Sri Lanka
Pirate passage
Over the past weeks we have been repeatedly asked why we would ever consider sailing the Red Sea right now. A better question would be why do we feel compelled to sail around the world?
It’s complicated.
Weighing us down constantly are the obvious and immediate decisions to be made regarding the next stage of our voyage. The reports of fellow sailors being executed, being taken captive, and being shot at are not unknown to us. Despite previous “pop star nipples” type comments, I assure you that we recognize that things have changed. These events cause more sleepless nights and dominate more of our conversations than you could imagine. It is after all, our own lives we are talking about. We may be idiotic but we’re not idiots.
Here’s what has been scrawled on our cocktail napkins over the past weeks:
- Sail around the Cape of Good Hope
- Sell the farm, ship our boat and meet it in Turkey
- OPERATION: RUN AND GUN
- Stay here or travel India or South East Asia
- Sail to Australia and sell the boat, use the proceeds to do something else fun
Africa represents an additional 5000 nautical miles of sailing. It doesn’t look like much in a sentence, but using 100NM’s/day for planning purposes that’s 50 additional days of open ocean sailing. Fifty days! What were you doing this time last month? Imagine if the answer was, ‘exactly what I was doing today, sitting on a boat in the middle of the ocean.’ Not in itself a show stopper, but significant enough to land on our con’s list.
There’s the weather factor. This area used to be called the Cape of Storms. The name change to Cape of Good Hope gave it an optimistic slant that read a little better. ‘Cape of good luck sucker!’ may have been a close second. The Mozambique/Agulhas is a powerful current that runs Northwest down along the eastern coast of Africa. Cold fronts generated below push in from the opposite direction. This combination of wind against water has been known to create some of the biggest waves on the planet. That said we could handle the weather. It comes down to being at the right place at the right time, something we’ve been practicing at for almost 4 years now. The 4 fronts we experienced on our way to and from New Zealand aren’t much different and on that trip we sailed further south than the Cape of Good Hope. Crossing that Agulhas current is the tricky bit but, by watching the weather and timing your passage to the East coast accordingly, it is more than doable as demonstrated by the small boats that do it every season.
Then there’s the third consideration, and it’s the same reason we’re even discussing the Cape option at all; piracy. Yes, it’s there too. Not as popular with the media at the moment and less concentrated, but it’s there. Remember that British couple (Paul and Rachel Chandler) in the news that were taken from their boat and held for over a year before eventually being released? They were taken off their 38 foot yacht near the Seychelles. If you don’t have an atlas handy, the Seychelles are pretty well exactly between where we are sitting right now and South Africa.
Lastly, you will need to hang out for months somewhere like Madagascar or Mozambique watching your bat rot while waiting for the right season to round the Cape (Dec/Jan). We would love to see these places, but not while stressing out about our boat. Being trapped for months in one of the poorest countries in the world could either be the best experience ever, or a nightmare. We loved Sri Lanka, but coming back to the boat in Gale harbor was always demoralizing. Oily crud crawled 18 inches up above the waterline and sooty black pollution had settled into every nook and cranny and turned our white topsides black.
So, you’ve successfully avoided the area of piracy currently being reported on and have decided instead to change your plans to one that your heart’s not in, expose yourself to an additional 50 days of open ocean sailing, infamous weather and seas, another ITCZ crossing, and still have the potential of being hijacked?
So the real question is not could we, it’s do we want to. Frankly, no we don’t .We wouldn’t sail to New Zealand again either. It was gnarly, uncomfortable and cold. It’s a significant point, we could take this on but if our hearts aren’t in it?
Conclusion: It’s on the list, it’s a real option, and we’ll do it if we have to (like eating your vegetables).
Now let’s talk shipping.
We could ship the boat and stay on schedule. If you manage to find a shipping company that has room, that you can afford, that is leaving from a place you can get your boat to, and is going somewhere that you want your boat to be then you are among a tiny fraction of small boat sailors and can consider yourself lucky.
We have found one. The agent we found working on behalf of the shipping company is a good one and we`ve been in daily contact with him for nearly two weeks. The cost is significant, the timing is significant and the meaning is significant.
First the cost; by the time all ancillary expenditures (like flights and hotels) are factored in this option sits in a haughty 30 thousand dollar neighbourhood. Like the additional ocean miles stated above, not the end of the world but certainly carries enough significance to factor in at the top of our decision making process. The boat leaves from the Maldives and drops in Turkey. We would need to have the boat in the Maldives ready for loading which is not a problem. The boat would be shipped to Turkey where we are required to meet and unload.
There is a definite ‘neat’ factor involved in this option. I remember watching them load one of these ships up on a discovery program once and thought that it was pretty cool. Divers attaching straps underneath the hulls then watching Slapdash dangle beneath one of those giant deck cranes from the side of a freighter before it`s slotted into place on deck like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle would be totally gut wrenching. It would also be a very unique, completely unexpected, and a somewhat colourful addition to our circumnavigation. But the price of admission for this ride might blow it out of the water.
Speaking of blowing things out of the water; the next option (which we`ve dubbed SLAPDASH: OPERATION RUN AND GUN) has some merit. We`ve been looking into two options. The first is acquiring arms equal to what the pirates are using and making it a fair fight. Who hasn’t wanted to have their very own AK? Even Jaime is warming to the idea, although I did lie and tell her that hers would be pink. We’re thinking a little NWA to run along with the video montage. The downside to this plan is that acquiring automatic weapons on the black market in a country that has just emerged from a three decade long civil war is as difficult as you might think. That and getting into a firefight with a bunch of drugged up Somali’s.
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That’s where Private security forces come in…
Mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, dudes that come with their own guns. Their industry claims that no boat with a private security force has ever been hijacked. As with the above there are logistics and cost to consider. Three soldiers of fortune with the tools of their trade on Slapdash? We only have one head. Trained killers riding shotgun on your vessel doesn’t come cheap, it can cost as much (or more) than shipping your boat. We have found a way to mitigate the cost but it’s a really long story.
On the other hand our guests are bound to have some great stories, and to kill some time there’s always the chance of some high seas weapons training. We really like this plan and are pursuing it aggressively.
