Ile Rodrigues to Ile Maurice (Mauritius)

Sunday 22^nd September, Port Louis, Mauritius.

Wow. That was a bit of an overwhelming arrival. And I haven't even stepped ashore yet. We seem to have arrived back at real, proper civilisation for the first time since Darwin – over two months ago. As we came in to the port we saw buildings more than two floors high, in fact, several floors high. There's lots of ships, big fishing boats, port buildings, a helicopter!. 

We seem to have located the entire Chinese fishing fleet - that's just one row of them.

We're tied up now at the immigration/customs dock awaiting the completion of formalities. Right beside us people are eating lunch outside restaurants, there's a bar, there are loads of people, hotels, traffic, a McDonald's! 

As we came in to tie up people were taking our photo instead of taking our lines (thankfully a nice coastguard officer was there to take the lines). There's the makings of some sort of live music being set up on the esplanade. And it's loud.

We did our usual early morning approach to the island and it was beautiful. It has quite spectacular jagged, volcanoey mountains in the north, a flat bit in the middle and then a copy of the Glass House Mountains (Queensland) towards the south. 

Glass House Mountains, I defy you to tell them apart. Made us feel at home.

The wind was coming from exactly where we wanted to go so we persevered with a bit of tacking (zig-zagging) before giving up and getting the engine on. Now we're in limbo – we've tied up alongside but we're waiting to get through the layers of officialdom. It's just like being behind the magic sliding doors at an international airport only more dramatic somehow because you're actually in the middle of town with only an invisible shield preventing you from stepping ashore.

Karl with respectable pants, polo shirt and document folder under his arm prepares to tackle The Ocean of Paperwork.

So we had a grand little sail across from Rodrigues – a 300 mile sail seems like just a little hop to us these days. We left in light winds because it was just the easiest timing with port officials and the supply ship being due in. In the afternoon we sailed out in sunshine and a gentle breeze, passing by local fishing boats sailing in the lagoon, while sucking the last bit of reception out of the local radio station. 

Karl in cruising mode. He's wishing for underpants with pockets, so there's a business opportunity right there for any of you who are interested in an untapped market. 

The lights of Rodrigues fade into the distance.

Next day there was very little wind so we took the opportunity to fly our MPS (a spinnaker-like sail, that's the big colourful one) for the first time. Yeah, I know. We've had Gráinne 5 years and have never bothered to get the MPS up? In our defence we have put it up in the marina in its sock and made sure all the lines were present and correct and the sock worked, just had never actually flown the sail before. And my, didn't it look pretty! So pretty it attracted a large pod of dolphins who joined us for lunch.

Ta-dah! Prettiest sail on the boat. 

Notable on this passage was the amount of shipping around – at one point I had seven ships on the AIS (electronic ship-detecting device) at once, so that's within about 15 miles radius. That's a lot of ships, the most we've seen since the Barrier Reef, it looked like Space Invaders (or Mars Attacks! which we've just rewatched for the first time in years, still good). So could you all please stop ordering things from overseas, it's making it very busy out here. I had a beautiful night watch on a peaceful, almost completely calm, moonlit night. Eerily quiet without wind or waves or movement through the water. Bach on the stereo. I set a new record for least miles covered in a watch: 3. The next morning the wind was back with the waves and the noise and an early morning “Help!” from Karl. Rover was in trouble again, his gears had unmeshed. So (hero) Karl re-meshed them while we both thought how incredibly grateful we were that he had completely rebuilt Rover in the garage (cluttering up Bar) earlier this year and knows him inside out at this point. Karl tried some fishing again and lost his favourite (i.e. the only one that ever worked) lure. We're pretty sure it was snapped off by a huge blue marlin. So Karl is kindof counting that as a fish caught.

And now here we are in the big smoke waiting to explore the glamour of Port Louis.

Just a little bit Gold Coast.