We had a very pleasant 3 day sail from Rodrigues to Mauritius. Finally a nice sail in the Indian Ocean! Mauritius is a volcanic island and is quite lovely with high mountains and unique rock formations. It is also very touristy and there are fancy resorts on most of the beaches. Yacht check in is in the capital of Port Louis. We came in late in the afternoon so we hid out in one of the bays to allow us to arrive first thing in the morning. Apparently the customs officials only spend a couple of hours there in the morning and if you are late you need to track them down. Chantey beat us there and tied up to the wharf. It was calm enough so we rafted up to them and Will and David went off to complete the formalities. The bay is very protected but the tug drivers are not all that considerate. We were waiting for the guys when we got a wake and Karen had to fend off the dock while I tried to keep the boats from hitting each other. It was a big wake and as the boats pulled apart the fairlead was ripped off the bow of Chantey. No one was hurt but it was not so fun. With formalities completed we decided to pull into the marina for a couple of days. We needed to renew Zack's passport and the embassy was walking distance from the marina. There are no anchorages near Port Louis. The marina, if you could call it that, was cheap enough and convenient. It is basically a basin with concrete walls that boats tie to and you can raft your boat onto a boat that is there. We tied off to a catamaran and Chantey tied onto us. The owner of the catamaran pitched a fit for the two of us being there and Chantey had to move to the other side. Fortunately he did not live aboard and was not there most of the time, as we had to climb over his boat to get ashore.

We were unable to book an appointment online for the US Embassy so we just showed up the next day and it was no issue at all. We filled out the paper work, they were very courteous and helpful and 10 days later we had Zack's new passport. It was a far better experience than Kuala Lumpur. We spent a couple of days exploring Port Louis. There is a huge market but the hawkers are fairly aggressive. It's OK, you just walk around and look while repeating "no thank you." It's mostly all the same tourist stuff you see everywhere and we didn't buy anything. We did find a micro brewery and had a lovely dinner with Chantey. The beer was really good and the food was excellent. We left Port Louis and sailed up to Grand Bay. It is a lovely spot and the yacht club is very welcoming. They give all visiting boats a free month membership, which allows you to use the free but slow wifi and to shower and use their dinghy dock. |It is a reasonably short walk to the Super U grocery store where we spent most of our time there re provisioning the boat. It had been a while since we were able to shop at a large store and the Super U has just about anything you would ever want, including baguettes for about fifteen cents each. We ate a LOT of baguette! We were also able to get everything for a big sushi night on Flour Girl. It was a hit. I made the sushi rolls and MIm did the tempura and we had a huge feast. While we were shopping and being responsible, Zack was having a great time hanging out with Eric's niece and nephew who were visiting. They played volleyball most days at one of the resorts and a few games of tennis. A couple of the other kid boats were there and they had lots of fun climbing the tree at the yacht club and swimming in the bay. The water is cold so not a lot of swimming. I skipped the one snorkel excursion and was glad I did when David and Zack came back frozen and blue. We didn't do a lot in Mauritius but we did see a movie. It was in English and we were the only people in the theater. French is the official language but most people do speak English. Zack's friends Melodie and Max were due to leave to go back to Canada and it was getting close to Zack's birthday so we threw a small last minute birthday party for Zack. I had all the boat kids over for the afternoon and took them all knee boarding. They had all had a sleep over on Mares the night before and were tired, but they rallied. Zack is a keen knee boarded since he has gotten his 360,s down. He loves to show off. We had cupcakes and sang. It was a nice birthday/going away party for the kids. It was good because we ended up being on passage for Zack's actual birthday. Mauritius was pleasant enough and we had a nice stay. It was a good rest stop even if it was less exciting than the other stops in the Indian Ocean. We are going to give La Reunion a skip, we have heard it is beautiful but it is expensive. We are off to Madagascar!