Lat: 13 05′ S
Lon: 77 14′ E

We finally put a double-reefed main up yesterday and we’ve made good time ever since. The seas are more regular now, and we’re getting so used to 10′ waves that they really don’t look big to us anymore.

We had a pleasant surprise a couple of days ago when we found that we can receive US Armed Forces radio broadcast from Diego Garcia. The signal is excellent and it’s great to hear US news and the baseball playoff scores. The US news out of Diego Garcia BBC news broadcast from Africa are now part of our evening routine.

Other than that, there’s not much to report other than a bit of a flying fish mystery. For some reason, nearly all of the flying fish that I’m finding on deck in the mornings are only 2-3 inches long. We’re used to a range of sizes from 2-3″ up to nearly a foot, but for some reason only the small ones are showing up out here.

In the northern Indian, only the small guys are finding their way aboard

We get a weather update over the sat phone every couple of days when we post a blog and so far it’s been all tradewinds in the forecast. We’re hoping that continues…

Lat: 12 57.259′ S
Lon: 82 17.001′ E

One of the ways to break up long passages is to make milestones of the various intermediate events. We enjoyed two today; we now have less than 2000 miles to Cape d’Ambre and we just entered a new timezone (GMT +5). We’ve been making good time for us, averaging about 5.8 knots so far. Lauren baked an excellent loaf of wheat bread, the best looking loaf yet, and promised to bake a loaf every 1000 miles, which should work out to once a week if we can keep our speed up.

I’m impressed

Alll is well aboard and the days seem to fly by. Lauren is working her way through the 3-foot wahoo we caught and we’ve had enough power from the wind generators that we’re able to run the freezer to preserve it. The daily radio chats with other boats are really nice and yesterday we listened to a fair amount of news and entertainment from the BBC via Singapore. The used ICOM SSB has definitely been worth the cost and installation effort. I’ve also been happy that my homemade antenna, grounding system, and DC block have us sending out a booming signal to boats 3000 miles away. This morning was the first time that atmospheric propagation conditions didn’t allow us to make contact.

The Southern Indian Ocean has a reputation for being rougher than the South Pacific or South Atlantic, and so far it’s matched its reputation. The trades seem to be a little more boisterous, but the biggest factor is the sea state. Large waves or swells from two or more directions seem to be the norm and overcast, squally days also seem to be common. Usually squalls pass by with a bit of wind or rain, but don’t impact the sea state too much since they’re relatively short-lived. On this passage, however, the seas seem to instantly get a meter higher when we near a squall, although the rain has almost always been light. I’ve also been surprised by how many times the sea state seems to be settling into a typical pattern of moderately-sized waves from the current wind direction (generally SE) only to have the boat rocked by large cross-swells from the south 10 minutes later. Being on a heavy catamaran does seem to make things easier. We’re much drier and the motion isn’t nearly as bad. The monohulls we’ve been in radio contact with have reported things like cockpits full of water from swamping waves, decks frequently awash, bruised bodies from being thrown in unexpected directions below deck, a boat half covered in flour after making a loaf of bread, and a salon table being damaged beyond repair primarily from the force of the crew being repeatedly tossed against it when trying to maneuver below. At the end of several weeks of this type of treatment, you get to try to round what sailors have traditionally termed the Cape of Storms. It’s no wonder the Suez route gained such popularity with cruisers until the recent Somali pirate situation. Luckily we get a little better angle to the waves since we’re sailing to the northern tip of Madagascar and our boat in general handles a blow pretty well as long as the wind isn’t forward of the beam. So far, we’ve made the first 800+ miles on just the jib. We haven’t adjusted it in 2 or 3 days, so we really can’t complain about tough sailing.

Another difference between the South Pacific and Southern Indian Ocean has been the amount of plastic trash. There was little-to-none in the Pacific and it’s been pretty bad here. Between Bali and Christmas Island you couldn’t walk out on deck and look around without seeing several pieces of trash floating by. The winds and currents push it westward, and there’s a beach on the east side of Christmas Island with so much trash that there are garbage bags at the parking area so that everyone who visits the beach can pick up a bag of trash and bring it back to a bin on their way out. Based on the current patterns, the nature of the trash, and general impressions during our visit to Bali, it seems like the source for most of the trash we’ve seen is Asia. The beach on the east side of Direction Island at Cocos is in a similar state, and as a lot of the beach rubbish throughout the world is flip-flops (jandals in NZ and thongs in Oz), I was hoping to replace my second pair of flip-flips and do a bit of beach cleaning at the same time. Unfortunately, there weren’t many in my size and most needed more repair than the ones I’m wearing, so I had to leave Cocos without recycled footwear.