We could also stay here, ‘here’ being somewhere in South East Asia. We would spend the same amount of money bumming around that we would have on shipping or mercenaries, and we wouldn’t be any closer to home. A high probability of fun travel and buying time but no guarantee that anything will change. Given the international response to the pirate problem so far, all we are likely to encounter next year would be more, better armed, wealthier pirates. It was fun talking about all of the places and ways that we could kill off a year here but in the end this one just doesn’t make sense for us.
The last option that received some air time around the Slapdash settee was to sail her back to Australia, turn the boat into cash, and set off on some new adventure. The season would be right for the passage and the market there is good for a sale. It was fun talking about it and we came up with a bunch of crazy ideas but in the process realized how much we both hate backtracking and what finishing what we started really means to us. In the end this was nothing more than some fun conversation over big Lion Lagers.
We’re left with the following scenarios listed in order of most likely to least:
1. Operation run and gun
2. Sell the farm, ship the boat
3. Cape of good luck!
The options I’ve described are the same for anyone living on a boat in this part of the world trying to get home. None good, all with major downsides. Some horrifying things are being said of those few sailors who are captured and/or killed trying. The media has been quick to criticize Quest and ING without seeing the other side of this story. Why? Nine out of ten die trying to summit Everest. Far worse odds than a boat faces sailing through the Gulf of Aden. Yet climbers are welcomed back like conquering heroes. They go on the speaking circuit, make money, speak to school children and inspire them. Light a candle for the dead climbers, but curse the Johannes’s for trying? We are totally confused by the media’s portrayal, its idiotic discrepancy.
Here’s some stuff we’ve learned about the Somali pirates while wading through all of this crap:
Pirates are foot soldiers of adventurous capitalists, frontline operatives of a criminal organization interested in making money. From that perspective their model is excellent; high returns and low investment. Recruits? An endless supply of hopelessly poor Khat chewing kids with nothing to lose. Risk of capture and prosecution for Jin al Bar (Demons of the seas, as the guys in boats like to call themselves) might as well be nil. Get yourself a sat phone and 100K of start-up capital and you too could become the celebrity director of your own fleet of Somali pirates. Benefitting from all of this are the insurance companies (charging huge premiums to shipping companies), the mercenaries providing escort detail, and the land based pirate bosses. Everyone else is a victim of circumstance.
Every year 23,000 ships with billions in cargo pass through the Gulf; financially speaking the crumbs the Jin al Bar pick off barely justify the show of international Keystone Cop style prevention we see now. Apparently more than 28 warships are operating in the Gulf of Aden and Somali Basin today.
The majority of the warships operating in the Gulf of Aden (GoA) and the Somali Basin are under the control of MSCHOA (www.mschoa.org). MSCHOA; the Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa. There’s also MARLO (Maritime Liaison Office) which is the American version of all the above. Not enough acronyms yet? How about EUNAVFOR, the EU Naval Force for Somalia.
No offence at all intended towards the military forces that we are so happy to see out there, far from it. They are doing everything they can within their means to protect this corridor and have the lopsided task of dealing with a ruthless enemy in ways that will read well in the headlines sure to follow. These insane directives end up lending rationale to the enterprising Somali’s business plan. Imagine what the combined money, people, effort, and equipment associated with a fleet of this size could do towards the problem if well directed? It’s like the collars for dollars fiasco; wrong targets! Leave the hopped up dime bag teens alone and take out the Ray Ban wearing asshole with the sat phone whose comments and opinions are so happily publicized worldwide through Reuters!
I digress.
Should all be decided in the next week but we have pushed this sailing season to its limits. If the ‘run and gun’ plan doesn’t work out we will either sail around the Cape of Africa, ship the boat, or sell Slapdash and partner with Pirate Inc. Anyone in the market for 75,000 pairs of Nike’s?
Sri Lankaaaahhh
monday february 21st 2011 (galle, sri lanka)
We were escorted through the channel into historic Galle harbour and dropped the hook near a buoy beside an old fort built by the Dutch in 1663 where we were told to wait for a Navy patrol.
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An hour later the Navy guys had boarded the vessel. Once satisfied through heated interrogation and close scrutiny that we were in fact not transporting Tamil Tiger rebels into the secure area we were free to proceed to the docks. Their inhumane methods mainly involved complimenting the boat, and asking a lot of questions about the pictures of friends and family we have hanging on the wall. “Excuse me sir and who is this one?” The whole thing took about 10 minutes and once they were finished they offered to ride in with us to help us handle the lines. We would need to drop our anchor and then back in, squeezing between two other boats and eventually tie the stern to the dock. There was no drama. Between our Navy line handlers and a couple of helpful neighbours we were soon safely med-moored to the dock on the inside of the harbour. The entrance requirements that followed would not be so easy and took up the remainder of our day.
 22-Feb-2011 17:26, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 8.89mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
We were involved in waiting, signing or handing over documents from 9AM to 3PM, a marathon not endured since Cuba. The total cost incurred was 200 USD which included berthing for 30 days, our agents fee, entrance and departure fees. Not bad at all, and like Cuba, the experience although long and drawn out was not unpleasant due to an interesting procession of characters involved.
Polite and chatty officials carried out their business in a detailed but friendly manner, and all but the Immigration guy visited the boat. This is a nice bonus that saves us from trooping all over town on a wild goose chase trying to find random unmarked offices.
The opening game of the cricket world cup featured Sri Lanka, against none other than Canada on the same day that we arrived. It started at about the same time that the Immigration guy was scheduled to arrive, so it was no surprise to find him sitting there in the office watching the game, revealing why he was the only official not to visit Slapdash personally.
With the boat sorted and bureaucracy satisfied we found a beachside bar 10 minutes away in a place called Unawatuna. It was here that we would celebrate our successful passage in the traditional manner. Talking about the good and the bad from the passage now safely behind us while gushing over what exciting things would be in store for us in the new land over rounds of local Lager has become a venerated and rowdily enjoyed first day ritual.
This was followed as usual by a good long deep dark sleep of the dead.
tuesday february 22nd 2011 (galle, sri lanka)
We spent our first two days in Galle tending to the boat. While I ferried 12 jerry cans of diesel and as many full of water back and forth along the rickety floating plastic lego dock, Jaime sweated it out inside the boat returning Slapdash to her former pre-passage glory. We dropped off a ton of salty laundry, mostly sheets and towels. My only contribution was a pair of board shorts, 1 shirt and a sarong. The temporary repairs made underway got us here just fine, but we also took the headsail down again and walked it into town to a lady near the docks who does sail repairs with an old Singer sewing machine.
