Enjoying the Maldives
I thought that I’d sleep like a baby on the first night at anchor, but two squalls kept me and my imagination awake. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d taught myself how to splice mooring anchor rode (rope) onto the anchor chain, and a squall gusting up to 42 knots (a new record for Aroha) wasn’t the way I’d planned to test it. The second squall came from the complete opposite direction- strange. The good thing about squalls is that they last a fairly short time – very intense to start with, but then dropping off. After about forty minutes the show’s over.
Today was Bernard’s last day before he flies back to ‘civilisation’, so we wanted to fit in a snorkel (for him) and dive (for Laith and me). I did a quick dive to check the splice and anchor (no problems) and then we took the tender to the opposite side of the lagoon. Laith and I had a nice dive with viz up to about 15m. Seeing a large stingray pass a couple of times made my dive.
It was sad to see Bernard go. He has been a reliable friend and crew for the last two weeks. He has been a natural on the helm, including the first night out from Fujairah when we were close-hauled for most of the night. He was on the helm from about 10 pm to 3 am, logging over six knots of boat speed most of the time!
11 April 2009
One of the signs of an experienced scuba diver is that he/she can express him/herself eloquently underwater. On yesterday’s local reef dive with Laith (my first ever dive with him, despite both of us being keen divers), he gestured to a large table coral, indicating that it was upside down. Together with my understanding of Laith’s sense of humour, I could tell that he was saying “The tables have turned”. And all this, fifteen metres underwater!
We did another shore dive this afternoon. Although it took only eleven syllables to say that, it took more than an hour to set it up – find the brother of the guy who has a dive compressor (because his brother is away- “but he is fully certified and has thirty full sets of equipment..”), lug my jumbo-sized tanks to the compressor, hang the air snorkel on the papaya tree, entertain the young Maldivian children, walk to the beach, look at the wooden fishing boat under construction (quite impressive, by all accounts..), and then wander back to the compressor place, lug the tanks back to the beach…
Phew! Then try finding a decent dive site! The locals don’t care too much- remember, this isn’t a resort island!
After a bit of trial and error and pottering around in the dinghy, we jumped in off a promising looking beach. It was a nice dive – lots of Pipefish (one of my favourites – basically straightened out sea horses, complete with snouts, fins that look like ears, and those dorsal fins which are always represented as propellers in cartoons). Two stingrays and lots of pretty coral later, and we both log our longest ever dive- one hour and twenty minutes!
Tomorrow is Laith’s last day here. We’ll go to a local resort at Manafaru island about 5 NM due south for a bit of R+R, cold beer, and high-speed WiFi.
15 April 2009
SY ‘Chimani’ and friends Bernd (skipper) and John (crew) arrived at Uligamu the day before yesterday. They left Fujairah about half a day after us and took a slightly different route- turning right at Ras Al Hadd as opposed to our “go straight for a few days before turning right” route. They’d suffered an autopilot breakdown and so hand steered for the last 1000 NM(!) or so. They reckon they’ve got biceps like Popeye (“…the sailor man, toot toot!”), but either way, they looked like they were well in need of a rest.
They arrived in style, sailing right up to the anchorage. They told me afterwards that that was the only decent breeze they’d had for several days and so wanted to make the most of it!
It was good to catch up with them as I’d had only sporadic communication/position information via Helen, so it was good to hear of some of their experiences, including being snagged in a fishing net hundreds of miles from land in the middle of the ocean!
John (the self-proclaimed boat chef) threw together a tuna dinner and we had a few beers and a good catch up.
We’ve explored a few parts of the island together. Although I’ve only been here a few days more than them, they accuse me of already walking and talking slower, and having reduced expectations of what’s possible and when. Island time, right?
We have been invited tomorrow to go coconut picking/eating. It’s not the Inter Atoll Tourism Permit that Bernd was hoping for, but it should be fun all the same.
A
19 April 2009.
Admittedly, most of the diving I’ve done here in the Maldives has been to look at Aroha’s anchor. Not the most exciting of underwater objects, but it’s become an activity which helps me sleep at night.
I’d never dived on an anchor before, but after our first night of forty plus knots of wind, I couldn’t contemplate not diving on it. I’d never anchored in such deep water before – about 26m where we’ve been all week. The fifty meters of the chain isn’t enough to get a suitable anchoring scope (ratio of length to water depth), so on goes a hundred meters of triple strand nylon rope. It’s a nice combination; it keeps the weight in the pointy bit of the boat down (compared to an all-chain solution) when underway, and having a decent amount of rope takes a lot of snatch out of the boat’s movement at anchor. The downside is that you need to be careful to keep the rope off the bottom, coral heads in the wrong place can make short work of rope. I’ll make some minor adjustments to the ground tackle in Sri Lanka, but for now, frequent dives give me peace of mind.
