Sailing Catamaran

Just having fun.

2012-01-26T07:44:00.000-08:00

With the huge circumnavigation milestone behind us we are now simply taking life a bit easy in St-Martin which is a place easy to relax. Plenty of restaurants and stores to eat and find all those boat parts we needed for all the small repairs that were not fundamentally important but still needed to be done at one point and that’s pretty much all we’ve been doing; eating and boat projects. As someone said; the definition of The Cruising Life is boat repairs in exotic places. St-Martin is definitively a place to prove that statement!

As for the eating, Grand Case is the town to go and the place Danielle and I like the most is what we call “The BBQ place”. Basically, about four restaurants setup there BBQ grills in an outdoor square in front of their business and serve food to the many tourists visiting Grand Case. The town is well known for its expensive and fancy restaurants but our wallet forces our brains to systematically discard them and erase them from our reality and that’s why we always end up eating at the BBQ place where we can find reasonably priced meals and where they accept the US dollar at par with the Euro; this means a 35% discount just there! For about $10 we got a rack of ribs and side dishes perfectly grilled on charcoal put in a drum cut in half with a grill on top.

The picture we posted for our “We sailed around the world!” post was not the only one we took. We didn’t quite know what tone to give to that picture and in the end we took a serious one because of the importance of the event. However, Danielle was really in a happy mood that day and she had quite a different idea of how we should present our goal of a lifetime! But in the end, fortunately or not that is hard to say, my bland and serious attitude won in the choice of the picture but still the other pictures we took that day are worth showing.

We sailed around the world!

2012-01-19T14:34:00.001-08:00

We did it! On Jan 4th, 2012 Danielle and I officially completed the circumnavigation of the Earth on board our 40ft sailing catamaran Chocobo by sailing across our own wake off shore of the island of St-Martin in the Caribbean where we sailed in 2009. To achieve that goal of a lifetime we sailed 29262 nautical miles (54427 km), travelled for 3 years, 3 months and 22 days or 1208 days, we visited 48 countries, crossed three oceans, sailed successfully though the most dangerous pirated infested waters, met the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer and leisured in the most beautiful scenery of the world. Although it is a major milestone in our journey it is not the end of our trip yet as we still have another six months or so of sailing in front of us. And for those interested in figures our trip so far cost us UD $179976.03 for a monthly average of US $4499.40. It was very expensive but was worth every penny!
Now it is time to celebrate!

Arrived in St-Martin (again).

2012-01-19T14:30:00.001-08:00

We arrived at Grand Case on the island of St-Martin from Low Bay in Barbuda on January 4th, 2012 after a passage of 78 nautical miles (145 km) that took us 14 hours for an average speed of 5.6 knots. Our arrival in Grand Case marks the completion of our circumnavigation of the earth.

Vacations in paradise.

2012-01-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

If we had known how beautiful were the beaches of Antigua and especially of Barbuda when we sailed in the area at the beginning of our trip we would have taken the time to make a detour here instead of keeping sailing south. Kilometer long beaches of fine sand are there for the visitors’ enjoyment. After two years of fast pace sailing it feels very good just to stop and enjoy the beach, work a bit on the boat and swim with the fishes.

But Barbuda is not only the nicest beaches in the world but also one of the largest frigate bird sanctuaries in the world. Tens of thousands of this majestic bird nest in the wet lands formed by the huge lagoon in the middle of the island. During the mating period the males inflate their red throat to indicate to the females their availability and somehow to impress them. Apparently, for frigates size DOES matter! According to our guide once a female has made her choice things go pretty fast. After the necessary gene interchange ordeal the female will lay one egg but the male will be responsible to sit on it but the female will have to do all the work after to feed both the chick and the father. Well, being a father at home has to have its advantages isn’t it?

As I mentioned before we didn’t have any breakups during the Atlantic crossing and we were all proud of how sturdy Chocobo was and all but if nothing snapped during the last few weeks didn’t mean things were not breaking up! I had to climb on top of the mast to change a VHF radio antenna that died with a spectacular leap of death from the top of the mast right to the deck as we were leaving Arrecife in the Canaries. This was not a very urgent task so I procrastinated until we reached that side of the ocean to actually go up there. Climbing the mast is always an interesting experience. I have to sit on a sort of harness made of a wood plank that serves as a chair hence its name the bosun’s chair. The chair is attached to the main halyard (the rope used to raise the main sail) and Danielle winches me up using our electrical winch. This may sound simple in theory but for one thing the winch is not meant to pull up 86 kg (190 lbs) of muscles and water. All right, maybe a bit of fat too! Anyway, I’m too heavy for the winch and I have to pull myself up at the same time. In the movies we see men pulling themselves up single handed along a 100m of rope. Well, it is not that easy especially for a guy who worked in front of a computer all his life! At the top of the 15m (50ft) of mast I’m totally exhausted and then the work starts which means trying to do detail and precise work while the waves rock the boat. A small balancing of the boat isn’t a big deal at the deck level but at the end of a 15m pole there’s quite an amplification factor. Some people rode their dinghy beside Chocobo as I was at the top and even waved at us “Merry Christmas!” while their dreadful wakes slid toward us and when Chocobo started to roll I had to stop whatever I was doing and to hold the mast with both my arms wrapped around it while I swung like a metronome and withholding the urge I had to tell our lovely neighbors what I thought they should do with their Merry Christmas! Of course nothing was working as planned and I had to go up and down three times before the antenna was all set.

But while playing Tarzan with the mast I noticed that the T-ball attachment of the port shroud was almost cut all the way through. The shrouds are the stainless steel cables holding the mast in place. The picture here shows the cut in the 5/8” (16mm) T-Ball that actually attaches the shroud to the mast. If this last bit of steel that still remained had snapped during the crossing we would have lost the mast! We bought this shroud in Australia one and half year ago and they are supposed to be good for ten years. Luckily for us there was a good rigger in Falmouth, Antigua and we got a new shroud made in one day. Of course, I had to go up the mast twice again but at that point I was getting the trick and somehow my newly discovered muscles had developed and I was able to hoist myself much easier.

I just couldn’t pass showing you this picture of the “STAD AMSTERDAM” we saw in Falmouth, Antigua which is in my opinion the most beautiful tall ship in the world.

Exploring Antigua.

2011-12-28T04:53:00.001-08:00

After two weeks at sea we could finally relax and recover our sleep and start to use our muscles again under the bright sun of the Caribbean. Somehow I caught a bug or something while in Cape Verde and about mid way across the Atlantic I developed a sort of lung infection and it took me almost a full week after our arrival here to recover from it. But talking about my being sick would start to be repetitive as it seems I get sick in every country we go lately. However, on a more exciting tone I went on a very interesting tour they have here in Antigua. It was called the Antigua Rainforest Canopy Tour and we would basically wear a harness and slide on zip lines spread between hug trees. This was really fun but unfortunately I had to do this only by myself since it was totally out of question for Danielle to do that activity. Danielle wouldn’t mind to go at the bow of the boat to fix a broken line while sailing through a storm, and she actually did that once, but her chronic vertigo prevents her for climbing a 3 feet (1m) ladder! It is then not hard to imagine that she would bail out of sliding on a cable at 100 ft (30m) over the forest! But the miss was all hers because the 12 zip lines and 9 suspended obstacle bridges were exceptionally fun.