Turns out we neighboured up to the right people. Paul and Natalie are a cool American couple on a big bad ass sailboat who have been doing this type of thing for 12 years. Along with some great stories Paul revealed himself to be an excellent mechanic. Big mistake. Before long we had the leaky injector valve off our engine and parts and tools spread all over the cockpit. We tried a few different things before landing on the culprit, a little rubber o-ring had worn and cracked. After installing a suitable replacement Beaker is now keeping its diesel inside the cylinders where it belongs.
wednesday february 24th 2011 (galle, sri lanka)
During our victory celebration on our first night in Sri Lanka we met Shar and Mitch. We spotted them because they were reading one of the same books we had just finished (Cloud Atlas). Then upon further examination it turns out that these two jokers had the nerve to not only hail from the same country as us, but the same city and then to our mutual surprise even the same neighbourhood! We hit it off and after one false start finally had them over to the boat last night.
The evening started slowly as we waited around in a little office for over an hour while all the necessary papers were completed, delivered and filed in order to process their ‘visitor passes’. It is strange living inside this little sealed and secure area, but other than the odd thing like this and having to show our own passes every time we enter or leave it’s not too bad. We made up for the slow start with a strong finish. To Jaime’s delight Shar showed us her weakness for Gin, while Mitch kept pace with me and the Captain (Morgan that is). Their passes were only good for the day, which meant leaping off the stern and negotiating the rickety floating lego dock in the dark, then passing through the checkpoint on the way back to their hotel. We’ve since heard that they made it back okay and apart from a couple of close calls on the dock had an uneventful trip home. The officials even pretended not to notice that they had overstayed the 4PM visitors curfew by about 8 hours.
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We have endured a couple of hot and sweaty decidedly un-fun days and we were looking forward to something entirely different. At first I tried stealing a tuk tuk, but had trouble with the hand start and grip shift. The owner, Saman, and Jaime found this quite funny and offered no assistance whatsoever so I abandoned the caper and went on to plan B.
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On our first night out we had noticed some motorbike rental places in Unawatuna. We took a tuk tuk back there today (no, not the same one) and started bike shopping. It took the better part of the afternoon negotiating and test driving, but we learned in Thailand that this is time well spent; we had big plans for these bikes and they needed to be tip top. I settled on a nearly new 250cc Bajaj for 800 rupee a day, and Jaime found an automatic 100cc scooter to her liking for 600. Rupees trade at about 100 to 1, so we are now into the bike portion of this expedition for 14 dollars a day for the two of us.
I strapped my paddle to the side and we headed West along the coast. I traded for this paddle back in Vanuatu and ever since have been lugging the thing around having artisans carve their best into the handle and blade. I’ve had work done in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia etc. Frankly, it’s been a pain in the ass. On the other hand I have a feeling that once it’s finished it will become my most prized possession. After a couple of stops I found a good carver named Mr. Namal in Hikkaduwa and left the paddle with him. We continued on to Ambalangota when Jaime’s bike which had been acting up all but died on us. We were off to a slow start. We made it to a mechanic who tore into the little bike with gusto. Within an hour he had it capable of highway speeds again. We were charged 50 rupees for the service. Yes, that’s 50 cents.
24-Feb-2011 22:26, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Feb-2011 00:12, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 80 |
With 1 gimpy bike and only a smidge into our epic bike trip we decided to play it safe and return the faulty merchandise to sender. We hate a false start, but having experienced the hassle of an unreliable bike on our Thailand trip we decided it was worth the extra day. We rode back to Unawatuna that night and returned the bike. At first this seemed like a defeat, but all of this changed when we found the replacement… a pink scooter called ‘scooty’ with a matching pink bowling ball helmet. What could be better?
Early on Jaime had expressed concern about some of the obstacles on the roads, a concern not unwarranted as not much later she was rammed by some crazy cow that came bolting straight into traffic. The -smack!- of bovine skull meeting plastic and ass was clearly audible and I watched the back end of Jaime’s scooter get lifted off the ground and shifted over nearly a foot. In an impressive display of good riding she regained control of the bike and pulled slowly over to the side.
26-Feb-2011 18:50, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Feb-2011 16:02, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
Not long after that we passed a sign stating that we were entering an elephant corridor. This caused a slight pause but she rallied and we continued on. Happy to report that in Sri Lanka the Pachyderms are much better behaved than the stupid cows. It’s a good thing too, look at the size of that big fella in the second picture.
24-Feb-2011 22:03, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
03-Mar-2011 17:31, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.6, 14.67mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
Suicide cows and elephants aside it became bone rattling-ly obvious on our second day out that mammals would not be the only challenge that we would contend with on this trip. We had spent the previous night in a shitty roach motel in Hambantota. It was pretty bad, but the owners ancient toothless wife added some ambiance when her incense and almost hypnotic Buddhist chants drifted in from the other room. It lent an exotic feel to the place and kept our minds from lingering on unpleasant thoughts like, I wonder when the last time this bedding was changed, as we drifted off to sleep.
Not wanting to see our room in the daylight we were off well before sunrise. I chose the road less traveled, a hair like wisp of a line up through the center of the map. Roads conditions varied between bad and really bad. Sometimes there were none at all.
26-Feb-2011 15:20, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
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Fortunately the scenery on this trip varied from gagging to ‘oh my god’ which more than made up for anything else.
26-Feb-2011 20:38, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
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Catch that? One more time for the slow learners. Roads very bad…
28-Feb-2011 17:20, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.4, 8.89mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
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26-Feb-2011 22:44, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
… scenery very good.
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We would get underway early, and pick up breakfast somewhere along the way. For some reason being the first ones on the road and freezing our asses off until the sun comes up gives a bike trip kind of a hearty and adventurous kind of feel. Breakfast was whatever we could find along the way. Sometimes it was a sugar cookie and a bag of peanuts at a Sri Lankan truck stop, other times it was an early morning fruit stand. In the mountains the fruit was amazing, in this category even giving the previously unchallenged Polynesia a serious run for it’s money.
