Cocos to Rodrigues

Saturday 31^st August, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Last day of Winter and we seem to have avoided it completely this year, yay. Like migrating birds.

We left Cocos last Saturday after soaking up a final bit of deserted beach and beautiful snorkelling. 

We tried a snorkelling spot at the end of the beach called “The Rip” which is, well, a very strong rip current. You get in and get scooped, whoooosh, past a wall of coral and loads of fishlife. Like a David Attenborough underwater clip on fast forward. And then you get spat out at the far end with a great big grin on your face and a childish urge to go straight back and do it again. So much fun. 

A gentle snorkel, not at The Rip.

The Catalan family left a couple of days before us so they had everyone over for a farewell dinner which was lovely and included such luxuries as ice-cream from their freezer (they have a way fancier boat than Gráinne, imagine, a freezer of all things!). And the day before we left a boatload of Finns arrived. We'd seen the boat in Darwin but hadn't met them. We had drinks ashore with the three young crew (while, I assume, the owners wallowed in the joy of an empty boat) – two of them had previously crewed across the Atlantic on this boat a couple of years ago and now dragged another along for the trip from Bali to Mauritius. So another boat heading in our direction. This is a thing I've noticed about the cruising life – it's a bit like backpacking for grown ups. You cross paths with people in a place, swap stories, plans and advice and then go your separate ways or end up meeting again. Only with boats, not rucksacks. There's also two groups: the middle aged boat owners (mostly couples, families or single men it seems) and the younger people who are travelling by crewing on various boats going in whatever direction they want to head next.

We did have our final trip to West Island before leaving Cocos. We went in search of Karl's Great Indian Ocean Surf. We headed to The Shack, which is a shelter where the locals leave their boards just opposite a break over coral. An anchorage neighbour has left his board there and kindly offered it to Karl. So we stood looking at the pretty impressive swell and one pretty intrepid surfer. I was planning my argument to Karl for trying further down the beach where I might be more likely to be able to recover his body when he turned, shook his head and just said “Nope”. He lives to find barrel another day.

Karl sits at The Shack, analysing conditions.

Not Karl.

Then we had lunch (freshly brewed coffee and toasties made from freshly baked sourdough.....real rarities in this neck of the woods) at the bakery, a gossip with the bakery owner, an upload of the blog and time to head back to the boat.

As I said, we left last Saturday morning, escorted away by dolphins and Ocean Protector (I've no proof of a link). 

Karl prepares our Gráinne Mhaol woz 'ere plaque before our departure.

The evening drinks venue ashore at Direction Island. Note all the plaques of previous visitors - we added our Gráinne Mhaol to it.

And here we are again, at sea, you know the routine. There was a patch of windless ocean to avoid for a few days that we managed to skirt successfully. Now we have some boisterous conditions. For the first time since leaving Mooloolaba the wind is not coming from behind us, it's coming side-on. Just plain rude if you ask me. This means the boat moves about a bit more. Our pilot guide calls the first half of this leg “uncomfortable” and I would agree. 

My galley skills have been forced to improve to Advanced Level II: places that I previously considered secure to put something down have proven otherwise, we've had flying pasta and leaping Spam, there's even been some swearing. But so far I haven't had to surrender to the freeze-dried camping food despite Karl's reassurance that it would be fine to do so (while I cook he sits at the desk towards which all the projectiles from the galley hurtle themselves so he may be in fear of his life). 

Showering is also proving more and more challenging (it is a sit-down shower) and is taking about twice as long with several near-injuries per shower. On the bright side, sloshing around in the shower is basically like being in a washing machine for humans. Our fresh food (from Darwin) is almost finished: we have four apples, two oranges, one potato and lots of onion, garlic and ginger. And we still have a good chunk of our water left – Karl tells me our daily use works out at 4.5 litres a day between us. That's for drinking, cooking, showering. I'm quite impressed at our frugality (although Karl's first estimate a few weeks ago was 10 litres a day, then 6 and now 4 so the maths may be going awry somewhere). And I don't even think we smell. [Karlnote – we do have a water maker on board and as we have to run it every couple of weeks for maintenance, we fill a bucket of water with it for the laundry].

