Passage to Rodrigues
18 July 2016 | Port Mathurin, Rodrigues
Kim
I know a lot of our readers are church folk, (and thank you for all the prayers for our safety), so I will keep the language in the following blog pleasant. The rest of you can feel free to add expletives at will, so that you can feel the true mood of our last passage. Add 3-4 f- bombs per sentence for a more realistic picture. Our last day in Cocos Keeling found us on one last spearfishing adventure. Zack just can't get enough, he is totally hooked. We went out to our favorite reef, which we named "success reef" because the boys always come home with a fish. It was way too sharky to shoot anything. The water was stirred up and cloudy so we decided to go elsewhere to try our luck. We headed into the middle of the lagoon and were having no luck when we spotted a pod of dolphins. We went to snorkel with them but as we were trying to get close to them we saw a very large shark charging us from the depths. We scrambled into the dinghy and decided to call it a day. It's time to leave Cocos before we get eaten by sharks! (There has never been an actual shark attack recorded in Cocos, or maybe no actual deaths, not sure). I just know I was getting a bit scared. Our next destination is a tiny island, the size of St John, called Rodrigues. It is part of Mauritius, and is located approximately 2000 miles to the west of Cocos Keeling. This is where you really need to start throwing in those expletives. We left on a gorgeous, sunny day with light winds. Our SSB radio has decided to stop working so weather forecasts are a bit difficult, but it looks good! And it did start out pleasantly enough. At least the first few hours. As soon as we cleared the lee of the island the winds and swell kicked in. Friends of ours did this passage last year and described it as boisterous, which is a nice way to put it. It was pretty rough. We started with only the jib out, which was plenty. We were expecting a 12 to 14 day passage and we always like to take it easy when we are offshore. Unfortunately the jib got a small rip on the first night and being prudent we decided to take it in and try the main sail. It's a small easily repairable rip but would have become an expensive rip had we left the sail up. No problem, we were making enough speed with just the main and it was a fairly pleasant day. Then the wind and swell came up. We spent the next 3 days in abject misery, hiding below. The wind was averaging 25 knots directly on the beam. The swell was 3 to 4 meters and waves were crashing over the side of the boat every 20 minutes or so. And I am talking huge waves that were half filling the cockpit! Yikes! Thankfully that only lasted 3 days and things were getting better. We had at least made the first 1000 miles very quickly. We spent almost an entire day sailing, and then the wind just died. To nothing! Unfortunately the swell did not, it came down some but never fully abated. This caused the boat to wallow back and forth which caused the sail to slap relentlessly. All the battens in the main slapped themselves to pieces and we had to pull them out. Another repair we will have to make. There was no wind for days on end. Mostly we kept the sail up so that we could make some progress, but it was slow, often averaging only 2 knots. We could have literally walked faster. We motored a little of the way, but we couldn't do it all. Diesel fuel was $2.71 a liter in Cocos, so we did not buy any. (That's approx $11.00 a gallon). We pulled the Sail down completely on a few occasions to get a break from the sail slapping, which will drive you insane. It was awful, because the swell coming up from the south made the boat roll violently. It seems that in the Southern Indian Ocean it's all or nothing. Towards the end of the trip the wind came back up. It went from 0 to 30 knots in about 3 hours. We were back below with waves coming over the sides again! Did I mention the rain which fell for a fair part of the trip? And it's getting pretty chilly as well. Overall we all agreed that this was our worst passage ever, except for the big storm we had coming north from New Zealand, but that was only a few days of misery. This trip was a full 18 days of horrible! We did manage to keep some sense of humor and Zack was as always great. Even though his new tablet stopped charging and he was left with reading as his only thing to do. We did play a lot of cards but it was just too rough for anything else. Luckily I had made a lot of food before we left and David was great at reheating it! Towards the end it got a bit dodgy with 4 straight nights of pasta with jar sauce. But we did eventually make it to Rodrigues! We pulled in late morning and cleared customs straight away. Our friends on Chantey had beat us by 2 1/2 days! Whistler had left Cocos a week earlier than us and they were waiting for us. We went out for a beer and then dinner. It was great to reconnect and share passage stories. Our story paled in comparison to Whistler's, by a long shot. They had higher winds and swell and their self steering unit gave out at the beginning of their trip. They had to hand steer almost the entire trip! It's strange how once it's over and you are sitting in a beautiful new place with a glass of wine, a nice dinner and good friends it all seems fine. Life is good and the island of Rodrigues is beautiful. It just needs to stop raining so we can get out and enjoy it!