight boats jostled for position. Yachts are able to dock alongside the commercial dock, but other boats have told us that it’s a bit noisy and the deck gets covered by course black sand, so we elected to anchor again.
We were at the back of the queue, so we had to hang about for fifteen minutes to wait for boats to settle to their anchors. We’d read that the holding is poor in the channel leading from the dock because it’s hard-packed and scoured by the propeller wash from the large ships. Therefore, we tried to keep to the west of the basin, in between the other yachts.
We dragged the first two attempts. We moved to a different place and dragged because we picked up a rice sack on our anchor. Finally, we got the anchor to hold. I think that the sea bed is soft mud, so, on our first three attempts, we were too aggressive when backing the anchor in. On our fourth attempt, we backed up lightly to set the anchor and then left it for a hour to settle into the mud, before backing it in hard.
After the trauma of anchoring, all the boats swirl around in the anchorage and we’ve ended up close behind “Ngalawa”. We can’t let out any more chain because there’s another boat behind us. It’s damn annoying for us and “Ngalawa”, but I didn’t have the strength to anchor again.
We invited Ralph and Karmen from “Relax” for sundowners. They had a bouncy passage as well despite the fact that they went the eastern route around the Great Chagos Bank. They are 42 foot catamaran and are not used to taking a lot of water over their decks. They had two hatches that weren’t closed properly and when a huge wave hit them, water was forced into the boat. One of their berths was soaked and sea water was dumped into their saloon, directly onto their laptop, destroying it.
There are more photos in our Photo Album section.
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