Chagos, a gorgeous deserted atoll 

The dinghy with it's new cover in the idyllic tropical waters of Chagos. 

The first island we circumnavigated, the anchorage is in the background. 

Some flotsam I found on the windward side of the island, some poor fisherman is getting sun burnt!

                                                  

What's left of the church's stained glass window. 

Disturbing the noddy's on their sand spit after circumnavigation # 4. 

The Black Rose, an 80 foot catamaran came to grief upon a reef.

Barry up to his thighs in water recycling bit and pieces off of  Black Rose. 

 
                                          

Cruisers never miss an opportunity for a book swap, I must admit this is the most exotic location where I have attended one!

Pictures of our trip from Sri Lanka to Chagos

When you see this on the horizon, it's time to reef. U...G....L.....Y

Buns will still rise when cooked at a 15 degree heel. 

Barry checking the prop for barnacles enroute on a very calm day.

This bobby was a bit stunned, we think she damaged herself when she hit the wind generator. 

We are enjoying our time here in Rodrigues. ( I am having internet issues so I am depending on my faithful brother to post this for me.) We anchored outside the main harbour when we arrived last Saturday evening. We went through the pass with the last of the fading daylight and dropped the anchor in the dark.


The next morning after we had negotiated the pass to the protected inner harbour we tied up at the big concrete jetty for the officials to check us into the country. One of our fellow cruisers showed up with a baguette for us and it was still warm, absolutely delicious.

I have a long list of boat chores for us to do but we have still managed to do some exploring. The other day we bought a map of hikes around the island and set off with Brian and Dorothy from Tagish. I thing we found the beginning of the path but must have lost it along the way.

We meandered back and forth across a small dry creek and then clamoured up the hill side. Dorothy found a ripe guava on the ground and we munched away enjoying the beautiful countryside. We kind of ended up where we thought we should be. We took the road back down stopping along the way for a snack of brie on baguettes. I don't think it gets much better than that.

Hopefully I will get my internet access sorted out and I can put more pictures on the blog.

Ann and Barry are safely in Rodriguez

Well we are having to deal with what the Southern Indian Ocean is throwing at us, 3 meter waves and winds in the 20 knot range with gusts up to 28.  We are down to a triple reefed main and our storm staysail so very little sail out and still going 6.5 to 7 knots. If we go all out we could make landfall in Rodriguez tomorrow at dusk but Barry is worried about stressing the boat so we will probably be about 10 miles out at nightfall, D@#*! It would be nice not to have to spend another night at sea in big waves, close to land and possibly fish boats. We had a scare yesterday when our staysail stay came loose.  The pin had come out and bent the deck fitting. We took down the staysail and Barry managed to fix it with a long bolt through the crooked piece of stainless steel.  It seems to be holding out quite well.   I am nibbling on a piece of chocolate, we have managed to stretch it out and we have about 6 squares left for tomorrow night.  We ate the last of the canned fruit today, the only cans we have left are tomatoes, kidney beans, corn, a couple tins of soup and some tuna.  It would have been pretty slim pickings if we had stayed another 2 weeks in Chagos. I think I had calculated for a month stay and forgot about the 3 weeks plus of sailing we had to do from Sri Lanka to Rodriguez. I am thinking mangoes, bananas, fresh tomatoes, lettuce and ice cream, YUMMMMM!