26-Feb-2011 14:05, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Feb-2011 20:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
28-Feb-2011 02:11, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.4 sec, ISO 100 |
In Sri Lanka there are over 3 million tuk tuks and apparently no building codes.
26-Feb-2011 20:57, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Feb-2011 19:50, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
The tuk tuks look like funky retro 60′s art from the Jetsons, but we’ve seen them in showrooms and wrapped up on trucks being delivered. They arrive brand new looking like this.
28-Feb-2011 19:30, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 100 |
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In some ways Sri Lanka reminded us a lot of our trip through Cuba. Economic necessity paves the way for all sorts of strange looking contraptions built by resourceful and proud people. The two man electric weed eater and rototiller with wheels pick-up trucks were among our very favorites.
22-Feb-2011 17:29, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
26-Feb-2011 16:30, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
The old cars and trucks are still in service here too, often suitably back dropped by crumbling character buildings.
28-Feb-2011 20:05, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 13.18mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 80 |
28-Feb-2011 17:54, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 7.57mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
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Like Cuba, Sri Lanka boasts some smart little dressers. Ever wonder why the poorest countries we visit seem to have the most sharply dressed, well behaved and happy little kids?
28-Feb-2011 21:06, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.3, 7.57mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 80 |
Everywhere there are good quality curious and friendly people around doing whatever it takes to get by…
26-Feb-2011 17:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Feb-2011 21:35, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
28-Feb-2011 17:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
28-Feb-2011 17:32, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
28-Feb-2011 19:13, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 160 |
… and then there was this distinctly Cuban hamburger patty from the Queens pub in Kandy. We think it may have actually been pork. To be fair we both agree completely that for some reason Sri Lanka has by far the most consistently delicious french fries. In that regard we have yet to be let down.
02-Mar-2011 21:38, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
At some point we arrived in Delhousie and stupidly decided to climb Adam’s peak. This was after a phenomenally beautiful ride. Despite the relatively low mileage we had planned for that day it still took us hours. We couldn’t seem to make it more than 100 meters before stopping to gape, gawk or snap a few pictures. It was like we had spent the whole day riding through a manicured park, a scenic painting or the Butchart Gardens. Half the time we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. The other half the time we were scared shitless when the landscape would pull our attention away from a dumpster sized pothole causing a quick correction and severe heart attack. This would always be followed by vows of never doing that again, which would be followed 5 minutes later by exactly the same scenario playing out again. Only the dumpster sized pothole varied; at times was a thousand foot cliff, or a relic of an old bus which are all seemingly driven by psychotic meth heads in Sri Lanka.
We splurged on a 20 dollar a night guesthouse so that we could have this view of the objective from our little patio.
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Adam’s Peak’s peak is at 2243 meters. It’s Sri Lanka’s second highest but most holy. There’s a monastery up there and every year over a half million pilgrims visit. There’s also a footprint at the top and depending on who your parents are, it belongs to either Shiva (Hindu), Adam (Muslim), or Buddha (Buddhist). We joined the pilgrims that day who at least had the benefit of religious zeal to keep them warm. They must have wondered at what motivated us to get out of bed at 2AM to join them.
There were little tea huts all the way up which allowed us to duck in out of the occasional rain, and I will admit that the lights along the path and orange glow from the monastery gave it the trek a surreal and reverent edge. There’s also a bit of giddy fraternity to be enjoyed when a whole bunch of random people are stuck together doing something really uncomfortable. We painfully learned the difference between sea legs and mountain legs, but managed to make the summit before sunrise. This is meant to be an awesome sight, especially when “the distinctive shape of the mountain casts a triangular shadow on the surrounding plain and can be seen to move quickly downward as the sun rises”, but we really have no idea. There was a full gale blowing sheets of rain horizontally when we set foot on top. The miserable weather was nicely paired with these wailing monks playing some kind of horrible nerve wracking instruments. We rang the bell at the top whose significance I’ve forgotten, ate a samosa, Jaime went pee and we started back down even before the sun had come up.
On the way back down we were treated to some spectacular vistas, wearing the impossible to conceal smug looks of people on decent. These are the same and probably imaginary looks we stared at on faces for hours as we labored up.
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Jaime’s hat garnered a lot of attention with the pilgrims. For the whole 6 hours people would comment, ask for a picture or just laugh hysterically. I recommend googling up some images for Adam’s Peak, it really is quite stunning day or night and we just didn’t have the gear to get tricky low light and wide angle shots to do it justice.
These three little dudes accompanied us most of the way down chirping away happily while we grunted out pained winded responses. This was their 10th summit, and while we were having difficulty walking they ran off ahead at the bottom on their way to school.
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After nearly 10,000 steps (9600) and a 14 kilometer round trip we were back at our guest house before breakfast. Jaime is a ruthless slave driver and her itinerary included a 4 hour ride to Kandy that same day. We decided to leave right after breakfast before our legs seized up completely. We saw an elephant along the way and an unusual cluster of natural car wash’s. One section of the road was bordered by a rock face which had all these natural springs. Each one had a guy with a hose attached to the rock somewhere and a little car wash sign. Far more interesting and scenic than any coin operated tin shed at home. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to take off a few layers of mud and dirt from the road hogs.
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Then we found a monkey and fed him a piece of corn. Uncharacteristically, he did not attack me. Corn is they key. I am the monkey whisperer.
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I bet this place wonders why tourists are always stopping to take a picture but never come in to eat anything.
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In Columbo we met up once again with Shar and Mitch who at this time were rollin like celebs in a pimped up Landy with driver. We wondered about their secret lives. They scored tickets to the Canada vs Pakistan match and off we went. At the game which Canada lost, they introduced us to the ‘beer case’ and our lives will never be the same.
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Afterwards the girls drunkenly decided that they knew exactly where we had parked and foolishly stormed off…
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… heartlessly leaving Mitch and I to fend off hordes of young cricket hooligans. Eventually we manged to evade the rascals and heroically save the girls. They were inside the Landy waiting for us exactly where they… er, we said it would be. At least that’s how we remember it.