We are definitively back to the Caribbean; the only place in the world where you can find a gas station that actually has no gas! I mean, seriously if they don’t have gas to sell what exactly do they do? Selling chocolate bars? They are obviously at the mercy of the delivery boat but this is exactly why the mercantile society invented a very interesting concept called: inventory. But apparently this obscure concept didn’t reach the southern islands. But part of our recovery time included some alcohol consumption and one night Danielle decided to look up on internet for the recipe of B52 shooters and found out it was made of Tia-Maria, Irish cream and Grand Marinier poured skillfully in distinct layers. It happened that we actually had these ingredient on board and after using the back of a tea spoon to pour the liquids; voila! I don’t know exactly how many we drank because after 12 I stopped counting but I do know that when we ran out of Grand Marinier we used the Brandy we bought in Gibraltar and although the layers were not as clearly defined, by lack of discrepancy in the specific gravity of each liquid or by lack of motor faculties, the taste was good anyway. And as Danielle put it so brilliantly “Bahhhh when it’s in our stomach it ain’t going to make a difference … hic!”

On December 23rd it was my birthday and we had a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant with the crews of “Karacool” in the back and “Adagio III” on the right. Not much to say other than I got a few more grey hairs but still have a very young heart and a beautiful wife.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all and we wish you all the best for the coming year.

We crossed the Atlantic!

2011-12-14T08:52:00.001-08:00

We finally made it; we crossed the big ‘O following the wake of Christopher Columbus on that crossing of 2111M (3926 km). Two weeks at sea were necessary for that achievement and it was with relief that we shouted “Land ‘O!” when Antigua showed up on the horizon. Two weeks at sea and being tossed in every direction by the waves takes a drain on two unfit sailors like us. We should really stop drinking and start exercising instead! In the mind of most people, crossing the Atlantic is a huge life milestone and it showed up by the sheer number of boats we saw jumping in that adventure while we were in the Canaries where they were preparing for the crossing. We estimated that about 300 other boats crossed the Atlantic at the same time than we did, at one point we were wondering whether we needed to take a number to get in line or what. With the advent of the GPS (Global Positioning System) and autopilots such a journey is now made affordable to a larger portion of the population but still remains a serious undertaking. Therefore, soon after dropping the hook, the cork of the bottle of wine popped and it was time for us to celebrate. An important point to notice is that even though we are now back to the Caribbean we haven’t completed the circumnavigation part of our trip. To complete a circumnavigation of the earth it is necessary to cross all the meridians and to sail over our own wake. We did cross all the meridians of the earth but we are still 35M (65 km) from the closest point of our wake when we sailed in Montserrat in 2009. Therefore, we are not yet to the point of celebrating THAT achievement, which will makes the Atlantic crossing look like a weekend trip, and since we want to stay in Antigua and Barbuda for at least until after Christmas the celebration for the big loop will have to wait a bit more.

The crossing itself went relatively eventless. On two occasions dolphins came to play at the bow of Chocobo and on a sunny day of the first week we had the rare privilege of the company of an 18ft (6m) whale who travelled with us for over an hour and half. This was more than what we asked for since sighting a whale is quite a rare event but having her to swim with us for 90 minutes is the treat of a lifetime! On the fourth day we had the surprise of passing another sailboat. Note that even if 300 other sailboats are crossing doesn’t mean we would see them. We can barely see more than 5 miles around us and the ocean is immense. I called them and they appear to be “Moin”, a German boat, who left Mindelo, the same port we left from, but the day before us. In four days we had caught up with them as we were flying with the strong steady wind prevailing in the eastern part of the Atlantic. That was probably only the second time in our trip that we found a boat slower than us and with our boosted ego we wish them good luck and fair wind as they disappeared behind us. We saw another sailboat on the horizon about a week later but we didn’t bother calling them. They didn’t call us either so they were probably not inclined to chat although usually when one spends two weeks at sea without seeing another boat it is usually tempting to talk to another human being other than his or her own spouse!

But beside these few “events” an ocean crossing is quite a boring adventure in itself. We stay on watch 24/7 alternating on 4 hour shifts during the night and a less rigid schedule during the day. In the morning when the night has been wavy I had to go and throw overboard the flying fishes that jumped on the boat in a suicidal leap for survival but end up flapping on the front trampolines. This time we caught a weird fish that I’m holding here on the picture. Danielle cooks pretty much all the meals since I am usually quite incapacitated by the continuous movement of the waves. I appear not to be much of a sailor on long passages although I jump right up when something breaks to fix it in a timely fashion. However, to our great surprise and satisfaction, we didn’t encounter any breakups worth mentioning during that very long passage. Normally, we would have expected to have a long list of repairs along the way or to be done as soon as we touch land but it seems that all the precautionary work we did and the fact that we now know Chocobo like the back of our hand really paid off. Exchanging emails with two of our boat friends, who are also crossing, we learned that one had a flaky autopilot looking for a reason to die and the other had his main sail ripped apart. On Chocobo we had only the spring of a deck block that snapped under fatigue with basically no consequences other than the fact that this block, which is under constant pressure of over many hundreds of pounds anyway would not stand straight up by itself! Chocobo might be a high maintenance chick but she’s a good boat.

Arrived in Antigua.

2011-12-14T08:49:00.001-08:00

We arrived at English Harbor on the island of Antigua in the Caribbean from Mindelo in the Republic of Cape Verde in on December 12th, 2011 after a passage of 2111 nautical miles (3926 km) that took us 14 days, 6 hours and 30 minutes for an average speed of 6.2 knots, which is relatively fast for such a long crossing. This was our second longest crossing after the Pacific and accounted for a huge milestone in our journey.

Not much to say about Cape Verde.

2011-12-13T05:11:00.000-08:00

We don’t have much to say about Cape Verde because we stayed only 4 short days just to sleep a bit after our crossing from the Canaries and to complete the last repairs and maintenance on the boat before the Atlantic crossing. Danielle and I went ashore only once for leisure and that very day a huge cruise ship docked in the harbor for the day and consequently the only people in the streets were tourists while the only locals we encountered were young men trying to get money from us by either simply asking for it or using more or less elaborated schemes to attain the same result. I went a couple of other times but it was for clearance and groceries. With the other thousands of tourists in town we went to a restaurant and to the farmer’s market to fill up with fresh fruits and veggies and in both places we got totally tourist priced by paying, in a poor African country, more than what we would pay back home! Since it didn’t amount to much money we didn’t argue the prices and simply contributed to the local economy. It may sound that we didn’t have a good time in Cape Verde but it was not the case. The small town of Mindelo and peoples were very nice and we had indeed a good time and rested plenty and finally got ready for the two week crossing to come.

Presently crossing the Atlantic.

2011-11-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

We are now crossing the big ‘O as in the Atlantic; a 2000M passage and two weeks at sea. You can always follow our progress by clicking on the “Where we are” button at the top of the page so see our daily position. See you on the other side!

Sailing home.

