Exploring the Islands

For the past two week I have spent more time exploring Mauritius and Reunion than I have been sailing. The boat is ready to head off to South Africa, but unfortunately there is little wind at present so I am waiting for a few days for the winds to pick up. I now realize that my journey is just as much about the destination as about the sailing, both of which I am enjoying immensely.

This update is about the splendid time I have experienced including:

•  The good and the not so good of sailing
•  Meeting the locals 
•  The socializing habits of yachties 
•  How to make tea bags 
•  Oliver turns 10

Sailing the thrills and the spills
The night before I arrived at Mauritius, I was sailing west hoping to make landfall the next morning. The wind faded away completely, although there was still a sizeable sea swell. I turned on the engine and motored through the early hours of the morning.

At dawn, a group of islands, large stone outcrops to the north of Mauritius appeared ahead of me. It is always great to see land after a few days at sea and in the right place according to the navigation equipment. As I rounded this group of islands and headed for the main island, the wind started to blow and with every hour increased until it was a lovely 15-20 knots.

As I was now in the lee of the island and had escaped the swell of the sea, the water was flat with only the ripples from the wind. I set all the sails and the Lady lifted her skirt and took off. This was champagne sailing and, hour after hour, we raced along. I wished it would never end. It was a little like sailing on Sydney Harbour, except there was neither land, ships, ferries to run into nor other boats to avoid.

The conditions were so perfect that when I approached land I saw there were a couple of local yachts heading the down the coast. I could not help myself and started racing them. I continually trimmed the sails to achieve maximum speed just to show off how good this Lady is, plus, if I may say, just to enjoy beating other boats. I am not the competitive type but I was just enjoying the thrill of sailing.

The spills were not that wonderful! I left Mauritius a week later and headed for Reunion Island 150 miles away. At lunchtime I departed in company with Nereida, skippered by solo sailor, Jeanne.

The wind was pleasant but blowing from a direction that made me sail the boat closed hauled.  This is where you are pointing the boat as close as you can into the wind, with all the sails pulled in very tight. As a result, the Lady heels right over and at times water is rushing along the top of the deck with the side of the boat under water.

As the day faded into the night, the wind and the sea increased until it was blowing 35 knots or 56 kilometers an hour. All the sails were pulled down except for a little sail that was enough to blow me along at a very good speed. By now the boat was taking on very steep waves and for the first time I experienced the Lady falling off waves. She would race up a wave and instead of just going down the other side she would keep going into the air. For a few moments, that often felt like forever, part of the boat was out of the water and there was relative silence, then she would crash back into the water. This would be followed by a moment of silence, then the bone crunching crash, the lurch, and then on to the next wave, knowing we might do it all again.

It was very rough conditions and I headed away from the island and a cargo ship that I was slowly overtaking.  This is a rare event to be passing such a big ship. Throughout the night, I was kept busy but tried to rest in the bunk as this is the only place to be in order to minimise the bruising and avoid being bashed around.

By morning, I was in line with the island but many miles out to sea. With the start of the new day the wind had dropped and changed direction allowed me to head for Le Port at Reunion Island. Both boats entered the port at 8 in the morning, having survived the night and now had escaping the rough seas. We tied the boats to the visitors’ wharf and I went below to sleep for the rest of the morning well into the afternoon and then set about cleaning up the boat and putting things back where they belonged after been flung around the cabin during the rough passage.

This leg of the trip was completed in remarkably quick time but the strain on the body and mind was draining. As is the way of sailors, Jeanne and I went off to a little restaurant for dinner and had time to reflect and laugh about the trip and both agreed it wasn’t too bad after all - easy to say when you are on dry land after having had a good sleep and with a cold Dodo brand beer in your hand.

Meeting the locals
There were ten women from Madagascar dancing in a circle. In the middle was yours truly and, to the beat of African Creole music, one women would leave the circle and dance towards me until she was only inches away and then by bending her knees danced until she almost ended up on the ground. At the same time, another woman had come behind me and was doing a similar dance. When the two had gyrated upright they would be replaced by two other women. All the time, the women in the circle were dancing, shouting and laughing. I was just taking notes.   As you could image, the dancing was exotic, powerful and indeed beautiful.  What a treat to be invited into the middle and, as is often the way, it came about by chance.

The boat is in a modern marina in Port Galets, Reunion which is in the shape of a basin. On the far side of the marina is a road and park area. On Saturday night people had gathered in groups for their BBQ and dancing, playing their music from a car stereo.

Opposite my boat were a group of men playing Creole music. Three guitars and drums played one song after another and then threw in the odd surfing tune from the seventies. After dinner Jeanne and I went to have closer look at the scene. The musicians were men in their fifties and got together on Saturday night to jam and have fun. On our arrival, we were greeted with beers and I was given the cow bell to play. I felt honored and banged along.