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By this time Jaime and I were incapable of taking stairs. We were also both suffering from vicious colds, both parting gifts from our escapade at Adam’s Peak. We barely left the hotel room for the next day and a half. Unable to justify the ridiculously overpriced hotel we were in any longer we left Columbo and were soon back on a beautiful hot coastal road.
25-Feb-2011 20:07, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 8.89mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
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It was an incredible trip and a great way to see the country. Of course there’s a million things we missed, but we’ve been at it for 10 days and feel like we gave it a pretty fair effort. Every day we finished covered in black soot, grimy from head to toe. The dust and carbon monoxide often left us hacking, wheezing and wishing for an oxygen tent. Accommodations were sometimes dirty, always spartan, usually offset with million dollar views. The vast majority of the people we met were genuine, curious and sincere. A few tried their best to separate us from our money. We were sometimes faced with a noticeably old fashioned view on women. When Jaime went out by herself there would be the occasional idiots to fend off, and she was often asked ‘where is your husband’, and indeed it was unusual to see a local woman out by herself most places. Except for the upscale hotel tapas bars and restaurants we didn’t see a single local gal out at a pub, they were an all male domain. In all of our travels we didn’t see a local lady on motorbike or scooter. All this but Sri Lanka was the first country in the world to have a female Prime Minister?
Real hassles were few and far between if there were any at all. We had been warned that the touts in Sri Lanka can be very aggressive and every official will be looking for baksheesh. Maybe we’ve just developed a ‘don’t even bother with us’ look of the veteran traveler, but neither of these things were true in our experience. We haven’t been hit up for any kind of bribe, been hassled by a cop for imaginary ‘pay on the spot’ infractions, or met a tout in a league with those in Kuta Beach or even Mexico for that matter. The incredible beaches, surf and highlands really surprised us as did the wildlife. We nearly ran over a 3 foot Monitor lizard as he did his hurried reptilian best to waggle across the road in front of us. The smiles and waves returned by locals ratio is as high here as it has been anywhere on our trip. It’s affordable and there’s a ton of interesting natural wonders and a diverse colorful history that spans back through to medieval times. It can be quaint with class. Take-away wrappers are scrap paper, usually kids schoolwork. Serviettes at the little mom and pop shacks are always strips of cut up newspaper, and yet in the same place the cream for your coffee is heated up before being served. Speaking of which, the food here is totally underrated. Samosas, Rotty’s,curries, and varieties of sambols are excellent. It’s easy for two people to have an excellent meal for less than 5 bucks. Note: it will be assumed that as a ‘foreigner’ you will want bland food. You need to ask every time to have dishes prepared spicy if you want to enjoy the real local flavors.
We both give Sri Lanka an enthusiastic thumbs up.
28-Feb-2011 21:25, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 80 |
24-Feb-2011 18:46, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
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wednesday march 9th 2011 (hikkaduwa, sri lanka)
We haven’t quite made it back to Galle yet. We have been holed up in Hikkaduwa in a big clean airy beach side guesthouse. We are literally right beside the water, which affords a pretty spectacular view of the sunset every night.
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That’s also the view towards the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. Hikkaduwa is suitable base camp for our daily correspondence with shipping companies, people that have just made the passage, news feeds from Somalia and NATO, placement agencies for Yemeni mercenaries, route planning for South Africa, and concerned friends and family back home. I’ve been at it for two days straight and will post all of our views on this matter, hopefully along with a plan of action soon.
22-Feb-2011 17:30, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
Boredom, Bedlam, Bliss: A Passage to Sri Lanka
thursday february 10th 2011, day 1
We spent up our Baht on a nice dinner and a massage. On the way back a quick stop at the minimart took care of any remains as we walked out with a few passage treats. We successfully launched through the surf for the last time and once back aboard the Slapdash stowed the outboard engine, hoisted up the dinghy and secured it. Jaime went about making the cabin passage-ready while I did the outside equivalent. Before long we were fit for sea and fresh out of reasons not to leave. It was exactly midnight when we weighed anchor and began slowly feeling our way out of Naiharn’s beautiful bay. There wasn’t much wind so Thailand’s lights lingered with us half the night before slowly but inevitably sinking under the horizon and out of our view.
The pre-passage jitters (PPJ) and anxiety faded away much more quickly than Thailand’s lights. PPJ’s are similar to that gnawing feeling you sometimes get when you leave the house in the morning thinking you may have forgotten something, times a thousand… or five thousand; the number of miles to the Med which is the next time we’ll have the wide array of services available to us that we have here in Thailand.
Fortunately PPJ’s have an instantaneous cure; leaving land. Once offshore there’s no point worrying about what you might need or may have forgotten. The anxiety leaves along with the options and choices you once had. Going from planning for everything to doing something is a beautiful feeling for me. I’ve said it time and again but leaving harbour in a well equipped boat has to be one of the most exhilarating and freeing things that you can experience.
Once the sun came up the next morning there was nothing to see but that familiar watery blue horizon 360 degrees around us. Before breakfast our first dolphin encounter of the passage came along and added some life to the scene. Very slow going today, but calm, so it’s been what you could call a ‘sleepable start’. This relaxed and gentle progress is the only positive side of not having much wind. What a difference from the sailing we’ve been doing all year. It’s a relief to be out of the confined, dirty, and crowded waterways of SE Asia and back in the big wide open ocean. We’re not paranoid about shipping lanes, logs, plastic bags stuck in the water intake, fishing nets and all that other crap. The water is clear, clean, empty, and beautiful.
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friday february 11th 2011, day 2
Last night we encountered our first squalls of the passage. They were spiteful little bastards full of lightening, rain, and blasts of wind from the wrong direction. We’re rusty sailors after so much time land lubbing in Thailand so needed the exercise. Good practice since there are surely more to come.