2011-11-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Go see the new video we put together to highlight the fact that we are starting our last major crossing before coming back to the Americas. Click on the “Video” button at the top of the page and select the video called “Chocobo Sailing Home”. It is a recollection of 40 something video clips we shot during our trip so far with the music of circumstance of “Sailing Home”. We are now in Cape Verde where we plan to stay a few days then we’ll jump across the Atlantic. If the plans don’t change until then we should land in Antigua and Barbuda, two islands we missed on our way down at the beginning of our trip. Note that this will not complete our circumnavigation yet since we need to sail across a path we already sailed which will happen soon after we leave Antigua and Barbuda. The bottle of Champagne is already put aside for the event.

Arrived in Cape Verde.

2011-11-25T06:29:00.001-08:00

We arrived at Mindelo on the island of Sao Vincente in the Republic of Cape Verde in Africa from Las Palmas, Canaries on November 24th, 2011 after a passage of 866 nautical miles (1611 km) that took us 6 days and 23 hours for an average speed of 5.2 knots, which is relatively slow but we had to stall the boat for many hours the last day to arrive after sunrise.

A sailor’s soap opera.

2011-11-25T06:11:00.000-08:00

Our main goal in the Canaries was to take a break from travelling and to relax a bit before venturing into our transatlantic crossing. And that’s what we did for at least a good two weeks. After visiting Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, two of the main islands of the archipelago, we stopped in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the largest city of the islands. This picture is a vibrant sunrise taken over the harbor of Las Palmas. Sunsets and sunrises are like dolphins, we see them all the time but we are always in admiration when we see them.

The other day Joy, the second person from the right on the first picture, told me “Don’t ever show your friends a picture of sailors you’ve met in your travels. They simply have no interests whatsoever in people they don’t know.” And she’s absolutely right. Nobody but ourselves really cares about these people we’ve met here and there but the fact is that they are intrinsically part of our trip. You read this blog to know what we see and what we do in this trip then here they are all these other sailors we meet in every port and every anchorage and whom for the large majority we will never see again. Now you might think that this story is going to be awfully boring but there is much more to these bearded drinking sailors than what meets the eyes. First, you need to stick with me and follow the characters in the pictures as I go through some presentation. On the first picture we were visiting Gran Canaria and you can see from left to right myself, Danielle, Janie, Joy and Phil. Janie and Phil were married before Eve gave the apple to Adam and were anchored just beside us in Las Palmas and as for Joy I’ll come back to her in a minute. The second picture was taken in a get together on La Graciosa and I am talking to Marc and his wife Amanda while the Asian person on the very right of the picture is Mai, who is actually not from Asia but from Canada, Toronto to be more precise. Now behind Marc is a guy with a grey hat, a white beard and a white T-Shirt, this is Richard sailing on “Moonshadow”. On the third picture, which was taken on “La Palapa” just before the ARC party in Las Palmas, we can see from left to right; Roger (not me, the other Roger), Carl and Birgit from Germany, Seet, Danielle and me. The person taking the picture is Aimée. Now here’s the story and it all started in Gibraltar. While at the Marina in Gibraltar we met for the second time Tony and Joy on board “Tactical Direction”. Tony is the captain and Joy, the one on the first picture remember, joined as a crew from Australia. Everything was going well with the two of them sailing together and one night Tony asked us to join them for dinner at a Brazilian restaurant by the marina with another German couple they had recently met. The couple in question was Carl and Birgit who sailed on “African Affair” and with whom we had a good evening together. In Gibraltar we also went out a couple of times with Karli and Roger on “La Palapa” who we know since Egypt. Karli and Roger were then together for over a year and sailed from Australia where they’ve met. Karli was born in Australia while Roger was a newly divorced American from his wife after she decided to abandon the trip but Roger didn’t want to abandon his dream of sailing round the world and decided to continue on his own. Roger and Karli’s trip went well for a while but already we could feel that things were not to last too long between them. We left Gibraltar and then sailed to Rabat in Morocco and “Tactical Direction” arrived just a few days later at the only marina in town. As we were going to Marrakesh they went with other people on other boats on a tour to visit the Sahara and Morocco. Once back as we were recovering from our cold we saw Joy coming back alone from the tour. We asked where the others were and apparently something happened and she decided to come back to the boat while the others kept visiting for another day or two. We didn’t ask any more questions as it was simply none of our business and it stayed like that. Another boat was in Rabat called “Moonshadow” with Richard as the captain, the guy with the white beard on the second picture, and Mai the Asian from Toronto who had just joined as a crew.