Our crossing is going very well so far (touch wood).  Today we put the spinnaker up at 0900 and flew it until 0100 and then we had a perfect takedown while bathed in moonlight.  The moon is just past full so we have it for most of the night, it gets up about an hour later each night.  We left just before the full moon so have enjoyed it's beauty and light for most of the night hours.  I watched it come up the other night, how come I don't remember watching a moon rise in Yellowknife. In the dead dark of the open sea when it rises it lights up the eastern sky, just as a sunrise might. Then the large glowing yellowy orange orb rises and lights up the sky.  There is a planet, either Venus or Mars which shines brightly on the western horizon every night.  Before the moon comes up, the starlight bounces off the waves, it has amazing light. When the spinnaker was flying in the dark our nav lights shone on it from the top of the mast.  It was flying on the starboard side which meant it glowed green as it billowed out around the reefed main, magic! The other night I was down below checking on navigation on the computer when I heard a weird noise in the cockpit.  I looked out and there was a stunned looking boobie sitting in the cockpit.  I think it must have been hit by the wind generator as it tried to land on the solar panels.  I took a picture and it didn't move.  I was trying to figure out how to get it out of the cockpit without getting attacked by it's very sharp bill when Barry got up.  After putting on a pair of gloves he just lifted up the cushion and dumped it overboard.  There was a little blood on the cushions, I hope it didn't break a wing or anything, and that it was just a little stunned. We have a schedule on our ham radio twice a day with 4 other cruisers who are crossing at the same time as we are.  One of them is a Brazilian and he is a little excitable. He got some information that there was a cyclone brewing along our path to Rodriguez. He threw everyone into a tizzy.  We downloaded Grib files, weather reports and were going  to get a weather fax, we could find no indications of a storm brewing.  When we got together on the radio again, we found out the cyclone was in East Timor which is just north of Australia. We are over 2000 nm away from there and there is no way the cyclone's path would head this way.  Even though we figured out where this was he was still worried about it today.  He projected that if it moved at 100 miles a day it would reach our area in 20 days, so what, we will be safely at anchor in a secure harbour at the time.  I guess he just has a fiery Latin temperament and needs something to worry about, but I wish he would stop going on about it on the radio. It was an interesting exercise in what the yacht's would do, the ones neared the equator were going to head back north and hang about outside the cyclone belt.  We thought we would just proceed at speed, using the motor to go as fast as we could to make landfall.  The boat only 100 miles behind us did not think he could make it to Rodriguez in time and was going to head back north.  Thank goodness we don't have to follow through on any of those scenarios.   Rodriguez is by all accounts a very nice place.  It is populated by freed slaves that were brought to Mauritius to work in sugar cane, I think.  I am looking forward to exploring the island and getting to know the people and it's culture.  A long time ago it was French and then was conceded to the British in the 1800's (I think), so all the official paperwork will be done in English but the locals speak French.  I am hoping to take some lessons so both Barry and  I can improve  our grasp of the language.  We will probably be in Rodriguez for a month and maybe up to three months in Mauritius, a good length of time to improve our language skills. Apparently there is a good French bakery on the island so baguettes here we come and my mouth is watering for fresh fruits and veggies.

We are on our way to the island of Rodriquez.  There was a good weather window and our buddies on Tagish we leaving and we decided to join them.  We were going to be fairly short on food for the journey so we decided to leave while we still had some goodies to enjoy on the trip.  We are having a good sail so far, we made over 100 nm yesterday and will do so again today.  There have been a few big wide squall giving us 20-25 knot winds for a couple of hours but we have managed to get the sails reefed before they hit and they have been no problems.  It is a 1000 mile journey to Rodriquez so in theory is should take us about 10 days, hopefully we will manage to make a little better time than that.  I am looking forward to the fresh fruit and vegetables when we get there and to eating someone else's cooking.