Washed-up trash on the beach at Cocos

Fellow flip-flop forager Johnny taking a break from the effort

We’ve continued to do a bit of reading about Madagascar using saved websites, cruising guides, etc. It sounds like an interesting and extremely poor place. Theft of dinghies and outboards is a problem that will be new for us as well as the occasional boat burglary. The people are so poor that boats sailing through last year reported that even empty glass and plastic jars are valuable trading items that can earn a seafood dinner. I’m not sure what they’re used for, but it could be related to the local rum being sold for about $1/liter and being dispensed into whatever container you bring to the store. We stocked up with some cheap T-shirts and about a dozen cheap soccer balls in Bali, so with the standard trading items we have around, Lauren’s hoping we should be covered for a lobster dinner or two. Between negotiating bribes, avoiding theft, trading for dinner, and dodging notoriously nasty low pressure systems known as “busters” it should be an eventful trip from Madagascar down the Mozambique Channel to South Africa.

Lat: 12 45.708′ S
Long: 86 42.940′ E

We are making good progress, especially now that the wind has become more consistent (15-25 knots). Yesterday was our best day yet — 154 miles. Dallas informs me that we are almost a quarter of the way to the cape at the north tip of Madagascar. Already?! Ha ha.

It’s a long passage for sure, but we are now settled in and enjoying it. The key to these long ones seems to be just keeping oneself occupied. I’ve always had the capacity to be a daydreamer, so I don’t have much trouble with that. (I remember calling a friend after running out of gas on a long stretch of highway, and her response was, "What goes through your head? Bubbles?") What’s more, I tend to view these long periods of solitude on the open sea as an opportunity for me to reflect, appreciate, ponder, and dream — a spiritual experience, if you will. Of course it’s not necessary to be in the middle of the ocean to have this kind of experience, but something about being out here day after day, without any of the hustle and bustle, distractions, noise, etc. of the mainland makes it extremely easy to get into a quiet, euphoric place.

Dallas, on the other hand, has no bubbles in his head and was raised to stay busy. (I was too, but I’m taking a break!) He has been able to stay occupied so far with reading, a bit of software programming, and video editing, but I think we’re going to have to get pretty creative to keep him busy for another 2+ weeks. Wish us luck!

It’s also not a good sign that he’s talking about food that we don’t have already, but I think he’ll be OK. We have plenty of food on board, although we are out of fresh fruit, and our fresh veggie supply has dwindled down to potatoes, onions, and a couple of questionable-looking cucumbers. (We’ve started taking our vitamins to supplement.)

It’s of little use to Dallas, but we have plenty of fish! We caught a wahoo yesterday — a real one, this time. After seeing its dark blue bands and its dorsal sail fin, we realized that the two we’d caught prior were not actually wahoo but barracuda. Apparently I’m a fan of both! Anyway, the wahoo was 3′ long, providing 8 nice filets, so I’m glad we have enough wind to power the freezer.

So this is what a wahoo looks like!

Lat: 12 26.520′ S
Lon: 92 02.686′ E

Well, it’s Day 4 and I think we’re settling in. The weather on this passage has been some of the strangest we’ve had. Most days we’ve had a few small faint squalls, though not very frequent or very heavy. The wind can’t seem to decide whether it wants to blow 12 or 25 knots, and the seas are just now starting to become more regular even though they’re still fairly large. The last few days they’ve been fairly confused and often large, sometimes seemingly out of the middle of nowhere. Every time we’ve thought about putting the spinnaker up because we’re down to 4 knots, we wait and an hour later it’s 25 and gusting to 30 and we’re doing 6 knots again. Somehow we’ve managed to cover 130+ miles each of the last 2 days with just the jib out, which puts us on a pace to make the passage in 22 days or so.

No-work sailing in heavy trades

We’ve been in touch with two other boats (Bahati and Boomerang) via the radio twice a day, and they’re seeing similar conditions, although Bahati seems to have it a bit worse since they’re farther south and west and Boomerang actually just arrived in Madagascar after a light-wind foray up to the Chagos.

Aside from putting a rip in the jib when the wind changed to the NE, we haven’t had anything break yet. We’re both settling into books (I’m reading “The State of Africa” and Lauren is working on “Eat, Pray, Love” when she’s not doing a crossword), and unfortunately we’ve already started talking a little about food. It’s not bad yet, but it did start early. The long passages always involve afternoon conversations about favorite foods and restaurants that are a world away. We weren’t sure what we’d have for shipping traffic on this passage, but so far there’s been a fair amount compared to our long Pacific passage. Two nights ago there were about 5 ships on the AIS overnight with one massive cargo vessel getting within 3 miles or so.

