Slow Boat to Christmas Island

Slow Boat to Christmas Island.

Thursday 25^th July, Indian Ocean, 60 miles west of Ashmore Reef.

Clear blue sky, nice 15 knots of breeze, positively hooning along (compared to the last week anyway) at over 5 knots on a dark blue 3000m deep sea, Karl in his underpants and a coffee by my side. Life is good.

Well, we left Darwin last Thursday after a few final pints in all our favourite places and having formally “cleared out” of Australia with Border Force. On our last night Darwin treated us to the ultimate smoky, deep red sunset followed shortly afterwards by an equally smoky, deep red moonrise. And our local Lola's provided the accompanying IPA. The next morning we got up early, went into battle again with the lock, emerged victorious and were on our way. Farewell mainland Australia.

As well as the lovely sunsets, Darwin left me with a parting gift of a nasty little virus so for the first couple of days I had lost my voice completely – Karl seemed to enjoy his perfect little wifey who was well enough to sail and cook but was completely silent. When Karl then got the virus though, instead of losing his voice he had the most irritating cough there has ever been. Not fair.

Karl wrapped up in manflu mode and sporting his new German fashion designer/soccer coach look.

We settled back into the routine quickly. We were no sooner out of the lock than Karl was back in his uniform of underpants and singlet. Border Force started their regular visits again (even returning having been greeted by the sight of Karl in his underpants), as have the dolphins. I might have seen a sea snake – something long and bright and stripey in the water – guess I'll never know. We became much more well acquainted with the Timor Sea than envisioned – there's been a great big calm patch north of Australia so we came quite far north to avoid the worst of it but still have had light winds and slow sailing, even the occasional flirtation with being becalmed. Which is actually quite pleasant and relaxing (admittedly, we have not been completely becalmed) and feels like a bit of a holiday after the last month. We were watching a particularly beautiful sunset one evening when the Sunset Director seemed to decide “hmmm, needs a little something extra...ok, dolphin, enter stage left and move slowly across the mid-foreground”. It was so perfect it was just funny.

Karl removing the remains of the overnight flying fish invasion.

So what's a typical day at sea? First watch handover is at 0600, the person coming off watch usually has a nap for a couple of hours and if I'm coming on I like to have a coffee while enjoying the sunrise (seeing as we get to decide the time aboard we try to schedule sunrise for around 6am and sunset for around 6pm). Then I'll have some breakfast, listen to some music and wait for Karl to get up. Then I'll make him breakfast (such a good little wifey) and boil the kettle to fill the thermos for drinks for the day while Karl puts out his fishing line (nothing yet but his determination is growing and I have the sushi kit at the ready). 

Karl sets up with his How to Fish book, his lures, his line, his tools and a grim determination to catch dinner.

The morning weather forecast check is a religion on board. We worship two deities – The American Model and The European Model – and will pray fervently to whichever is promising us the weather we want on any given day. The rest of the morning we usually hang out in the cockpit, listen to a couple of podcasts (we have finally arrived in the 21^st century having been podcast virgins – makes me feel like an old pair sitting around the wireless though), admire the scenery, have a shower (a bigger challenge on some days than others depending on conditions). Next watch handover is at 1200, then I make lunch, we eat that in the cockpit, maybe with some music. When I'm off watch I like an afternoon nap which Karl takes advantage of to play lots of guitar. The rest of the afternoon is for reading, guitar/tin whistle, trying to learn/re-learn French, pondering life and admiring the scenery.

Next watch handover is at 1800, then we watch sunset, I cook dinner, we eat dinner in the cockpit (meals must be able to be eaten from a handheld bowl with one fork or spoon and not slosh around), Karl washes up and then the off-watch person will have a nap.

The 2200 – 0200 and 0200 – 0600 watches are the time for stargazing, listening to music, being amazed at how bright a full moon makes the night, staring at the bioluminescence, watching moonrise/moonset and the beginnings of sunrise and generally pondering the meaning of life. I like to stay awake with a coffee and some lively music/singing/dancing for the first couple of hours and then take short naps (we have a rule about lookouts every 10 minutes) but Karl aims to maximise his napping time. And the next day we repeat – though because we have 5 watches we're on different watches every second day, just to spice things up. Occasionally we do things with sails – let them out a bit or in a bit. Or just look at them and talk about letting them in a bit or out a bit. One day we even had to change the sail from one side of the boat to the other to suit wind conditions – we treated ourselves to a beer after than one.

Before: sail on the left.

After: sail on the right. That was a Big Day.

Thursday 1^st August, Indian Ocean, 100 miles east of Christmas Island.

We've made great progress this week, the winds have been good, speeds of up to 7 knots have been recorded and we're actually getting somewhere! In fact, we've had to slow down today so as not to arrive at Christmas Island in the dark tonight, we'll time our arrival for after sunrise. Very exciting to think about making landfall after two solid weeks of ocean, ocean and more ocean.

Highlights this week included noticing, while writing up my 1800 log entry one evening, that we'd just passed the 1000 mile mark out of Darwin. As this happened conveniently just before sunset we broke out Miguel's good tequila to have a little sunset 1000 mile toast. And that particular sunset was on a cloud-free horizon, a lovely red sun, and just as the top dipped below the horizon......a green flash! I didn't even know the green flash existed until recently (and kind of half didn't believe in it) but there you go. I took that to be the universe giving us the thumbs up on our progress so far.

We had to cross perpendicular to a crazy busy shipping lane from the South China Sea to the Western Australia oil and gas fields. Business would appear to be booming in that neck of the woods. Lots of Indonesian fishing boats too, we've been passing at least one a day very close by and seeing the glows of several on the horizon every night. And they're about 150 miles offshore from Indonesia, it's a long way to come in those little boats. Loads of flying fish too and some of them even like to hop aboard, yuck. No dolphins since we left the Timor Sea though.

Stalked by a stealthy navy boat.

Trying to pick our way through gas/oil fields.

Indonesian fishing boat.

We've also seen a couple of what I've decided must be meteors. A very intense, bright light in the sky but that only lasts a second or so. Gave me a heart attack the first time, I was sure it was a searchlight from a boat hunting us down. And the very weirdest thing the other night: dark night, no moon, clear sky, so as usual on those nights the sea is just complete blackness. Then the horizon got a bit indistinct and the sea started to brighten and became a sort of milky colour (Karl called it glow-in-the-dark) until the sea was all bright and lit up and the sky was dark. Very spooky. Not sure what it was – a dense patch of plankton, some sort of spawning phenomenon, the end of the world? And this was in deep ocean, about 5000m. So if you have Google, which we don't, do let us know.

So tomorrow, hopefully, we turn back into tourists to see the sights of Christmas Island.

Time to break out the Christmas Island courtesy flag.

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