Meanwhile we learned that Karli and Roger on “La Palapa” decided to take a break of each other and that Karli took her stuff and flew to Bali to spend a month learning to become a Yoga instructor. The word was that she was gone for good. But even before we were through with our cold and Morocco Roger had sailed to the Canaries and rejoined with “Vagabon” a boat he knew way back from Pirate Alley. I don’t remember the names of the guy on that boat but I know he took a crew at one point, a girl backpacking from Russia, and now the two of them seemed to have a pretty good close relationship. Recently another girl joined the boat; it’s Aimée that you can see kissing Roger on that picture. Now you can see the topo here. Roger needs a crew to cross the Atlantic, Aimée is young and pretty and the Russian first lady on Vagabon is not very warm at the idea of having “another hot chick” on board “Vagabon”. It didn’t take more than two or three days and Aimée had jumped ship and was now sailing on “La Palapa”. We and a bunch of other boats all sailed from Rabat to La Graciosa in the Canaries where we would have a beer altogether on the beach at sunset. Then we learned that something wasn’t working well between Mai and Richard and that she decided to jump ship and joined Tony and Joy on “Tactical Direction” who now had two crews but Richard ended being alone to cross the Atlantic. Again we didn’t ask too many question because it wasn’t our damn business. Meanwhile we learn that Roger and Aimée after two weeks of partying are getting along so well that they decided to get married! At first we thought that this was a fun wedding just between the two of them but no, Roger confirmed later that they actually got married with papers and all! We are still debating of the legal meaning of a marriage between an American and a Canadian who got married in Spain! When we were done with La Graciosa we sailed south to Lanzarote while most of the other boats stayed in la Graciosa. At Playa Blanca we decided to take a tour to visit the island and the bus was to pick us up in front of a local hotel. As we stepped on the bus we ended up face to face with Joy who also took the same tour. But to our knowledge she was still supposed to be on “Tactical Direction” at La Graciosa. Then we learned that at one point, for no obvious reasons, Tony told Joy that it would better if she could leave now rather than later and he would continue with Mai. So Joy was now renting a room in Playa Blanca until she could take the ferry to Las Palmas from where she would take a plane to Rome about ten days later. We had a great visit of Lanzarote in company of Joy and then left a couple of days later because the weather made it untenable at that anchorage. We sailed down the island of Fuerteventura and the second day we stopped in a little town and a boat arrives the next day. It is “Adagio II” who we never met before but then I hear “Hey Roger!” I looked but with the sun behind them I couldn’t see who that could be. “It’s Joy!, came the voice from the boat. She had joined her friend Dusty on “Adagio II” and got a ride to Las Palmas with them. A couple days later we were in Las Palmas where the ARC was gathering. The ARC is the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers and is a huge fun race to cross the Atlantic. This year they should be about 230 or something boats crossing all officially leaving the same day. We are not really into that sort of rally with fix departure date and more of an independent mood and leaving when the weather tells us to do so. Nevertheless, Roger on “La Palapa” and his young new wife joined the ARC and consequently all the parties that come with it, which is about one party every day. They asked us to join them on “La Palapa” for a Mojito pre-party drink and we gladly accepted the offer. A Mojito is a rum based drink with soda and mint. Very good especially when it is Aimée who makes them with 50% rum! As we got on the boat Roger told us they were expecting a friend couple they just met. They arrived a few minutes later and sure enough it was Carl and Birgit on “African Affair” that we met in Gibraltar. They also had joined the ARC and all the six of us as well as Jen and Seet went to the party after two or three Mojitos of Aimée’s concoction. The party was sponsored by the largest chandler in town called “Rolnautic” and food and alcohol were served on an all you can drink basis. Well, let me tell you that a bunch of sailors can drink a lot and we sure did. A few hours later we were so drunk we could barely walk. Somehow I ended with Aimée in my arms and Danielle telling me to take her back to the boat safely. She on her side was carrying Roger who was barely able to walk. Note that Danielle and I were not in better shape but following our German friends I made it back with Aimée to “La Palapa” while Danielle and Roger went missing for a while until they arrived about an hour later. By then, Aimée was in bed; Carl and Birgit were snoring in their boat and Roger collapse in the cockpit. Danielle and I took our dinghy and I managed to find back Chocobo. The next morning somehow I was the only one who had any recollection of what had happened the night before and I had to tell everyone the whole story and reassure them that nobody had misbehaved and should not be worried of having said or done something embarrassing other than being completely toasted. But that morning as we were tending to our hangovers Danielle and I were very hungry and wanted to eat a BLT sandwich but didn’t have any tomatoes left. I dinghied to “Adagio II” to ask Joy if they didn’t have a tomato to spare. I got my tomato but Joy also told me that “Adagio II” was leaving the next day and that she had to stay another four day in Las Palmas until her flight on the 13th. Unfortunately, because of the ARC in town there was not a single room available for her to stay and was wondering if she could stay on Chocobo. Of course, there was no problem and Joy came on board and stayed four nights with us until she flew to Rome. We had a visit of Gran Canaria with Phil and Janie as well as Joy. One night we cooked a pizza on Chocobo with Joy, who is as I mentioned lives in Tasmania but was born in Germany so she was going along pretty well with Carl and Birgit who both were drinking water the day after the party but were again on the party two days later. The interesting thing about the pizza was that we made it with flour we bought in Turkey, the oil came from Australia, the salami and pizza sauce were from Morocco, the sugar from somewhere in South Pacific and the mushrooms, green peppers and cheese were from the Canary Islands. We cooked it in an American stove using butane gas bought in Spain and put in a bottle from Australia. It was what I call an international pizza! As we speak, Roger who is American and his new wife Aimée from Canada are getting prepared to cross the Atlantic and to find a deserted island to party while Carl and Birgit from Germany are also preparing their African made boat to do the crossing with the circumnavigation of the world in mind. Mai, the Chinese women who immigrated in Toronto is still on board “Tactical Direction” with Tony from Australia, while Richard from Oregon is still looking for a crew to cross the ocean with a stop in Senegal. Joy flew to Rome where she will spend some time with her sister before flying to Munich to see other relatives and then get back home to Tasmania in the south of Australia. As for Danielle and I we are still together and still deeply love each other even after three and half years living 24/7 side by side.
As you can see pictures of the other travelers we met are maybe boring but the stories behind them is not always and this is a huge part of our trip. In the last three and half years we met hundreds of boats of all nationalities who live their dreams and like us wander the oceans in search of an escape to our otherwise meaningless lives. They are great people and we have a lot of fun with them but every time we raise the anchor and wave them goodbye we never know if we will see them ever again.

Dry Canaries

2011-11-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

The Canary Islands were for us a stop to wait for our transatlantic crossing which will be our second longest passage at sea after the Pacific. Obviously, we have to wait because of the hurricane season in the Caribbean and the huge storms in northern Atlantic but while we are here better take the time to enjoy the place. Did you know that the name Canary from which the archipelago takes its name is not about the little bird of the same name but really about the huge dogs that used to roam the islands? They were called Canaria, which has its root in canis, the Latin for dog. Who would have thought? I was sure to see tons of Canaries, the birds, here but nope if there were any in the past they probably all died from the major volcanic eruptions that happened a couple of centuries ago although there’s been regularly eruptions in the archipelago at an average period of 40 years. In fact, at the very moment there are many underwater eruptions happening around El Hierro the westernmost island of the group.

Among the pleasure of the Canaries we couldn’t miss trying a paella for the last time which is probably the national dish of Spain and for our geography lesson of the day let’s mention that the Canary Islands are part of Spain. Paella is a rice dish cooked in the oven with sea food or a choice of meat. October 31st is still Halloween although not very popular around here. As you can see my imagination is boundless when it comes to choose what costume I should wear. Note that if I really wanted to be accurate in my disguise I would have need to paint my skin black like Somalis, wear dirty worn out pants and t-shirt and carry an AK-47 as well as a rocket launcher. But unfortunately most of those items were missing on board Chocobo! Finally, there’s no need to be fancy to have fun. A simple walk can rapidly turn into a photo shooting frenzy.

If you’re like us you thought camels were only in Africa or Middle East. Well, geographically the Canaries are really in Africa but still somehow we didn’t expect to see “camelus dromedaries” in a Spanish territory. For 6 Euros ($8.70) per person our humpy friend took us for a 20 minutes ride in the black desert of Lanzarote Island.

The dromedary ride was part of a visit tour we took on Lanzarote, one of the seven major islands forming the archipelago. During that visit we saw many things out of the ordinary. The first picture shows a vineyard where the vines are planted in the middle of a little stone wall to protect against the elements. The island is very dry and growing anything is a definitive challenge. But what really impressed me was the number of these little walls and last time I checked there was no machine to build that kind of wall! Click on the picture to enlarge it and you’ll see that the circles expand as far as the surrounding hills. On the second picture if it wasn’t of the blue sky and the sea in the background we could easily believe we just landed on the moon. A large portion of the island is actually less than 200 years old from massive eruptions that changed the nature of the landscape. Finally on the third picture, besides Danielle unforgettable smile, we can see in the background a small green lake in the bottom of a volcano. The green color comes from an algae living in that pond.

We couldn’t pass on that one. We always say that sailors are always challenged when it comes to clothing wearing wrinkled faded t-shirts and over reused shorts. Well here we have the proof that tourists on cruise ships are fair contenders to the fashionably challenged specie in the world. I mean yellow socks in sandals with blue shorts and a beige shirt it’s hard to beat!

Arrived in Canary Islands.

2011-10-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Playa Francesa on the island of La Graciosa in the Canary Archipelago from Rabat, Morocco on October 18th, 2011 after a passage of 459 nautical miles (854 km) that took us 3 days and 18 hours, but included 4 overnights, for an average speed of 5.1 knots. Note that Canary Islands are part of Spain although they sit in the Atlantic Ocean off the Moroccan coast in Africa.

To visit or not to visit?