When we cross shipping lanes, we’re far from alone

That’s about all the excitement I have to relay at the moment. All is well on board and ticking off the miles…

Lat: 12 08.363′ S
Long: 95 56.866′ E

It’s Day One of our 2900 mile passage to Madagascar, and so far, it has been very smooth sailing. The seas are calm, winds are fair, and we’ve already caught, cleaned, and eaten a portion of a nice wahoo. Dallas just arose from one of his nice, long power naps and has his nose back in the fishing book. He’s really getting into fishing now, which is just fine by me. I love eating fresh fish and don’t mind cleaning it as long as I don’t have to deal with until after it has already been put to death. Contrary to Kurt Cobain’s lyrics, I’m still not convinced that fish don’t have feelings.

If you read our last blog, you may be wondering why we are only just now setting sail. Well, our friends aboard S/V Marionette showed up in Cocos on Saturday morning, just a few hours before we were going to leave, and quite easily persuaded us to stick around for another night. I think both Dallas and me were up for having as much fun as possible in Cocos prior to embarking on this 3-week, one-way passage to Longitude 49 E. It turned out to be a very memorable delay….

We have spent a number of fun evenings with Marionette in a number of places (Panama, Marquesas, Niue, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Darwin, Christmas Island), but each time we have met them, there have been different people on board, with the only constant being the young (28) Belgian skipper, Markus. Sailing a racing boat around the world with no auto-pilot or wind vane, no electronic charts, no long-distance communication system, and usually very little fuel, he is of a different breed than most skippers. Some criticize his ways of operating, but aside from being declared missing by the Swedish news media during the tsunami last year, he has traveled around much of the world without too much drama. Personally, I appreciate his tenacity and ability to do a lot with a little. On long passages, he requires at least 3 other crew since they have to hand-steer the boat at all times, but he doesn’t seem to have much trouble finding backpackers willing to pay for the experience of island hopping or making an ocean crossing. Currently he is traveling with an exuberant guy from the Czech Republic named Johnny and a couple (Aussie guy/Chinese girl).

Markus (left) and his current crew

Here’s Johnny!

Saturday afternoon we invited the Marionette crew to join us for a barbie to finish off the wahoo that we caught on the way in. Markus wanted to contribute as always, and cooked up a huge pot of curried rice and veggies. After lunch, I hopped in the water with the volleyball and suggested a game of monkey in the middle that turned into a rousing game akin to full contact water polo. We then took turns diving off of the diving platform and trying to catch the ball mid-air. About this time I realized that not only did I seem to have my energy back, but the stitches inside my mouth had finally dissolved, allowing me to talk without a lisp for the first time in three weeks. No wonder I was enjoying myself so much!

Reach for it!

Dallas and I returned to the boat for a couple of last minute boat projects, namely taping up the spinnaker sock and stowing gear in preparation for leaving first thing in the morning. Around sunset we were visited by Hans and Nino from S/V Drumbeat. We befriended Hans back in Tonga when he was on his own boat, and he is now the Chief Engineer for the superyacht. Anyway, it turns out that Hans had noticed our cat, but after hearing about my accident while in Bali two weeks ago, he thought that it couldn’t be us. He was glad to see that I was in good shape and eager to catch up. It wasn’t long before Markus and Johnny sniffed out the potential party going on and dinghied over to join in the fun. At some point, Dallas shared with Hans his idea to make a music video as a present for our mutual friend Martin on S/V Anima. (Martin has rewritten pop tunes to dedicate to others such as Tiff on their birthdays, so it was fitting that he should have one written for him.) Hans was keen on the idea as were Markus and Johnny, so needless to say, we were committed to sticking around for another day.

Hans’ arrival was cause to celebrate

Before rehearsals began on Sunday, Dallas and Markus went out near the east edge of the lagoon to do some spearfishing. Dallas had a lot of fun but had to get used to keeping an eye out for a shark that was lurking — normally reef sharks don’t bother you, but if you have a dead fish at the end of your spear, it’s a different story. They returned with two pretty large fish — a red squirrelfish and a colorful parrotfish, so the six of us had delicious fresh fish and curried rice (the same pot from the day before) for lunch again.

Hans then came over, and it was time to get down to business. Dallas had already selected and downloaded lyrics for MC’s Hammer’s “Hammer Time” (since Martin’s last name is Hammer), and it wasn’t too tough for he and Hans and me to change a couple of verses and the chorus to focus on Martin and his many talents. I found a recording of the song on a hard drive, and Hans was able to pick up the riff on the guitar, with Markus and Johnny on hand drums and Dallas and me on vocals. Initially it seemed like we were never going to pull it together, but after a little practice and a little rum, we filmed sevral entertaining versions of the song: one on the boat, one with us dancing and playing on the beach, and two versions with us sitting on concrete posts by the jetty, hamming it up while the cameraman (Nino) panned in on each of us individually. It turned out to be a blast, the only problem being that none of us can get that song out of our heads! We can’t wait for Martin to see the finished, edited product, but as we are on totally different routes now, we’ll have to mail it to him somewhere in Thailand.

MTV, here we come!

Yep, that’s us!

As for Marionette and Drumbeat, we look forward to meeting up again in South Africa!