The French is coming along. Karl has been learning the present and conditional tenses and today has moved on to the future. I've just started a book from the 50s by a French sailor (Bernard Moitessier) who has just arrived at Mauritius after being shipwrecked. I've also braved Ulysses – it's not as bad as I feared and some of it is actually enjoyable. Karl continues to play way too much Dubliners and Chieftains. We've realised we're going to need more podcasts so if you have any recommendations send them our way.

Saturday 7^th September, 170 miles east of Mauritius, becalmed-ish.

A beautiful, sunny, Indian Ocean day. Blue sky, fluffy white cumulus, a gentle breeze. Just not quite sailing weather and Gráinne is managing only about 2 knots. But the wind will return tonight and we should be at Rodrigues Island, Mauritius on Monday morning so nothing to complain about really.

The past week has been a mixed bag. After gloating about having escaped the winter this year (clearly the universe was listening) the first day of spring dawned grey, damp and distinctly Irish. Karl's initial solution, which actually worked quite well, was to play Cuban music loudly all morning. Amazing what a little contrast in atmosphere can do. That lunchtime we had our 1000 mile celebration, huddled under a blanket in the cockpit with our treats of fruit cake and the last of Miguel's good tequila.

Sometimes it's just wet.

One wet day and I end up sick with a nasty sore throat - Karl just thought I looked cute in my suffering and decided a sneaky photo was the way to be supportive.

The rest of the week was back to more typical conditions – sunny and windy and rolly. It got so boisterous one night that I had to admit defeat and have a rehydrated freeze-dried camping meal for dinner! Then on Tuesday we had our first breakage in ages. We were putting out our pole (when the sea state and wind mean that the headsail tends to collapse you attach the end to a pole to hold it open) when the base just broke away from the mast. Bummer. We knew we had a couple of days of pole conditions ahead too. Anyway, we lashed it on deck and added it to the latest “to do” list. Yesterday morning Karl was looking suspiciously perky when I got up – then he revealed he'd come up with a grand plan as to how to use the boom instead of the pole (inspired by a diagram in the Beth Leonard bible). Like a child at Christmas he couldn't wait to try it out so I had an hour of forced labour between breakfast and my first coffee of the day. Not civilised. The plan worked though and it's still going strong (though it required a little excursion on deck for some tweaking at the 0200 watch handover last night). 

The slightly inelegant tie-your-headsail-to-your-boom solution. Karl is very proud. (Karl would like it to be pointed out that it's not "tied" to the boom but led through an elegant system of blocks and blah blah blah blah blah blah).

It's all been very quiet out here. There's just not much about. The occasional ship – less than one a day and mostly just showing up on our electronic system, we've only seen three in real life. The occasional bird, maybe one or two a day. Much fewer flying fish (shoals flying in the water that is, still lots in every wave that makes its way on deck). 

This little guy must have been washed aboard with a splash that interrupted my night watch nap - I didn't notice at the time but found him squashed underneath my cushion the next morning. Kara's bum 1 - Flying fish 0.

And no planes – there were lots to be seen at night in the Timor Sea but I haven't seen any at all here. No dolphins. Not much of anything. We know that the sailboat Ganesha has been ahead of us somewhere and that Sissi and Anabel should be behind us and that seems to be about the sum of life out here. Definitely the place to ponder the vastness of the oceans and the scale of the universe (one too many night watches.....).

The French is coming along ok, Ulysses is plodding along at about Grainne's current pace, the podcasts continue to entertain and Karl's guitar repertoire is being re-established. The oranges are gone, we had the last apple for breakfast this morning and there's just a tiny bit of miracle cabbage left. Karl is beginning to accept the appearance of chickpeas in his meals but I can tell he's fantasising about having a great big slab of cow when we get ashore. And it's getting a bit exciting to see the track on our chart move slowly across the expanse of Indian Ocean and now edge towards land on the other side. Let's just hope they let us in when we arrive.

Karl (also one too many night watches) thought the chartplotter showed us about to be swallowed by a hand-puppet dog.

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