2011-10-14T01:09:00.001-07:00

While waiting for our immune systems to do their job against the epidemic of cold raging on Chocobo we tried to decide about our next destination. If you think that we have a detailed plan in mind about the path we will follow and everything we will visit in the next six months then maybe you’re not reading this blog for long enough. In fact, as a general rule we have a good idea of the general direction we will head to and the seasons we have to respect but for the details we don’t plan more than a week in advance. The reason is that we change our minds every five minutes according to our impulses of the moment. Danielle in particular is notorious to act with spontaneity . For example the other day we were at the post office sticking Moroccan stamps on an envelope and we wondered who could well be the man on each of the stamps. A young Moroccan happened to pass by and with no more formalities Danielle turned toward him and asked ''Who's that guy?'' while pointing on the stamp. The guy looked at us as with a super smile, hesitated a moment and then replied ''But this is the king!'', holding his big amused smile. In a sense, he probably was not completely wrong and realized it then started to laugh to tell us that this was the current King Mohammed VI of Morocco and immediately we saw the incongruity of the situation and started laughing. Continually changing our mind and responding too quickly creates sometimes comical situations but it is greatly useful when we need to respond quickly.

So the dilemma we have is that we have two months to spend in the area before we can cross the Atlantic sometime in December. Presently we can chose between leaving Morocco and head directly for the Canary Islands, where we will have to spend almost two months doing almost nothing, or sail south to the city of Agadir and take a tour to go camelback riding in the Sahara. For the most adventurous the Agadir scenario is self obvious but we have to remember that we are travelling for over three years and after 45 visited countries we are not as trilled as we were at the beginning to see new things. It is certain that this is probably our last chance to take a hike in the Sahara because for our future travels we will have to choose between hundreds of extraordinary places to visit in the world that we wouldn’t have seen yet. Moreover, these things are not cheap and if you look carefully at our cost page you will realize that the bill of this trip begins to be as steep as the Grand Canyon so it is very tempting to go basking freely on the Canary’s beaches and to wait quietly for the hurricanes to calm down in the Atlantic.

So while one day we are settled to put on our backpacks and to climb our dromedary and the next day we are as determined to head directly to the Canaries we spend our days relaxing, doing some chores on the boat, shopping a bit at the medina of Salé and at night watching movies about three movies every day! The boat overflows with supplies in prevision of the time we will spend in the Atlantic so all we need are fresh fruits and veggies we can find at ridiculous prices on the stalls of the medina. We don’t have to deal prices in Morocco and this makes our life much easier and simpler. Prices are not always marked but after over three weeks we realized that merchants all asked pretty much the same thing for the different products. Restaurants also are quite cheap. It is maybe not Thailand but we can still eat a good meal for about $12 per person or less. So if you ask us what our life looks like these days then let’s say that we relax, we enjoy the good food, we warm up under the African sun (while nights are relatively cool) and as soon as the wind picks up again in a few day we sail away at sea but we don’t know for what destination!

Recovering in Rabat.

2011-10-12T03:59:00.000-07:00

After our visit of Marrakesh we came back to capital city of Rabat where we left Chocobo and on our return we brought back more than beautiful images of the magnificent city we also brought back a flu virus. Yes you read right; the FLU! I mean how in the world can one get the flu when the average temperature during the day is 36°C (97°F)??? Well we sure managed that, no challenge is too hard for us. And with this we had to basically spend the week at the nice marina in Rabat with a box of tissues, lots of rest and watching an industrial quantity of movies. Of course, the fact that you can get some pretty good movies for 10 Dirham ($1.25) in Marrakesh and 5 Dirham ($0.63) in Rabat sure helped with that. In the other hand having some time to rest and do nothing is not a bad thing altogether but we are looking forward to move somewhere else.

One cannot spend time in Morocco and not hear about Mohammed V the king who was primarily responsible for the independence of the kingdom. Every city has a major boulevard named after him and in Rabat they erected a mausoleum for him. Now, this rather small building wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t one of the most beautiful manmade structure in the world. Everything is made of carved marble or other noble stones and as soon as we got closer we quickly realized that this building that looks a bit ordinary from afar was in fact a stunning piece of workmanship that made us stop on the doorstep all mouth open.

Right in front of the mausoleum of Mohammed V stands for a few centuries already La Tour Hassan. This structure was intended to be a minaret and the 200 columns you see behind me where supposed to sustain the planned mosque but the poor fellow who dreamt of what was supposed to become the largest mosque in the world passed away before work completion and his dream died with him. We left the site and then walked a few kilometers north to the medina where we could admire some architecture unique to Morocco. The medinas or old cities are actually a dangerous place to wander. Not that anyone would attack us for Moroccans are very nice people but because we might get lost. These old quarters were planned either by a guy doing way too much drugs or by a fine strategist who wanted to ensure no invaders would be able to find his way through this maze of streets and souks.

As it is always the case Rabat is not only an old city but also an enjoyable modern city with, among other things, its brand new tramway system allowing people to travel all across the city for only 6 Dirham ($0.75). During the past few days since we arrived in the country it became obvious to us that Morocco is ongoing some major breakthroughs in its development and the situation is moving in the right direction for what seems to be the only stable country in the Middle East and North Africa.

Among friends in Marrakesh.

2011-10-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

The best way to visit a region is to know someone who lives there and visit him during the trip and it is this unique opportunity we had for our visit to Morocco. I worked for several years in Ottawa with Said, a born Moroccan, who returned with his family to live in Marrakesh. So we left our boat in the national capital of Rabat and put on our backpacks to visit them and to visit at the same time this tan city with its souks and of course the Moroccan food. On the picture you can see from left to right Leila, who at fourteen is already at her fifth comic book drawn on paper, Danielle with her legendary smile, Hakim who like all teenagers doesn’t talk much, but becomes quite feverish when the subject becomes the latest video games, then at the other table we see Sylvie the active career woman who is a director in a clothing company and finally Said physicist by training, engineer by passion and university professor by profession. It’s with all these nice peoples that we spent three days in Marrakesh. The picture was taken in one of the many restaurants that open every day in the public square of Jemaa El Fna, Marrakesh’s most famous area.

The Moroccan architecture is the first thing that strikes in Marrakesh. The city has a regulation stating that all houses must be of color tan which is the color that was obtained with earthy materials used in the early days for building construction. But it's not just the old walls of the medina that captures the eye but also more modern constructions such as the main train station in Marrakesh that you can see here and that is perhaps not a monumental building in size but is of impressive beauty when you stand in front of it.

Just behind Jemaa El Fna Square we find the famous Moroccan souks. But unlike Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, which is full of shops selling only bits and pieces for tourists, here souks form a real shopping center for people of Marrakesh and one finds everything in this maze of incredible streets and squares. As a matter of fact it was a good thing Said was with us because we would have gotten lost for sure. Once out of the souks we were back to the central square where we find traditional water carriers such as this one. Now I'm not sure that anyone still buys water they carry in their water pouch made, I think, in goat skins, but they are constantly asked by visitors to be photographed, for few dinars of course.