Also new to the scene last night were some very peculiar sea conditions. We’ve read a bit about this phenomenon in the Andaman Sea so weren’t caught completely off guard, but it was still cause for some tense moments. Imagine cruising along on a flat glassy sea when some disturbance catches your eye. You start focusing on some strange looking action in the water up ahead. You were expecting this on some level but still refer to the charts one more time just to be safe, a bit irrational but you can’t help it. Breaking waves in the middle of a flat ocean can be a good indication that you are about to run aground. Fighting off that nagging feeling you proceed into the melee. Suddenly drunken mixed up waves slosh around in all directions colliding with each other and into your boat from every odd angle. Your speed is cut in half. Whoever was trying to sleep at the time is no longer and stumbles into the cockpit to find out what the hell is going on. Then at some point before you even register the transition, the noise has stopped, boat speed is back up to normal, and you are once again on a glassy sea. Did that just happen? Eerie, like weird Bermuda triangle type shit. It’s always tough to capture a picture like this, but we tried:
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I was keen for a swim today until I saw a big tuna (at least I think it was a tuna) leap clear out of the water 3 times in a row before landing for the last time in a turbulent patch of water caused by a big black shape just below the surface. The tuna didn’t do anymore jumping after that, and I didn’t do any swimming.
It may seem early to be considering our fuel reserve but once we pass Great Nicobar there’s nothing until Sri Lanka. We will pass 60 miles from the northern tip of Sumatra at that point where in theory we could take on additional fuel. So far there’s been no wind of any consequence. We’ll monitor consumption and forecast mileage before deciding once we’re there.
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saturday february 12th 2011, day 3
Our first night out Jaime claimed that a giant green attack dolphin had been repeatedly charging our boat. I chalked this up to a sleep deprived Gravol-enhanced hallucination, but owe her an apology after witnessing it for myself last night. ‘Giant’ may have been pushing it a little, but a dolphin bigger than most did come along and make a few passes. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen a dolphin alone before, so that in itself was unusual. The green phosphorescent comet was quite striking and made it look even bigger. Not sure if it was the same one but he sure fit the description.
Woke up this morning 25 miles SW of Great Nicobar. Did some homework and found the island in one of our guides. Apparently these are Indian islands and stopping there is absolutely prohibited. There’s a bunch of military installations there and they don’t want people snooping about. To the South we have Sumatra and the port of Sabang. It doesn’t get glowing reviews either, a commercial port in a province with ‘considerable unrest, be sure to check on the latest situation before attempting to land’. This is getting complicated so we’ve decided to put our chips on Neptune. The wind is meant to fill in once we’re clear of these islands so we’ll take our chances. We have plenty of food and water anyway so if it comes down to it we can always just bob around and wait if we have to. Seems like a better idea than taunting the Indian military or getting our good selves mixed up in considerable Sumatran unrest. Both of these things are probably exaggerated of course, but our fate is sealed; it’s Sri Lanka or bust. It feels good to have that settled. There will still be much reworking of miles travelled, diesel used, engine time and RPM adjustments for optimal mileage.
sunday february 13th 2011, day 4
I started my shift this morning and on her way into the cabin heard Jaime say, ‘there’s wind’. We had taken the sails down again last night after it had died completely so this was welcome news. She was asleep within seconds of sharing her observation. Feeling set up I began hoisting and trimming the sails myself. This wasn’t too much trouble with the help of the autopilot and light winds, but I guess the change of motion eventually woke up Jaime. I sarcastically apologized for the inconvenience, saying that I hoped my solo efforts at tending to the boat hadn’t disturbed her slumber. Instead of taking the bait she made a sweeping gesture towards the stern of the boat and airily replied that something was caught on the rudder before promptly returning to bed. With the boat underway I began freeing Slapdash from the chunk of fishing net she had picked up while secretly plotting my revenge which has now taken shape in the form of recording the entire exchange in this log. Jaime edits and posts all the logs though, so we’ll put her journalistic integrity to the test and see if her version of events differs from mine. [Editor’s Note: journalistic integrity shall not compromise artistic flair, in the form of gross exaggeration, while describing subpar performance, behaviour, or fashion sense of the Admiral.]
We keep passing these absolutely monstrous freighters. I read about them in ‘Dangerous Waters’ and have been wondering if we would see them on this passage. I’m not sure if they are VLCC’s (Very Large Crude Carrier) or even ULCC’s (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) like the decommissioned Jahre Viking in the latter category. Her dimensions were almost unimaginable. So big that both canals, the Malacca Straight and English channel ,were off limits to her. At 458 meters from stem to stern she was longer than the Petronas towers are tall! By the way, “Ultra Large Crude Carrier”? Not exactly extravagant language for the largest mobile manmade objects ever built. Seriously, who let the engineers name the ships?
Frequent encounters are making dolphin spotting connoisseurs out of us. There’s the full moon sighting, the sunset sighting, the sunrise sighting (which turn the dolphins a beautiful pink color) and the new Slapdash favourite, the phosphorescent comet tail sighting. Last night’s encounter left me completely speechless though, and not just because Jaime was asleep and there was nobody else within a thousand miles to talk to. A few critical factors were in play; the water out here is crystal clear, last night the moon and stars were hidden behind a blanket of clouds, and I was totally tripping on Peyote. Just kidding, although you might think so after the next few sentences. The wind was nonexistent, we were motoring along over this crystal clear sheet of glass in absolute darkness. Normally green comet tails would give away their positions, and you would be treated to this really cool monochromatic submarine firework display. But last night the perfectly still clear water helped to create a completely new effect. Instead of only seeing their trajectory, the entire shape of the dolphins became completely visible. Millions of glittering white flashing lights created these perfect dolphin shaped missiles that darted back and forth between the bows just inches below the surface. Their fins, noses, tails and everything were perfectly outlined in what looked like flowing diamonds, or sparkling frost. The mind blowing effects would have made James Cameron drool.
monday february 14th 2011, day 5
As if on cue the wind picked up almost as soon as we past Great Nicobar. It was out of the SW though, a bit unusual since we are at the height of the NE monsoon season. This passage is meant to be a pleasurable downwind cruise, but we’ve found ourselves working windward for the past 24 hours. No complaints though, we are very relieved to be sailing properly and making miles without relying on the engine. Every free mile counts. The forecast we downloaded 3 days in a row before leaving was unchanged and called for 7 straight days of NE winds from 10-15 knots. We get the feeling based on the first few days out that we could be in for something all together different.
I celebrated the free miles with something we’ve coined the ‘suicide swim’. This involves diving off the bow of the boat while underway and swimming beside it as fast as you can for as long as you can before darting back in behind the boat and grabbing a line trailing off the stern. Good exercise, cools you off and it gets the heart pumping. Jaime has yet to sign up for the suicide swim program and is still content with the occasional drag off the stern.