DATELINE: INDIAN OCEAN GINGER BEER BOMB An explosive experiment gone awry was reported on the Canadian registered sailing vessel Cat's-Paw IV last week.  The explosion was unobserved as there was no one within 200 miles of the event (good thing) but the results were easily observed in the tiny pieces of ginger plastered over teak woodwork lining the inside of the vessel. In an attempt to duplicate the ginger beer elixir they became enamored with in Sri Lanka the first mate of Cat's-Paw IV mixed yeast, sugar, grated ginger and water.  The first batch was acceptable but a little bland so she reported that she upped the sugar and ginger content to give it a little ZING.  The explosion was stupendous, spewing out of the bottle with tremendous strength, reaching the ceiling of the boat and dousing the walls with the results.  The remainder of the bottle, a scant cup in the bottom was very tasty indeed. Fortunately, no injuries occurred and the Captain maintains the right to slowly and carefully open all future ginger beer experiments.   FILED BY YOUR INTREPID REPORTER ON THE SPOT-----ANNOE We have been in Chagos about 10 days now.  It is a wonderful spot, an atoll about 5 miles across with about 10 deserted islands.  There were 15 boats anchored here, 4 departed the other day so they are about 25 people in the area.  We are allowed to stay here for 28 days and we will probably stay most of the time unless we start running out of food.    We have been spending our time circumnavigating the islands with another very keen Canadian couple. We have visited 7 of the 10 island and managed to walk around 5 of them. At one of the islands we discovered a 25 meter catamaran that slipped it's anchor last year and went up on the reef.  It is aground on the edge of the island so we spend a few hours with hammers, screw drivers and saws salvaging what we could.  Apparently the yacht belonged to a French rock star and was being delivered across the Indian Ocean by a paid skipper when something went wrong.  What a shame it is to see the wreck of what once must have been a beautiful boat.  Barry had a great time, he took off some lovely steel mast slugs, a very large D ring, a lovely stainless steel turnbuckle, worth about $300 new.  Today we sawed off some teak walkway, I have 4 pieces and I figure that someday it will make a lovely picture frame.  My favourite find was a small fire extinguisher, Barry found a very useful bottle of contact lens solution. We have been doing a lot of snorkeling, we manage to see something new each time we are out.  There are turtles, rays, octopi,black tipped reef sharks and all sorts of beautiful fish, groupers, butterfly and angel fish, snappers, parrot fish and dinner on the fly, trevally, just waiting for Barry to figure out which lure they like to eat.  He hasn't managed to catch any fish yet, but one of the other yachties took pity on us and gave us one the other day. There is a well on the island and we have been using that water to do our laundry.  Once a week we take all our dirty clothes ashore and take about 10 buckets full of water out of the well and swish and plunge our laundry around in an attempt to get it clean.  It feels like real luxury to have enough water to rinse twice if I feel like it.  I have washed our cockpit cushion covers and the covers for our fenders, washing them in soapy water twice in an attempt to get rid of the grime from Sri Lanka and the output from the rubber plantations in Malaysia. With much squeezing and wringing, making me wish for a mechanical wringer by the time I am done a load, I put the wet clothes in a plastic bag, lug it back to the dinghy and then motor back to the boat where we hang it to dry.  The ample UV and wind usually make short work of getting everything dry.  The whole process takes us the better part of a morning though.   I have been using some of my time in the galley to offset the lack of stores here.  I am making my own yogurt as well as bread.  The ginger beer production is still underway with mixed results.  I am also sprouting mung beans and once a week we have a very nice salad made with bean sprouts and carrots. I should probably have 2 batches of sprouts underway at once since it takes about a week until they grow big enough to be eaten. We have been having social times with other cruisers, we've had a get together with drinks ashore, the day after we arrived so we could meet everyone.  A couple of days ago we had a morning book swap with coffee/tea and goodies we had baked.  We invited an Australian couple, (the ones we went on our tour with in Sri Lanka) with their 2 children, 10 and 12 over for dinner and a games night.  Yesterday we went on a snorkeling excursion with 4 other boats.  All in all we have been keeping busy, I am neglecting my embroidery and Barry and I are about equal on the Scrabble score board.   Hope all is well with everyone, we enjoy hearing your news so please drop us a line at v8bl@winlink.org.  If you have NEVER written us at this address before put     //wl2k       in the message line and it will get to us.

