Here we go again

We are off again… crossing that ocean to get back to South Africa, with the intention of using it as a stepping stone to South America. But of course, with our arrival in SA only about nine months from now, South America is a long way off and those plans are ephemeral at best.

What! 9 months to get to SA? So to explain ourselves here is the picture of the voyage, with a brief description.

 There are 4 main legs to the route we have chosen across the Indian Ocean: Phuket to the Maldives, Maldives to Chagos, Chagos to Mauritius and finally Mauritius to SA.

Leg 1 is timed to use the winds of the NE monsoon season (blowing from the NE), which hopefully will mean that in general we will not get wind “on the nose” that we have to bash into. This leg will be done in the last week of Feb / first two weeks in March.

This grib chart (below) shows the weather in that first leg predicted for 24 February: wind indicated by small arrows, blue patches show rain. The cursor (showing where we are going, roughly) and associated detail on the left clearly shows almost no wind in that area…

for situations like this, we have made provision….

Yes, an additional 20 jerry cans of diesel, secured along the back walkway and in lockers, which we are hoping NOT to use!

On the other hand, we see a cyclone developing SW of Sumatra. This system draws in all the wind from elsewhere, and we may end up with absolutely nothing; on the other hand, it could move up and give us wind… but it may just be in the wrong direction and it may just be uncomfortably strong. 

The prediction for next Thursday however is this:

We will be at the red dot, approximately: reasonable winds but very, very wet. Once we are out there, of course, we just do the best we can with what we find.

Leg 2, Maldives to Chagos, is short (about 3 days) and generally easy. To be done after a month travelling down from mid-Maldives to the southernmost atoll, enjoying just cruising.

Leg 3 takes us to Mauritius. We will try to go via Rodrigues, but may not get there if the winds have too much of a South component.

On 17 Feb, this was the weather in that general area of the Indian Ocean:

 UGH! The detail shows 60knot winds in a cyclone just off Madagascar, and a storm front approaching from SA…. And they both moved towards Mauritius: You do NOT want to be in that ocean!

This 3^rd leg therefore cannot be done before the cyclone season south of the equator (and over Mauritius) has ended, hopefully by mid May. The timing of legs 1 and 3 dictate a stay in Chagos, but BIOT (British India Ocean Territories) only provides a one-month permit to visit Chagos, sometimes making it difficult for sailors if there is an unfavourable weather system ahead of them and they need refuge.

Leg 4 (Mauritius to SA, after hopefully a quick visit to Reunion) should not be done while there is still chance of big storms coming round the cape and up the east side of SA, therefore cannot be undertaken before about October, which dictates a long stay in Mauritius.

So. Weather dictates our progress, but we look forward to the forced stop-overs in Maldives, Chagos and Mauritius as opportunities to explore and in some cases have friends and family do some exploring with us.

Our hope is that we are NOT dictated to by boat problems, and at this stage we believe Ketoro to be sea-worthy. A complete set of new house batteries, new starter motor and regulator, all less than a week before departure, amongst many other mechanical interventions, will hopefully ensure that.

This work was done at Yacht Haven Marina, far north in Phuket, and this was Rolf’s view from half-way up the mast when Irene winched him up there to fix the fore-deck light (for night-time sail changes and deck work at sea) and install a new horn.

And this was Irene’s zoomed-in view of Rolf:

At this stage his bum was really sore and he was using his feet and toes to shift weight (as is monkeys’ wont): my request to send down the bag to hoist up the camera and remain up there, get creative and photograph his environs was somewhat growled at…!

We have also worked hard to fill Ketoro with provisions… if you were to come on board, you would probably laugh and roll your eyes, particularly at this sight:

This was the forward cabin, just starting to take shape as a storeroom, but already providing essential needs: the box of red wine centre back, the drinks cans dotted around (these supplement those at the bottom of all the other lockers), the spare water pump and white bag which contains spare toilet macerator, fan blasting air into the jam-packed back locker (found mould, didn’t we!?) and…. Drum roll… huge bags of corn flakes and coco pops!! Ok, so our insistence on kids’ cereals is shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of storage, but cereal people are cereal people and they will make a plan to get their coco pops (won’t they, Rolf!?)

Our first provisioning trip to Macro rewarded us with 3 huge trolleys and a till slip that was longer than Irene is tall.

Rolf with part of our first provisioning-trip supplies

The stuff all had to go somewhere. While we unpacked lockers to put layers of tins and cans at the base and then repack, we found that our system of storage has until now been pretty erratic. So started a major “spring clean”. That means storage of foodstuff, medicines, electricals, tools, adhesives…. You name it.

And of course that spring clean found the mould in the locker above. This is a very dry deep-storage locker: duvets, sleeping bags, hiking boots, extra pillows etc have been safe there for 3 years. Further investigation of the mould revealed…. Aaaargh! Water! Saturated sleeping bags! Moulded boots! The finger-tip taste test revealed salt. Happily, it was nothing more than a leak in the water pipes that feed through this locker to cool the generator and 24 hours later (and a boat festooned with dozens of odd drying items and Rolfs work on leak identification and repair and subsequent drying out of locker)… the deep-storage dry locker was good to go!

Well, so are we.

So: a quick trip to lovely Phuket town

to enjoy the contrasts provided by newly-renovated old buildings

and a quick reminder of the great market food stalls

Bye for now! We will upload the next blog when we are in the Maldives, but until then you can follow our progress across the ocean by clicking on the link on the right.

There is a huge ocean out there, and it is an extraordinary privilege to have such close contact with it. It is at times exceptionally beautiful, at times not; at times benevolent, at times definitely not so. We will be well - we will be sailing! Enjoying the good and getting through the less pleasant, we will make the most of the experience of the open ocean again.