Indian Ocean
Chagos Archipelago
Salomon Islands
Ile Takamaka
SY "Kamu II" at anchor, west of Ile Takamaka, at 15 m depth, on sand.
Sailing the Indian Ocean from the Maldives to the Chagos Archipelago, (i) watching shoals of smiling bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) course alongside the ship and "surf" the bow wave during the day, (ii) leaving a trail of fire from the stirred up bioluminescence through the black ocean at night, as if the keel were a burning matchstick and the water flammable, and (iii) meeting many fishing boats, but no pirates.
Thinking of our beloved and respected sailing friend and role model Seth in
Mourning over our brain-dead autopilot (only later in Phuket did we discover that a dried out capacitor in the Robertson RFC 250 fluxgate compass had caused the malfunction of our autopilot) and applauding to the always extremely reliable, fully mechanical Hydrovane self-steering which rescued us from hand-steering along the whole distance.
Logging the distance of c. 320 nm during four squally days (a relaxed average daily run of only 80 nm) between the most southern of the Maldivian atolls, the Addu Atoll, and the
Eyeballing through the shallow pass into the atoll along a straight line from S 05° 18.36' E 072° 14.42' (the outer waypoint; note that there is a 0.25 nm WSW offset on BA charts, C-Map and Google Earth) to S 05° 18.93' E 072° 14.98' (the inner waypoint) with the sinking sun behind us and still almost bumping into a submerged coral head halfway between the atoll entrance and Ile Takamaka.
Meeting friendly anchoring yotties: Ming & Frank and their little daughters Carmen and Julie (SY “Constante
Click below for more blog posts about sea passages
Click below for a summary of this year's travels