The weather here on Chagos is affected by the ITCZ,(Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), known by sailors as The Doldrums) often 60% cloud cover with passing squalls.  There is steady 10 to 15 knot wind out of the SW to WSW that helps cool things off.  There are seven or eight islands that make up the atoll and we have currently walked around three of them.  We do another tomorrow.  The atoll is about 5k+ across.  I have yet to catch a fish but working on it.  Barry

Chagos is a great place!  Barry

We arrived in Chagos today, April 20 after a 15 day sail from Sri Lanka. The anchorage here is quite pretty and there is nothing here but 8 sailboats.    Barry

We are now in the Southern Hemisphere again having crossed the equator for the third time.  I put a message in a wine bottle again and tossed it overboard.  I put a request in the message that if anyone ever finds the message to let me know where and when they find it.  I wonder if I will ever hear about it.  I did the same thing when we crossed the equator for the first time just north of the Galapagos Islands and have never heard back from that message, but you just never know!!
I gave a toast to Neptune and the Wind Gods when we crossed the line and they must have been paying attention. After a couple of hours of bobbing around catching ever little wind gust the wind filled in and we were almost able to make our heading and we were actually moving along quite nicely at about 4 knots. The wind has continued until tonight when a huge ugly system came through and put a wrench in the works.  The wind picked up and we were moving along at a brisk 7 knots then wham, it started raining and we had to reef and we were seeing 30 knots over the deck, not recommended for the week at heart.  This lasted for about an hour and a half, that seemed like five and then bob, bob, bob, nothing.  Just the equatorial current sweeping us thirty degrees off our course at two and a half knots, yech!  It seems to have come up again so I had better sign off, we have only 144nm to Chagos so the Wind Gods being in our favour we should be there in a couple of days.  Hope all is well with everyone, drop us a line.

From: 02 26.5N 074 25.8E in the middle of the Laccidive Sea, Indian Ocean (who knew there was such a sea???)
Yesterday we had been at sea for a week and we had gone a grand total of 390nm, subtracting the time motoring, we have been sailing at fantastic speed of 1.95nm/hour, that is Velocity Made Good or if you track all our tacking and calculated miles actually sailed it is 2.44nm/hour. Which ever way you look at it we are definitely not living life in the fast lane! Our philosophy is that once we get to Chagos we just have to wait, so why use up our fuel when we got nothing but time.  The preferred time for a passage from Chagos to Mauritius is in June, so since we are only allowed a month at Chagos the longer we take to get there, the closer we will be to the optimum time for making our next passage.
We saw a turtle yesterday, he was about a foot in diameter (those of you brought up with the metric system, just convert, I know you can do it, 2.54 cm to an inch, 12 inches in a foot).  He was just hanging out swimming around as we sailed up to him.  He popped his head up about 5 times and took a look at us, he was fairly blase about it, putting his head up and then down and doing his turtle thing, flapping a flipper around, turning slowly in the water.  Finally when we were really close, I could have touched her with the boat hook, she decided to take off and she dove.  We could see her flippering away for a long time. The visibility was fantastic and she just kept going down, down, down until we lost sight of her in the deep.
There was next to no wind so I decided that the spinnaker would be a great idea (wrong again).  We put it up and down three times before the wind decided which side it was going to stay on, that should have been a clue.  Once it was up the poor sail just flopped around limply, half filling occasionally, I think we actually got to 1 knot of speed once.  Anyway, we were going no where fast and I figured that turtle had the right idea so I jumped in.  The water was so warm it was like a bath tub, you didn't cool off at all, it was the same temperature as the air. The spinnaker was still up and I was doing laps around the boat.  I climbed up the ladder and Barry jumped in and checked out the barnacle situation on the prop.  I have the best picture of just his legs visible coming out from under the boat.
Last night was ugly, there were huge dark rain clouds covering over half of the horizon.  I was darker than sin and then the sky would light up with the flash of lightning.  It went on for hours, lightning is just so scary when you are on the water. The sails would be flogging around doing very little and then the squall would hit and there would be 20 knots of wind across your bow. The boat would be screaming along, heeling way over and we would scramble around trying to reduce sail, oh yeah, did I mention it was raining too.  Not our finest night, that's for sure.
This morning our beloved stool went overboard.  It is a plastic spool that had 100 meters of line on it, my Mom made a cover for it and it is great for sitting up behind the wheel.  It also doubles as an extra seat at the dining table.
the stool went overboard and Barry came about and I was at the bow with the boat hook ready to rescue it.  Cat's-Paw IV just did not have enough steerage to come close enough to reach it with the boat hook so rather than see our handy dandy stool float off, I jumped in to get it.  I got it just fine but found it was water logged and very heavy and awkward to swim with.  The boat was slowly sailing away as I was trying to swim to it, Barry tossed me a line and I pulled myself and the stool into safety.  Oh, the things that keep us occupied while at sea.
Check out our position by clicking on the link on the side panel of the blog.  I try and post it daily, then you too can marvel at how slowly we really are going!!!

