We keep moving along hitting an island for a day and then moving on, not staying long term in any one place. We were in Kanditeem(06 26.093:072 54.281E) two days ago anchored off a shore with crashing waves pounding away at it. The anchor down(about 25 feet) was hooked onto a chunk of coral on the bottom as was Yolo who parked beside us. We spent the night listening to all the crashing surf glad the weather was calm as what we had anchored on would probably not have held us in any kind of big blow. We pulled up anchor and motor sailed across the atoll to a nice long island(again deserted)called Farukolhu(06 11.890N:073 17.700E) where we came in in very shallow water at times only 3 feet below the keel. Nice beaches lined the shore. It was a good 5 hour trip to get there so it was into the afternoon when we arrived. I launched our dinghy for Tracy and Karen to go play and snorkel as the men stayed on board doing other projects(downloading Google Earth shots of where we were planning on going amongst crashing programs and locked up computers). This was the first time Tracy had taken our dinghy out using the "new" outboard. It didn't really like her and by the time she got back, she had pulled a few muscles in her back having pulled the start cord so many times. We had another nice evening with Jason and Karen swapping more stories of our different trips.
Yesterday dawned another beautiful day with wind! Yes, some wind and wind we could sail with. Both boats pulled up their anchors after waiting for the tide to rise(Yolo could go out anytime being a catamaran but we had to wait for more water to come in). We finally got underway at about 1045 and slowly made our way out of the anchorage and hoisted the main and forestaysail and rolled out the genoa. We put it all up. Yolo raised their sails as well and off we went for another anchorage. This time Dholhiyadhoook about 15 miles away.
As we made our way south, we saw some fishing boats and a tourist boat as they zoomed around the islands. We hadn't put on the rudder for our Hydrovane so we had to manually steer Zephyr during the trip. We've been spoiled by our Hydrovane since it has done most of the running of the boat when we have the sails up. A great piece of equipment.
We got to the island about 1400 and after getting things put away, we both launched our dinghies and took off for shore. Now this island is a bit unique in that it has a resort on it that was never finished. It's about 80% there but the money ran out we think about 5 years ago and what had been built(and there is a lot of buildings on the island)are slowing falling apart. They still have a staff that lives on the island taking care of what is built with necessary supplies being boated in on a regular basis. No tourist except the occasional cruiser stopping by. Great shelling on the north side of the island. It's sad to see someones idea of paradise just sitting and slowly falling apart.
Today, off to another island