Bulk produce is one of the many interesting things to see in the souks. Spices, nuts, dried fruits, supposedly medicinal products or simple natural soaps can be found in industrial quantities around the maze of boutiques. And prices are frankly very reasonable. Then, in the periphery sections of the souks we find factories where craftsmen manufactures things sold in the sections closer to the central square. A small note by the way about the vendors in the shops. As you can imagine one doesn’t walk in front of a store without being approached by the vendors, which is perfectly normal as they are not there to put color into the background but to sell their products. But unlike similar places in most other countries, Moroccan merchants know the meaning of the word ''no'' and it was possible to walk without too much hassle in this commercial maze especially when we stood not too far behind Said that everyone took for an informal guide who had caught two tourist losers and who would be asking them a sizable commission for bringing customers.

Finally, our visit of the souks ended in front of a bowl of snails served in a pepper sauce and sold in one of the few designated kiosks on Jemaa El Fna square next to the snake or monkey handlers. Snails were pretty good by the way, but Danielle, who is usually very fond of snails that you buy in tins and are served with garlic butter au gratin, just passed on them this time! I wonder why?

I could not finish my article on Marrakesh without at least showing you a picture of Said and his family’s beautiful house where we spent the three nights of our stay. Unfortunately we did not bring our swimsuits, which was a shame since it was around 36 ° C (97 ° F) during the whole time we were there. It is also in this house, I called the Belkouch Manor, that we ate most of our traditional Moroccan meals generously provided by our hosts. In the end, visiting the attractions of Marrakesh was of course interesting, but after three years of traveling and over 45 countries visited, it’s really the time spent with our four friends that was the most interesting. It was good to see Said and Sylvie after so many years and finally get to know their two children, Hakim and Leila, who were about seven and five last time we saw them. Our stay was a bit short but we hope to see them again next time they come to visit relatives in Canada.

Our first impression of Morocco.

2011-10-03T05:56:00.001-07:00

Let me give you a little more detailed description of our arrival in Morocco than I did in my brief previous post. We left Gibraltar with in mind to go to Tangier on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. Following the Spanish coast to avoid cargo ships in the Strait of Gibraltar and the counter current, we changed our mind and stopped in Tarifa, Spain. Nothing special so far except that it made us change our first destination in Morocco. What you should know is that we chose our destinations based on the information we have and that in this case our main source comes from a cruising guide published by Imray in 2006. Six years is usually not much but for Morocco it is the day and night since, as we would soon see, the country has undergone major transformations in recent years. Because of this, the descriptions we had of the various ports of Morocco were completely wrong. But at that time we did not know yet and decided to head for Port Larache where we would supposedly be able to anchor and spend a few peaceful days. So we left the beautiful beach of Tarifa and headed south. Our crossing of the strait was, as you know, enhanced by the meeting of whales and dolphins but they were not going to be the only mammals we would meet. Indeed, homo-sapiens inhabiting every inch of the planet was not far away and after only a few dozen miles in Moroccan waters we were boarded by the Marine Royale of Morocco which is roughly the Coast Guard of the country. A small routine check is nothing very troubling when the boat is at the dock but at sea things are a little different. There we had to haul down the sails and prepare for the docking of their zodiac. Strangely, we had completely finished our operation while they were still working to put their zodiac in the water and we had to wait for them! Finally, two men came on board, asked for the usual information they wrote on a piece of crumpled paper, briefly inspected the inside of the boat and then left. This was done in a polite and friendly manner and of course the fact that we spoke French facilitated the entire process. But the routine checks are fine for the authorities of the country but are completely useless to us, and above all it made us lose almost an hour in our very tight schedule that day so after our characters in uniform have left Chocobo we were not sure we could make it to Port Larache before nightfall.

It was then with all sails open and the port engine fully engaged that we just barely reached the mouth of the river to Port Larache while the sun was putting his pajamas to go to bed on the horizon. At very low speed with eyes riveted on the two depth gauges we traveled up river to a place that seemed correct to anchor for several days. But these few days have quickly turned into a few minutes when the visit arrived. This time it was the port police who kindly told us we could not stay in this peaceful and secluded (and free) spot and we had to moor in the noisy, dirty and obviously paying port of Port Larache. So with the sun already below the horizon, and under the close supervision of the police, we raised the anchor and went to attach Chocobo to a rusty metal dock on which our shoes became stained with red paint and rust hence redecorating the top of our white deck into an abstract cave painting expressing in a way the sense of appreciation we had at the time of the welcome we’d received by Moroccans so far! In no time, the arrival of a “luxurious” catamaran in the port was quick to attract attention and the dock was filled with onlookers coming out of nowhere but also officials of each department the government found useful to invent to govern a port, all armed with paperwork to make me self-digesting my stomach. For you see, papers take a long time to complete when typing at the computer with two fingers or when one does not really speak anything but Arabic, and with all this Danielle and I didn’t have the time to eat anything and our last meal dated back to that morning! However, notice that all this time everyone was very courteous and even if they were a bit lost about what to do with us people were still trying their best to make things easy.

It is then in this picturesque setting and permanent odor of fish that we spent two nights in Port Larache until the wind turned north to continue on our way to Rabat, the capital, which according to our wonderful cruising guide has no facilities for yachts and is not a port of entry and therefore no official is present. However, by talking to people here we quickly learned that Rabat is now one of the main ports for yachts with a large modern marina and the main port of entry for yachts! It's worth paying $ 80.00 for a book that useful! But during our stay in Larache we wanted to visit some places and just to make things more pleasant than they already were a cold front passed over the region bringing with it the first rain for over four months, a temperature of 20 ° C (68 ° F) and humidity near 100%! You can only find conditions more miserable than that in Montreal during fall! Finally, we only went to the ATM to get some Dirhams then returned to the warmth of the boat to watch movies the rest of the day. The next day it was two happy sailors who left Port Larache in fourth gear. At this point, our only idea was to navigate directly to the Canary Islands and to forget about Morocco altogether but as we headed for the Canary Islands a small fishing boat approached us. One of the men on board was making the sign of a cigarette and I signed them to approach. In Gibraltar cigarettes and alcohol was cheap and we had a good supply of brandy and Marlboro to give as gifts to Moroccan officials but as it turned out this practice must be obsolete because no one ever asked me anything close to a bribe and they never made me feel that I needed to give them any kind of baksheesh. Danielle ran inside and came out with a half liter of brandy and a pack of cigarettes which immediately raises cheers of joy from our seafarer colleagues. Sometimes in Muslim countries brandy is worth its weight of gold, but here we got a bag full of small soles that will give us three meals of fried fish with the first one that evening. This little happy interlude with these fishermen has boosted our morale relative to Morocco and we finally decided to head for Rabat and give a chance to this country of sand and ancient culture.

Arrived in Morocco.

2011-09-28T02:42:00.001-07:00

We arrived in the town of Port Larache, Morocco from Tarifa, Spain on September 22nd, 2011 after a short passage of 60 nautical miles that took us across the Strait of Gibraltar and from Europe to Africa. While crossing the strait we encountered two species of marine mammals. First was a group of pilot whales that at first looked like dolphins but were way too black, too slow and had a round head. They were very social and we were able to approach them but unlike dolphins they didn’t come to play at the bow. A few minutes later we indeed met a group of dolphins of what may seem to be bottlenose dolphins for they were simply huge. They came and swam at the bow for only a couple of minutes, too short to take a picture of them but long enough to realize they were the largest dolphins we’ve encountered in this trip. We see dolphins quite often but somehow it is always a treat to watch them crisscross in front of the bows.