Not too much has changed, light winds on our nose, having to tack to make our heading.  In three days we have managed only 150nm in the right direction, but have sailed 250 miles with at least 10 hours under motor.  Our usual day would be about 100 nm so it has been slow going.  We are in no particular hurry and although we could stop in the Maldives for fuel we hope we don't have to so we are slowly meandering along.  It is hot and the ocean is really calm with the lack of wind.  Today we were ghosting along under 1 knot watching the wind ripples or cat's paws come towards us, once it would reach us the boat would pick up speed to about 2 and 1/2 knots. Sometimes the boat looses it's heading we are going so slowly and she stalls out and goes into irons, then we do a donut or a chicken gybe to get back on course, not too much excitement here! We hope you all had a lovely Easter, I didn't even realize it was that time of year, they were not selling Easter eggs in the stores in Sri Lanka!!

We have had a good first day, it would be a great day but the wind is directly on our nose, so although we are sailing along at a very respectable 4 knots we are going 50 degrees off course, which can be very disheartening. We went southwest first in the direction we wanted kind off, but a new program we have on the computer where we can plot a virtual voyage that inputs the average current and winds says we should be heading west first to take advantage of the current in this area has led us to tack. At the moment we are heading about 340 degrees which is almost back to Sri Lanka and our progress on the chart looks terrible. We are still 20 miles east of our rhumb line so we will continue to head NNW most of the day until we cross the line and then we will tack southwest again. I slept part of the morning away and feel very groggy at the moment. Time to do some embroidery on the tiger!

We will be leaving Sri Lanka on Thursday, April 5th and be making our way to Chagos. We should be there in about 10 days. We will be staying there for a month waiting out the change in seasons.  Please check our progress by clicking on Our Position.

One of the things about Sri Lanka that really piqued my interest was the number of men on bicycles.  I don't mean lovely new bicycles, the cycles are old, mainly one speed with the old fashioned kind of brakes

The men ride them in their traditional dress a long piece of cloth wrapped around them.  Mostly the cloth almost reaches the ground but sometimes they tie it up just above the knee.

Sometime the cyclist has a pair of flip flops on, but sometimes the feet are just bare.  I truly enjoyed watching the mostly old men of Sri Lanka pedal around the city

They basically would go anywhere and the traffic would just flow around them.  It was refreshing to see people out getting exercise and using their bicycles as a legitimate mode of transportation.   We saw one fellow out in the country with a 20 gallon barrel tied to the back of his bike, I wish the camera had been handy. 

I asked our tuk tuk driver, Batu (the fellow in the picture) for a Sri Lankan cooking lesson and he arranged for us to go to another driver's house and his wife cooked a lovely curry for us.  There was dahl and curried lady fingers ( a Sri Lankan vegetable) and a fish stew.  It was a wonderful meal and a lovely evening in the home of someone who lives here.  

These are the lady fingers.

