Maldives,  Sailing

Trouble Leaving

I have just finished reading a book about one of my heroes, intrepid explorer James Cook, and our voyage seems tame in relation to what he accomplished.   We have bemoaned the inadequate chart information; Cook discovered continents without even the confirmation they existed; so I guess we have had it easy.  Nevertheless, there is a huge sense of satisfaction and achievement that we have navigated our way through the Maldives without too many hiccups along the way.

It turns out that leaving turned out to be the most challenging part. I gave one of our first blog entries the same title of “trouble leaving” when a series of challenges in final boat preparation and a couple of gear failures set our Dubai departure date back a few days.  I had a sense of déjà-vu as the incompetency of our shipping agent’s local representative also set our final Maldives departure back a couple of days.  This normally wouldn’t be an issue; after all, this whole venture is spanning six months; but my mate Joff and, a friend of Helen, Nik flew in from Dubai and UK respectively to crew on the return journey, so I feel an obligation to returning them to work within the time frame expected.

The first time I met Joff was at the sixties themed party where he was wearing a huge afro wig.  I had to meet him a few more times before I made a connection between the smiley down to earth version and the tipsy afro-haired version.  After a few desert and mountain camping expeditions, we ‘met again’ at a posh function at the Dubai British Embassy.  Needless to say, we both looked a bit different in suits compared to our usual weekend gear and Joff was slightly embarrassed when he didn’t recognise me (I scrub up quite well, I’m told…) and introduced himself yet again.

Nik is a mate of Helen’s brother in law Neil from Bristol and so far is proving to be an all-round nice guy.  In our initial discussions, he told me he’d sailed across the Atlantic ocean.  But he didn’t mention it was on board the Queen Mary cruise liner!

After suggesting that our agent’s Male representative might consider taking responsibility for doing what he’s paid to do, I had the (dis-)pleasure of spending a morning tracking around the five required government offices with a by now sulking and grumpy agent, collecting the necessary stamps to allow us to leave.

Considering Aroha has officially entered the Maldives three times (from Dubai, Sri Lanka, then Chagos) and each time requires the filling out of nine forms (yes, I counted them), we are quite familiar with the amount of paperwork, not to mention fees.  Cruising in the Maldives is not a cheap pastime.  We’ve paid around US$1,800 in cruising permit fees, visa extensions, port charges, clearance fees… it’s no surprise that 90% of government revenue comes from tourist taxation.  Helen beats Aroha, entering the Maldives four times this year.  We reckon if she tries it another time they’ll start to look at her passport a little strangely.

We persevered with the paperwork, paid a few more hundred dollars and left Male at around noon yesterday.  We have had beautiful sailing conditions so far with a steady 12-16 knots on the beam.  We are deviating only slightly from the rhumb line to Ras al Hadd (the corner of Oman) and sailing up the middle of the northern Maldives atolls.  With atoll on our left and our right, this gives us shelter from the steady westerly swell and also some scenery for the first couple of hundred miles.

All going well, we should bear left a little and leave the Maldives sometime this afternoon.  It should then take about ten days of blue water sailing before we see the Oman coast and then about two further days of coastal sailing to get to Fujairah, UAE.

8 September 2009

We encountered our first tropical squall just as we were about to go through a fairly narrow pass in the reef to leave North Male atoll.  We hung about inside where there was more room, got bashed about for a bit until it passed, then exited the atoll.  These are very isolated storms which dump a lot of water, blow a bit, then swiftly move one.

It was good for Joff and Nik to experience this in daylight.  We’ve encountered a squall every two hours or so for the last two days.  During the day the squalls don’t represent too much of a problem.  You can see them several miles off.  They usually form huge black clouds and you can see the rain sheets below them.  They move in pretty fast though and once they hit, winds will pick up from 10-12 knots to over 30 in a matter of minutes.  At night they can be picked up on the radar showing as pink patches on the screen, but it’s not quite the same as seeing them for yourself.  As they’re easy to see and therefore prepare for, we’ve been doing a lot of furling and unfurling of sails to take advantage of sailing in the lulls between them.

Unfortunately, we had a repeat performance of the foresail furling line parting company with the Furlex roller furler; the same problem that delayed our original departure from Dubai.  This time though I was quick enough to race forward and secure the foresail in the rolled position until the weather drops off a bit and we can work safely on the foredeck to improvise a fix.

I am having mixed feelings about my decision to sail up between the northern Maldives atolls.  We’ve been going for two days now and we’re only about thirty miles from the northernmost point of the Maldives.  Admittedly, this is a couple of hundred miles from Male where we set off from but it feels like we should be further away given our journey duration so far.  The ‘snail trail’ track that we leave on the chart plotter and the increasing latitudes in our log entries remind us that we are indeed making progress in the right direction, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

As we leave the Maldives archipelago behind, the sea is slowly changing form from waves to swells.  The sea is still a little unsettled and so tasks such as preparing food, reading or typing blogs can be uncomfortable or worse, nauseating.

I think it’s time to stop typing and get back upstairs into the fresh air…

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