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We are loving the sat phone. We receive free incoming text messages with this plan. These text messages create a nice level of connection that doesn’t at all take away from the solitude, mystery and adventure, but provides a thin thread of connection to a sister, a brother, a mother or friend. Turning on the phone and downloading the little messages we get from home has quickly become a daily ritual and highlight for us. On the other hand now that we’ve become accustomed to these little treats, when we fire it up and nothing comes through it’s a bit of a downer… so keep it up folks. We especially liked the strange motivational ones about eating frogs in the morning??
Sometime after dark after a few nasty squalls (this is turning into a very unpredictable passage) Jaime poked her head out into the cockpit and said, ‘oh yeah, Happy Valentines day’. Then she gave me a piece of liquorice and went to bed.
tuesday february 15th 2011, day 6
This morning I lowered the stern end of the dinghy to drain out all of the water collected during last nights’ squalls. We leave the plug out of course, but even so this dink has a deep bow and collects a lot of water up front. Too much weight on the davits led to a bit of high seas drama on a passage in the South Pacific so we try to stay on top of this now.
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Once the sun came up I could see just how ugly the sky had been. Skuddy crap smeared across the horizon in front of us. It was raining and I had low expectations for a comfortable morning watch. My mood reflected the weather until a little while later two things happened almost simultaneously that made me feel better. Dolphins (pink in the morning light) began breaching beside the boat just as a rainbow appeared just beside the starboard spreader. Two good omens, enough to give me an optimistic outlook, and then I looked astern. The ugly squall line we had passed through the night before was still visible on the horizon, but exploding out of them higher than any other was this crazy cloud shaped like a horse with a rider carrying a sword in his left hand. The sun backlit the scene casting it in a burning orange glow…“behold, a fiery red horse appears, its rider has been given a large sword”. This can’t be good. Unsure which omen to trust, and unable to remember which terrible outcome for mankind the red horse of the apocalypse represented, I started reading the manual for our chart plotter.
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Turns out we have an odometer that we can reset for every trip. Who knew? It’s right there on page 46. Ever since we started our trip I’ve been using the distance from objective to calculate our daily progress for the log. For example, if 24 hours into a 1000 mile passage we were 840 miles away from our objective we record a 160 mile day (wishful thinking on this passage). This of course doesn’t take into consideration the extra miles covered in pursuit of our objective (most commonly a course change to optimize sail trim), which I’m assuming that the odometer would. So we’re talking about the difference between planned vs. actual here, on some days this could be a very significant difference. Our method obviously has us logging less miles than we have actually sailed, but a more accurate assessment of progress. If we were logging actual miles sailed then in theory we could put less emphasis on the actual destination, and more on maintaining the perfect point of sail thereby enabling us to log 200 mile days… sure, we end up in Antarctica or back where we started from but with bragging rights. That seems stupid, so is there some standard method we should be using? Until I hear otherwise we’re sticking to our countdown method.
One of the messages we received from home was from a recently married, soon-to-be dad best friend who jokingly asked if we would like him to send us another bird to keep us company on the passage. Of course there’s more to the story so this is a bit out of context, but strangely Larry the Bird II showed up today. He was a bit retarded compared to the last Larry the Bird though and kept trying to land on our vertical main sail for some reason. Eventually he crash landed on the bottom step of our starboard transom. Jaime immediately said, ‘uh-oh, that’s not a good sign’. Usually when birds visit it’s because they know that there is some nasty weather on the way and they’re looking for a place hide out. That’s when I began to think that in nautical poker a fiery sword wielding horseman of the apocalypse may trump a Dolphin/rainbow pair. Anyway, we scooped up Larry the Bird II and gave him a little place to rest for the night. Like the other birds we’ve played host to, Larry the Bird II didn’t mind being picked up and moved around. For some reason (either exhaustion or no exposure to humans) they seem completely unafraid of us. Thanks Bob!
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When Jaime started her shift at 9AM we were making slow progress under full sail, choppy seas, and fluky winds. Not long after I crashed out things started to pick up. We have literally been weathering a procession of squalls one after the other so this was really nothing special. Jaime woke me up when the wind hit 20 knots and I told her not to worry that this was exactly what the last three did, this would be the worst of it and within the hour we would probably be forced to motor again. A few minutes later I hear ‘twenty five’ from the cockpit and decided that it was time to join her. We still had full sail up, but convinced by our days of experience with this on again off again weather just decided to put the wind behind us for the few minutes it would take to blow itself out. Mistake. Twenty five became thirty. Thirty became thirty five. We were blasted so hard and so fast it was hard to believe. Clearly this was not going to be like every other squall. Despite the risk of damaging our sails we had to get them down, things were going from surprising to dangerous at an alarming rate. By the time we had swung the boat around and released the sheets in order to take in sail we were in the high forties. After furling most of the headsail I went up on deck and started wrestling with the main. As I left the cockpit a quick glance at the wind meter told me that for the second time on this trip we were in the plus fifty category.
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The Beaufort Scale is an empirical measure for describing wind speed. At 54 knots we were on the very high side of Force 10 on the Beaufort Scale (force 11 starts at 56 knots, force 12 is a hurricane), which lends this cheery description to the category:
“Trees are broken or uprooted, building damage is considerable. Large waves (6-9 meters), overhanging crests, sea becomes white with foam, heavy rolling, reduced visibility.”
There were no trees around, and building damage while unfortunate was not our primary concern. Colourful as the description is it leaves out what I consider to be by far the scariest part; the noise. It’s deafening. Sails shake with frightening intensity, the mast looks like it may uproot and disappear, lines whip around like bullwhips… but the sound is more incredible than all of that. You can scream at the top of your lungs at somebody 5 feet from you and they will hear nothing. Fortunately Jaime and I both knew the drill and didn’t need to do much talking. We did end up with a nice little tear in our headsail, and one or two of the little clips that hold the mainsail onto the mast popped but we did manage to get the sails in. We had hundreds of miles of sea room so just turned downwind with a tiny bit of headsail showing and rode it out. It didn’t take long to blow itself out. We were still riding downwind an hour later but winds were only in the high thirties. Not long after that we were mid twenties and then poof! Nothing but a torrential and blinding downpour and the miserable sloppy leftover seas to worry about. Once the windy bits were through we began to worry about collisions in the reduced visibility. We decided to renew our policy of keeping the ditch bag handy on passage. Jaime happily agreed.