The cook produced all this food on a two burner propane stove. Her other method of cooking is on a open hearth with a small fireplace. The frying pan is sitting over where the fire is and you can glimpse the firewood underneath the hearth.  I tried to have the tuk tuk drivers on board for lunch today, to return their hospitality, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.  We are in a military harbour and we have to show our pass and go through a gate each time we leave the compound. In order to have the guys on board we had to get them a pass.  Barry went off this morning to complete the paper work and I stayed on board and cooked up spaghetti, a lettuce salad and a wonderful fruit salad for dessert. The paper work was almost done when they decided since the president of Sri Lanka was coming today to open a new fish factory close by that they would not allow any guests in the harbour.  I was sitting on board, all the lunch was ready, but no guests!  Then we were told we had to move again because the presidential helicopters were going to land very near the boat and we would have been too close. 

Sri Lankan president on board

Gun boat patrolling the harbour while President was in the area. 

In Sri Lanka the norm when you go out to eat are rice and curry, or if you really felt adventurous you could have curry and rice. The other things you can eat are roti, which is an Indian version of bread.  It is a flat bread that is cooked in a big circle and then folded into a triangle and things are put inside.  You can have ones with egg in them or curried vegetables, which is very popular for breakfast.  The long skinny thing on the plate is a fish curry thing with a coating that is fried.  The drink is the ever popular (at least in my book) GINGER BEER! It is the best even better than the Bundaberg variety because it is more gingery.    

This guy is mixing up a huge batch of roti.

Last week we went to visit the fort that was built by the Dutch back in the 1700.  The Portuguese were here first and then the Dutch came in.  I think they were the ones that built this fort, they certainly knew how to make fortifications.  I don't think the lighthouse was built that long ago but the church is quite old as well.  

Look at the big stone wall, it goes all the way around the fort.  

I just love this picture,  I think it is good enough to be a post card.  

We have been playing musical boats the last few days.  We are in a military port and 2 days ago at the drop of the hat we were told we had to move to let a huge tug  go out.  We were attached to shore by three lines, one starboard, one port and one aft as well as to our anchor.  We had to untie all 3 lines and then pull up the anchor, all the while trying not to run into the boats on either side of us.  We then went around and around in circles in the harbour  until the tug had left.  We were given a little more notice the second time and were told we could tie up in another section of the harbour if we chose.  All the lines were untied and we motored to the other side of he harbour and tied up again.  Today the wind changed directions and our boat drifted in to the floating plastic dock behind us.  Our neighbour boat thought we were dragging anchor so untie all the lines, pull anchor to discover his anchor was over top of ours, so he had to untie all his lines and get his anchor out before we could reset ours.  What a smoze!  Hopefully we can stay put for a few days in this location and the swell doesn't get too big, because it gets uncomfortable in this spot if there is a large swell.  

I was going to do a blog about the food in Sri Lanka but the pictures won't load so I will save it for another day. The English cricket team is in town and are playing a 5 day test match against the Sri Lankans.  There are supposedly about 8,000 extra Englishmen in town to watch the games so it is really busy downtown.  Barry and I did not want to spend the $35.00 each to watch in the stadium but if we went up to the ramparts of the Galle fort we could catch some of the actions.  We spent about 2 hours watching.  The vendors were in full force but rather than the peanuts, popcorn we usually here in North America, the cry here was watermelon, pineapple, water but universal and especially welcomed in the heat was "cold beer"!  

   

The last day of our tour we started off  by visiting a sacred Buddhist place. It was a temple called Dambula that consisted of 5 caves, which were filled with frescoes and sculptures, each more elaborate than the last.  I was amazed at how they could paint of the roofs an sides of the caves.  Buddha was represented standing, sitting and lying down in many sizes. 

What detail, magnificent. 

This is painted on the uneven roof, it is truly amazing. 

We were driving home and there were a number of cars stopped at the side of the road.  What a marvelous site to mark the end of a super tour of Sri Lanka.