After my introduction to playing Creole music, we wondered back past the group of women dancing together. They invited us into the group with more beers and salad rolls with very hot and spicy grated fresh vegetables. I was introduced to each of them. These married ladies were having a girls’ night out and they knew how to have fun. It was an absolute pleasure to meet these women and I left them dancing in the early hours of the morning.

Earlier in the week I spent an evening with a young French couple. I had met Martine and David in Rodrigeus and they had invited me to visit them when I arrived in Reunion. They are both English teachers so language was not a problem. We met up at a beach side café in the afternoon where the locals gathered for a drink after work and watch the sunset, then off to dinner at their house that is perched high up the volcanic hills. I counted 56 sharp bends up the narrow road. Joining us for dinner, were two other French couples: Sophie a social worker, and her partner Mat, a sound engineer; plus Florence, a school teacher, and Jeroen, a pilot. All spoke English and we had a wonderful night sharing a traditional Reunion dinner, Australian wine and good conversation looking out over island below.

The next day Jeroen came to visit the boat and took me to lunch at a beach side café.  It was a public holiday for All Saints day. The beach was packed and women in their swimming outfits and high heels paraded the promenade. At lunch we met a group of French doctors and nurses, many of whom spoke good English and throughout the afternoon taught me French words that they thought I would find useful for a variety of occasions. 

They invited me to a party near by and I was greeted by the host Olive and his partner Perrtine. Their house, right on the beach, was made from woven bamboo - very modern and very classy, as were the people at the party. They were mixture of young local and French professionals. And what a party it was. It reminded me of nights in the seventies. They danced, and could the locals dance. People wanted to practice their English so I had no shortage of people to speak to and, when language was a problem, a young English teacher would come to my rescue.

These events all took place in Reunion, a department of France, and very French in everyway, as well as being a very modern and prosperous country. And I had thought I would have to wonder the streets without saying a word and feeling isolated!
 
The sailing community socialises
At Port Louis in Mauritius the boats are tied up to the wall of the marina which is a u-shaped basin right in the middle of the city.  It was a mini version of Darling Harbour in Sydney and all day and night people would be staring down at you in your boat. During the day, families would wander past and in the evening, lovers would stand in front of the boat doing remarkable things with their hands and they were not waving at me.

In the marina there were seven other boats and I had met their crews at other ports or spoken to them on the radio every night. We were like a little community where we would each help each other. When I was approaching the Port, Beth and Peter from an American yacht, spoke to me on the radio, giving me instructions on how to reach the customs’ wharf and, on my arrival, they were there waiting for me to take my lines and tie up the Lady against the wharf. It is a wonderful welcome for a solo sailor to have several pairs of hands at the crucial moments of coming alongside a wharf.

Most nights we would gather on someone’s boat for sundowners, in other words, a drink with a few nibblies. Many of the yachties were also kind enough to invite me to dinner on their boats. I wanted to return the favour and have sundowners on my boat. I produced a coloured printed invitation a few days before and invited the group, plus a few other people I had met on the island.

As Christine, my darling, departed wife would ask after I had returned from a cocktail party, “Did you meet some nice people, and, what did you have to eat?”  Well, jammed into the cockpit of the boat on a Friday evening, were a dozen people, including Tom and Jill from Kansas,who are sailing their modern but old time design boat around the world. They come from a career as policy researchers in the American medical world and state government.

There was a family from Namibia, Hycue, Diane and their boys, Stephan and Oliver, who played waiters and kitchen hands. Diane has a beautiful voice and has given me a CD with some of her songs she has recorded. They were on their way home after 12 years of exploring the world.

Peter and Beth, sailing their beautiful American yacht, are also on their way back home to complete their circumnavigation. Peter is a professional skipper taking charter boats around the Florida coast and the Caribbean. Beth is a friendly, vivacious woman with a lovely southern accent.

There was a group of solo sailors also going around the world – Yeller, from Holland, who has an infectious laugh and a big smile; Jeanne, who spent 10 years sailing on her boat, the last 5 years on her own after her husband died; Urging from Sweden, a very quiet man in his late fifties who sailed directly from Darwin to Mauritius, having left his home in Fiji.

Marie and Jack, a French couple, had sailed from Reunion and had brought a bottle of very tasty but powerful rum fruit punch. We were also joined by two businessmen from Durban in South Africa who were on the island for business. David and Warren were both lovely men and great company. They weren’t half pleased that their country had won the Rugby World Cup. I will meet up with them when I arrive in Durban.