Gibraltar: The Rock!

2011-09-19T15:26:00.001-07:00

There are many places in the world that make one dream such as the Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt or the Panama Canal and whose reputation and history are relegated more to legend and myth than real personal knowledge and Gibraltar is one of them. What I mean is that everyone heard about Gibraltar and its famous rock but who could point it on a map or say why it is significant? In fact, before getting there Danielle and I, and other people with whom we spoke, thought it was an island when in fact it is a small peninsula with a large rock on it.

To fill the intellectual vacuum of the club for the geographically challenged which we are part of, I present here a small map of the region and some info I found here and there. The first thing to see on the map is that Gibraltar is not an island but an appendage of Spain and more specifically of the peninsula of Iberia. The second thing to notice is that this Lilliputian kingdom is so small that without a microscope it is not visible on a world map. Add to that its proximity to the only entry to the Mediterranean and therefore it’s obvious interest to the British, a rock several hundred meters high that is totally impregnable for an invader and a main street full of English pubs and you have Gibraltar. A population of about 30,000 and the currency is the pound of Gibraltar pegged at parity with the pound sterling. Now, how can such a small population support a currency in itself is a great mystery to me especially that since it is pegged to its big British sister so why not just use the British pound? Well let’s not try to understand world finance or we will have to understand how an American can mortgage his house to 110% of its value! The day we arrived, Sept. 10, happened to be Gibraltar’s national day and the people here were truly patriotic, all dressed in red and white which are the colors of the flag of Gibraltar. Notice that the same clothing could be used for the Canadian or Peruvian national holidays when you think about it.

A passage in Gibraltar is not without a visit to the famous rock which covers over 90% of the area of the country. But in addition to the tunnels, caves and monkeys the feature that strikes the most during this visit is the view that one has of the only airstrip in the country. The problem that the British had to deal with is that there is not enough flat land here to build a long enough runway. So they took the only flat part of the country, have filled in the missing part and spread the asphalt over it. But as the runway covers the entire breadth of the country so how do we get out? Simply by passing on the airstrip. A system of traffic lights on each side and we’re in business. Run a red light and a plane lands on top of you! It sure makes you think twice. Now back to the rock itself. Over the centuries it seems that everyone wanted this piece of rock then the English or Spanish depending on who owned the land at one time have dug tunnels in the interior of the rock for shelter in times of siege. This is more than 48 kilometers (30 miles) of tunnels that are now found in this mineral gruyere. Think about it for a second, 48 km of tunnels dug into the rock bed! And you found that our work at the office was hard! But on top of all this is found the only tribe of monkeys in Europe, more than about 300, which bask and enjoy absolute protection and food that their cousins Homo sapiens give them. Obviously there is no such thing as a free lunch, even between primate species it seems, and these favors are given at the price of being photographed all day long with ugly tourists. Of course we can ask ourselves the existential question of which of the two species is the smartest? The one that works his ass off all day long to satisfy his irrelevant taste for consumer goods or the one that basks in the sun of the Mediterranean and eat the food given by the other? Just look at the last two pictures and the answer becomes pretty obvious!

Obviously the cruising life would not be the same without the never-ending list of boat repairs that extends as quickly as we managed to reduce it. So every time we enter a port of importance on the one hand we spend hundreds of dollars for our pleasure but on the other thousands for the boat! Here, among others, the main sail had to be mended and we also installed a new windlass, which is used to winch up the anchor, and thus put an end to two weeks of exhaustion for me after raising the anchor by hand. A 10mm (3 / 8'') chain it is heavy, very heavy! And talking about windlasses one might think that installing such a device would be quite a piece of work but it wasn’t the case at all. The old one we had was almost the same so the installation turned out to be trivial. However, Danielle had to work very hard to actually get the part delivered to the boat. The story is too long to be described here but to make it short let’s say that we ordered the device in Spain while dealing with customer service in England then it was shipped from The Netherlands and delivered in Gibraltar. And without the commendable dedication of Ian in England we would have long finished our trip before receiving the device! But when I say that it is virtually impossible to empty the list of things to do I'm not kidding. When I finish mending the sail, our list was completely empty of any essential repairs. Well, that lasted two hours and then poof! The container of one of the watermaker’s filters cracked in half pouring all our water in the bilge. Why this container, I had just installed in Turkey, decided to die at that very moment? The only possible answer is that it heard us talking in the kitchen and saying that we managed to complete all essential repairs hence creating a paradox in the maritime parallel universe and the container such as a Palestinian martyr has voluntarily sacrificed itself in order to rebalance the normal order of things.

Arrived in Gibraltar

2011-09-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the country of Gibraltar on Sept 10th, 2011 from Puerto de José Banus in Spain. Our plan is to get the boat and ourselves ready for the Atlantic crossing that is to come soon and before leaving the civilization to go back to the Caribbean but wait… not right now. To be continued…Morocco…Canary Island and maybe Cape Verde who knows!

La Costa del Sol

2011-09-14T01:55:00.000-07:00

The coast of Spain is full of very pretty towns and instead of sailing directly to Gibraltar we took the time to wander along the Costa del Sol and stop here and there. Probably the most charming town we stopped would be Cartagena. The architecture speaks for itself on these pictures but as you can see Spanish can be very elegant and romantic but also modern and artistic. This mix of old European classic and bold modern styles was omnipresent everywhere we went. Cartagena was warm and pleasant and we sure took the time to enjoy the place during the five days we spent there. It was the right opportunity to try good paella, this rice dish that holds almost the place of an emblem in Spain, and an Asiatico which is a special coffee with brandy unique to Cartagena we were told. I don’t think I have to say that both were very good and contributing to the steady weight gain we suffer since we are in the Med!

Still in Cartagena we would find statues everywhere representing people in different position such as this poor soldier who seem to find his bag quite heavy and needed to rest. Of course I’m always available to cheer a poor fellow in need. Not too far from there we came by this interesting device. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out quickly that this is a submarine but a closer inspection shows many unusual aspects such as the shape of propellers and rudders, the thickness of the hull, the small size of its hull and the top hatch. Well we just had to read the sign telling us that this is the “Peral” submarine built in 1885. All the weird design features can be excused by the fact that this is was one of the early submarines to be built and was the first to use electric battery powered motors and a chemical process to regenerate the crew’s air supply. It was never used in battle but made a nice display item for the tourists a century later!

The cruising life wouldn’t be what it is if it was without having fun with other cruisers which is usually not what you are used at home. For instance when was the last time you had dinner and all your guests arrived bare foot or bringing their own dishes for a potluck? But my favorite was from Roger Hayward on La Palapa who actually swam to Chocobo with his glass of rum in hand! Besides being totally crystal clear with over 15m (45ft) of perfect visibility the water temperature was 20°C (68°C)! If you’re used to swim in the Canadian great lakes this wouldn’t a problem but when you spent the last two years in tropical weather this is quite freezing. Sometimes though things are more “normal” so to speak such as this nice dinner we had at a restaurant in Aguila with, from left to right, Carla & Sebastien sailing on their boat Begonia, myself and Danielle of course and then Roger & Karli from La Palapa who you must be familiar with by now if you read this blog regularly and with who we’ve been sailing on and off since Suez in Egypt.