I had no idea the damage that anchoring can do to the seafloor. Corals within an arc of the anchor are completely flattened – hacked off by the chain under tension. I feel a bit guilty causing this kind of destruction.
Laith and I did two dives off Uligamu – walking in from the beach and chancing upon some nice reefs – seeing rays and pipefish in really good viz. Laith said he saw a grouper too, but I didn’t feel it.
I also did a couple of dives from the local resort a couple of days ago. Lots of caves and overhangs, quite common here, make for interesting terrain.
By far the most impressive sights, in addition to the almost daily dolphin displays, was seeing manta rays two times. The second time was as we were on the resort dive boat preparing to leave the mooring. The first time was right on sunset as I was getting from the tender onto Aroha on the anchorage. I was enjoying seeing the first one milling around (feeding), his wingtips just breaking the surface nearby. I was mentally calculating how far he was from me (about four meters) when a second one come up from under the tender and broke the surface about one and a half meters from me. These guys measure three-plus metres wingtip to wingtip. Powerful stuff.
18 April 2009
After fourteen days at sea, Laith and I were ready for a bit of five star R+R. We called the local resort and arranged to be picked up and transported into the five-star world that draws most tourists to the Maldives experience. Manafaru, here we come…
It was such a nice day out, I treated myself to a repeat performance yesterday… a couple of dives, cheeseburger by the pool, a cool beer as the sun thinks about setting, and then the return journey in five-star luxury.
The transfer is by a hotrod of a speed boat powered by 375 HP and two huge water jets (a propulsion system, I am proud to say, developed in New Zealand). The three-strong crew of the boat were immaculately turned out- Laith and I couldn’t help but think that they were probably more accustomed to a higher standard of tourist than us, as scruffy as we were (errr… and still are….)
Years ago, a somewhat posh friend was telling me of the time he visited Machu Pichu. As much as he was unaccustomed to roughing it on the Inca Trail, upon returning to civilisation, promptly checked into the local Hilton and ordered room service cheeseburgers. I could never understand the logic of this extravagant gesture. Until now. It’s not that we didn’t eat well en route or since arriving, it’s not that we slummed it too much, it’s just that sometimes you want things to happen when they should, how they should, and by someone else’s hand.
And the cheese burgers and ice cold beer weren’t too bad either.
18 April 2009
Both Laith and Bernard are now dreaming of yacht ownership. I was a little surprised – I’d thought that for both of them it was a once in a lifetime experience that would give them the bar-bragging rights of “there was that time I crossed the Indian Ocean on a thirty-seven foot long bit of plastic…” So, I’m quite pleased that they enjoyed the experience on another level.
Bernard needs only to convince his lovely wife, Jacqui, that sailing to New Zealand isn’t really that difficult. No, really!
Laith and I spent some time poolside ‘specifying’ his perfect boat. By my account, it needs to be about fifty-five foot long to cater for the accommodation, equipment and toy storage he desires. Looks like he’ll be looking for full time paid crew to help him sail a boat that size!
It doesn’t seem like that long ago when I started chatting to a guy (John) on the DOSC pontoon, who at that time had just taken delivery of their Bavaria 42 ‘Suzanne Margaret’. Me: “Nice boat”. “Yup”. “Gonna go cruising?” “Yup”. “Where?” “Dunno”. “When?” “Dunno”. I’ve got to know John (and Sue) quite well since then and now know that John is far more eloquent than on that first day. At the time though, it seemed to represent the easy-going nature of cruisers, which led ultimately to us joining the ranks.
I’ve often said that one of the attractions to this type of sailing is the variety of disciplines it encompasses. There’s the sailing of course, but if you can sail around the club cans on a Saturday afternoon, then there’s not much difference to crossing oceans. Then there’s the planning, routes, weather, comms, engine (and other stuff) maintenance, managing energy, provisioning, cooking interesting meals… on a heel, deciding how many kayaks to take, dealing with bureaucracy on arrival… and departure, deciding how many horsepower to put on the tender. All of these are individual projects. There is often no right or wrong answers, but just the solution ideal to your own cruising needs.
There will always be cruisers far more experienced, travelled and wise than us, but it is quite an honour that we have now joined this exclusive club as junior members. Maybe Laith and Bernard aren’t too far behind…?
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