Now the food. Jill had brought a plate of hors d’oeuvres of pumpernickel bread with a cream cheese, topped with sun dried tomatoes. Jeanne arrived with a bowl of cocktail sausages with a spicy sauce, a bowl of humus and crackers.  I had prepared a French onion dip and a creamy tuna dip served with fresh vegetable and a number of fruit platters. Fresh watermelon was followed by a platter of rock melon and thinly sliced green mango covered in dark red pomegranates seeds. Then a platter of sweet pineapple that are in season on Mauritius. Both the pineapple and the mango were sprinkled with chilli powder and salt, a traditional way of eating these fruits on this island. The mixture goes very nicely and the spices substantially enhanced the flavor of the fruit,

As the evening wore on, I served hot finger food including chicken legs, crab claws, spring rolls and large chicken nuggets. These were prepared by a local restaurant, one of many that surround the marina. For a cocktail party it turned into an all evening affair with the group staying till late, having had sufficient food that dinner was not necessary.

The tea bag
Have you ever wondered how they make tea bags? Well, now I know. A few of us hired a taxi for the day to explore part of Mauritius.  This is very cheap way to travel. We had the latest model car with a driver who knew exactly where to go through some very narrow winding streets.

Down the south of the island they have tea plantations and we had the opportunity to tour a tea making factory. It is not a very complicated process to make tea leaves; however, the tea bag machine was fascinating. It starts with a piece of perforated material, it is folded and the tea is dropped in. The bag is then sealed the string attached and the label stick on. The bag falls into the box and a sad faced lady changed the box every few seconds. She was rather bemused why I was so interested in the process. For many minutes I watched the creation of individual bags.  After the tour of the factory there was the opportunity to try all the varieties of teas.

This is a country of 1.8 million people and is rapidly developing. When I arrived at Port Louis I was astonished at the size of the city which has substantial high rise buildings, a port full of ships that never stopped working. The area around the marina has five star hotels, up-market shops and cafes and restaurants a plenty. At the same time, you only had to walk a short distance to hundreds of street stalls and a fruit and vegetable market that had a wide variety of food and you paid very little for quality produce. Hotels and resorts are abundant along the coast, with holiday makers from South Africa, England and Europe in great numbers. You would say it was very trendy.

Oliver is 10
Oliver lives on a boat called Stenellar that comes from Namibia. He has lived nowhere else. For the past 12 years, his parents Hycue and Diane, along with his 17 year old brother Stephan have sailed the world. Oliver is a very bright and friendly little boy who is exceptionally well mannered and comfortable both with people and living on the sea.  He was born in Trinidad and has grown up experiencing the world.  When at sea it is a time to do school work, fish for the big fish, or, if there is no wind, he and his brother catch squid. When not at sea, Oliver loves exploring the land and doing extra school work. I first met Oliver when the family arrived at Cocos Keeling Island and on the first night he was organizing hermit crab races and was having a lot of fun. When you see him on the boat he is like a monkey, gaily climbing the rigging. The day I left Cocos, Oliver was swinging 20 feet in the air, sitting in a boson’s chairs waving me farewell.

When he was four he went to his grandparent’s home in Cape Town and his mother tells the story of his great excitement when he saw a window, “Look mum at the huge portholes”. He was confused over what curtains were for and was amazed that when he turned on a water tap, the water kept flowing and he did not have to pump a handle.

I had reached Mauritius a week before the family and was told by some of the fellow yachties that it was his tenth birthday a few days later. He was still 3 days away from the island on his birthday and on the evening sched - the radio link up with the other boats - we each took it in turn to wish him a happy birthday. Hemming, a solo German sailor, who was in the middle of the Indian, sang happy birthday to him in German. When his farther handled him the microphone, he said how happy he was that we all knew it was his birthday and told us his mother had baked a great cake to celebrate.

When his boat arrived in Port Louis in Mauritius, each of the boats gave him a little present. I made a card for him that I had printed out in colour at the internet shop and inserted a DVD of the movie Oliver. Several nights later we had dinner on their boat and Oliver had arranged his presents on his bunk and insisted everyone come and inspect his treasures. He had been given cards, a fishing lure, chocolates, DVDs and money. At a dinner that night we again celebrated his birthday. It was lovely to see a young boy be so happy with the attention and at such a tender age so appreciative.

Next stop
I expect it to take about 2 weeks to sail to Richards Bay in South Africa, then slowly make my way down the coast to Capetown. I can also expect some rough weather on the way as storms blow up from the south and there is a strong current going south. Not a good mixture, so weather forecasts will be even more important.

Thanks to all who have contacted me and passed on my adventures to others.

I am still having the time of my life and always grateful to many for the opportunity.

Love to you all
Peter

Thank you to my supporters:

–     Medical Industries Australia for an extensive offshore medical kit
–     JSE Marine Electrical for extensive spare parts and tools
–     Endeavour Marine for spare parts for the Volvo Penta engine