Stupid horseman.
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wednesday february 16th 2011, day 7
Wow. Beautiful morning. A complete contrast to the last 24 hours. Larry the Bird II flew the coop this morning. Not before walking around for a while and randomly pecking at things. I sensed that he was about to leave us so woke Jaime up. She would be disappointed (and may blame me) if she woke up to a Larry-less boat.
We pulled the sails off and repaired the tears from the big storm yesterday. We feel like such grown up sailors when we do stuff like this. Look at us making repairs while underway! This was only the start of our busy morning. We also transferred the last of our reserve fuel into the main tanks. We did this with the help of “the jiggler”. This is the latest in my long line of fuel transfer devices, and the most simple. Roger from Palapa gets credit for showing me the way of the Jiggler, and I found one of my very own in Thailand. It’s just a little siphon hose with a brass fitting on one end that has a ball valve on it. You drop the hose into your jerry can, put the other end in your tank and start jiggling. The ball valve is one-way so it draws fuel up the line and starts the siphon. Simple, effective, cheap. We love it! After that little project was packed up I moved onto engine maintenance. For some reason we’ve developed a leak near the injector pump. This is disconcerting for a number of reasons. Wasting fuel, potential fire, potentially broken injector are among the most concerning. I’ve been able to determine exactly where the leak is coming from, but it appears to be from where the injector lines come out of the pump. Time for a little light reading. Technical manuals… hooray!
I also cleaned up the engine compartment. We seem to be shredding belts, this sucks because our engine was totally mint and now there’s this black belt residue and diesel all over everything. I cleaned it up as best as I could and left the hatch open so that the diesel would all evaporate in hopes that I’ll be able to identify exactly where the leak is coming from.
More dolphins, today a pod of at least 50 hung around for a long time. At least an hour. Very cool and we managed to get some good pictures and video. After all that boat work I did a few suicide swim laps to cool off and work the kinks out. Very refreshing and I’m almost beginning to forget how shitty things were yesterday.
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thursday february 17th 2011, day 8
At the moment we are on exactly the same longitude as Kathmandu. It’s only 1000 miles directly north from our position. I’ve started re-reading manuals on this passage for some reason, I guess because that odometer thing made me wonder what other tricks our little Slapdash has up its sleeve. Low and behold, I finally found out how to change our water temperature thing to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. I’ve always felt goofy reporting in Fahrenheit since I have no idea what it means, and couldn’t be bothered with the complicated subtract 30 divide by whatever conversion. So, I’m happy to report that the water was 30 degrees Celsius today. That’s pretty bloody warm. It was so beautiful and clear and inviting that we shut down the boat, geared down and went for a skinny dip out here in the Indian Ocean hundreds of miles from anything. I get some juvenile thrill from looking back at our boat from the ocean… it just feels so wrong in every way that it’s hard to resist. It was so nice that even Jaime who is normally a bit of a chicken when it comes to such matters couldn’t resist the temptation. We had a good session of swimming, jumping and diving off the boat. Jaime got this cool shot of me diving into the water, and I took the other one while swimming around the boat.
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17-Feb-2011 20:32, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
The battle of the fuel gauge versus the wind gauge continues… it’s never far from our minds. Look at that, on this passage even when we have 0.0 knots of wind it’s right on the nose! Could be a close one.
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This just in… We saw the green flash. We first heard about this phenomenon from Tom off Some Days a Diamond way back in the Bahamas. After hundreds of failed attempts we chalked it up to folklore and fairytale. One of the many seafaring tales that are just plain old BS… like mermaids, the Kraken etc. Tonight just before sunset Jaime and I both happened to be in the cockpit drinking a tea. There was a bit of broken cloud low on the Western horizon. It was my watch and I had just finished doing my rounds, the sun was about to dip below the horizon and since we were both there I said, “hey Jaime, maybe this is a green flash night” even though the conditions were not what have been described to us as being optimal for this phenomenon to occur. Despite that, we both stared silently at the sun’s last few seconds. These last few seconds seem to be the only time you can really perceive the sun move against the horizon and for some reason its captivating. Tonight as the last bit of the top of that red disc dipped into the sea a bright green (like I mean neon green), diamond shaped starburst flared just at the point where the top of the sun was a moment ago. It lasted for one or two seconds and then vanished. We celebrated this extremely rare and magical experience by hooting, hollering, and high fiving like idiots.
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friday february 18th 2011, day 9
You know how sometimes you get that brief and confused moment when you first wake up in a hotel room or on someone’s couch and you don’t know where you are? I love that moment. It’s exciting because you really could be anywhere.
You never know, the next moment could be; ‘oh yeah, I’m in the Country Inn and Suites in Calgary and have a treadmill, continental breakfast and all-day sensitivity training workshop to look forward to.’
Other times you realize that you are on a sailboat in the middle of an ocean on your way to somewhere that you’ve never been, from somewhere that you may never be again. That was the case this morning. It was 6AM. I opened my eyes and there was Jaime, looking very Captainly with her raingear sipping on a mug of something hot and steamy. I took this picture. What a ridiculous life.
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saturday february 19th 2011, day 10
This will be our last day. We stopped the boat to visit a big sea turtle that we saw along the way. He swam right up to us and then seemed surprised at something and quickly left. When the sun came up we were surrounded by little fishing boats. My last count had 34 of them dotted around the horizon. The ones that pass close enough return waves and smiles, always a good sign. I’m not begging them for diesel either, looks like we’ll make it with 15 gallons to spare. I wasn’t able to fix the injector line leak but it hasn’t been getting any worse either so it’s on the Sri Lanka list.
We both have a good feeling about this country. It’s a bit of a dark horse, we don’t know much about it and find that very exciting. We’ve gleaned what we could from a 30 year old little booklet and will fill you in with what we learn when we get there. Right now we’re trying to make contact with the Port Authority for permission to enter Galle Harbour. We’re told that we can expect a Navy escort so that should be interesting. It’s been a crazy, mixed up and long passage. We are both very, very happy to make this landfall.
Hoping for a safe harbour, long shower, good neighbours, cheap beer, and spicy food.
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