Pursued by security guards in Spain

2011-09-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

We didn’t know what kind of very weird adventure awaited us when we stopped for one night in Puerto de José Banus at this port that could easily be called the St-Barth of the Mediterranean with megayachts lined up at the main dock in front of the most expensive stores and where Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porches are as common as the low class Mercedes, Audis and BMWs! We, poor sailors with no revenues, came along in our dirty dinghy, attached it at the wall of the marina and dared walking these streets paved by the money of the higher castes. We even were bold enough to have dinner with Karli and Roger on La Palapa at a nice seafront restaurant. Dinner and company were charming but when we came back to the dinghy at the end of the evening a security guard was waiting for us on the dock. We didn’t notice him in fact until he tried to stop us from getting into our boat while calling for some backup. He didn’t speak English or French and clearly wasn’t something good for us so we ignored him and yelled at him when he tried to prevent us from untying the line. Usually, men from authorities such as police officers use firm and directing tones of voice in order to control us but in this case it was us who were talking down the poor security guard who probably only received two hours of training before getting his oversized uniform. The scene was happening right in front of two amused bystanders sipping their drinks on the waterfront. We left the dock and the poor powerless guard while the two bystanders were sending us thumbs up with big smiles in approval of our defiance. But we were totally unsure of what he wanted from us and it was obvious that they would be looking for us along our way out of the marina so we had the brilliant idea of hiding in the dark behind a dock for a moment which tactic has the same effect than an ostrich burying its head in the sand. We tried calling Karli and Roger, who came back to their boat about 45 minutes before us, on the VHF radio to know if they had any problems with the marina security but got no answer. Then we saw a boat leaving its berth in the back of the marina with huge search lights at its bow. Hidden in our little corner we felt like two teenagers who had done something bad and would get grounded as soon as they get busted.

After a moment we decided that it was better to leave fast then to wait for them to get too organized and we moved at normal speed toward the entrance trying not to attract any attention. But the boat seemed to follow us while guys ashore were shouting at us to stop. It became very clear that they really were onto us and that our tactic of leaving unnoticed was a miserable failure hence relegating it to the archives of dumb ideas. Following the same genius reasoning Danielle said “Come on, go go go!” and I pushed the motor at full throttle as we passed the fuel dock and with a very calm sea around us we planed immediately and left the entrance of the marina at full speed. At this point we thought “Oh my god, oh my god we are fugitives now!” even though we were pursued by security guards not units of the Marine Corp! For some reasons the other boat behind us didn't accelerate immediately and because the breakwater wall of the marina had a dog leg shape we had to turn south to exit the protected area and this made that for a short moment we were out of sight of the pursuing boat but not really of the guys ashore shouting at us. Going directly west toward Chocobo anchored not very far would have been obviously stupid so as soon as we were passed the breakwater I turned south-west toward the sea until we were well passed Chocobo. With no lights we were probably hard to see on the water, even though it was a near full moon, because by then the boat with the searching lights was out of the marina and flying at full speed due south. At this point we taught that this was probably just a boat leaving the marina and went somewhere else and we slowed down while turning toward the shore were it was clearly dark. We came back slowly to Chocobo hidden by the darkness of the night and with the music of “Mission Impossible” in our mind while the other boat was getting further south. But as we were raising the dingy on its davits it turned back and returned toward the marina with its search lights moving in all directions. They were really chasing us down We thought of leaving the anchorage immediately and go back to Marbella about 3 miles east but revised our decision when we saw that the boat had turned and seemed to have lost our trace. It would be less suspicious if we stay and just leave at 0700 am the next morning as planned and that’s what we did. We never heard of them afterward. Of course we still have a zillion unanswered questions from that story. What exactly were they expecting from us? Paying 50 Euros for using their holy wall? How much did it cost us in fuel to chase us at full speed with their big boat? How can the guys on shore be so stupid not to be able to follow us under a full moon as we ran away and tell the guys on the chasing boat? Did the guard on the dock get shit from his boss for being such a puss and letting us go so easily? How come they didn’t come investigate the only two sailboats that were anchored outside the marina? I mean, where did they think the dinghy was coming from exactly? Everybody managing a marina or a port knows that sailboats use inflatable tender boats to get ashore but these guys flew straight due south thinking we would sail directly offshore in the Mediterranean Sea aboard a ten foot inflatable boat! Do they recruit their security personnel directly from the Spanish Institute of Graduated Morons or what? But the real question that remains a mystery is what was wrong with those guys anyway? Everybody attach their dinghy to the main port walls when going ashore and no one ever bother us for the simple reason that we are not really a nuisance. I think those guys really need to get a life because they seem to have way too much time on their hands. But this whole story has the merit of having put some excitement in our cruising of the Med. After dealing with the corrupted officials of Central America, crossing the largest oceans of the world, sailing through blood thirsty pirate waters and dealing with Egyptians our trip was getting pretty dull and this poor security guard had as much chance to control us as a sardines, found in great numbers in this part of the world, to eat us alive!

Islas Baleares.

2011-08-31T03:56:00.000-07:00

After escaping from the exorbitant prices of Italy we sought refuge in the Baleares Islands which are part of Spain and considered as the most expensive place in the Mediterranean. Told like this that choice of a place might sound a bit awkward but it is important to know that unlike Italy there are many spots in the Baleares to anchor hence reducing the expense to a humanly bearable level. It is then with our wallet under high surveillance that we were able to loll here at La Cala de la Calobra known as one of the most beautiful place in Mallorca Island. By the way, in Spanish the word “Cala” only means “bay”. It has nothing special but it seems that it sounds nicer when we say “La Cala de la Calobra” then to say Calobra bay. Of course, it is important to give it the Spanish accent when we say it otherwise it loses all its charm ;-)

Since we ran nonstop for the past few months from one place to another while trying to survive through the European pecuniary gauntlet we were long due for some vacations which was our goal when we arrived here. And free time we had. Karly and Roger our friend on board La Palapa were coming in the same area than us to meet their friend Frank visiting them for a few days from California. The beauty of having visiting friends is the fact they can carry boat parts in their luggage and in this case two watermaker pumps for their good friends on Chocobo to replace the old ones used to make water over three quarters of the world and were now spilling more water through the way too many leaks than through the membrane! So it is here in Puerto de Andratx that we waited a few days for Frank and his 12 kilos (25lbs) of extra luggage while repairing the boat but mostly fully relaxing in this Spanish village.

Andratx being a popular destination for European tourists it was easy to find all kind of restaurants. Our quick race in Italian waters didn’t satisfy our appetite for the dishes from the big boot. For that reason the first thing we did on arrival in Andratx was to drag our stomach into an …. Italian restaurant! Yep the proximity with the roman kingdom makes available in abundance and quality the unique cuisine of this country in these small Spanish Islands and we made the most of this fact telling ourselves that dishes from the old conquistadores’ descent could wait a bit. Hence the white wine matched wonderfully the large flat pizza, the adente pastas and deli on this pretty terrace with a Hispanic charm.

In the end the crew of La Palapa was unable to come over the island of Mallorca to meet us due to a headwind and Frank had to take another small plane to join them on the next island Ibiza. We did the same but in our case we use the maritime way and it was then on the small island of Espalmador, located between Ibiza and Formentera, that we rendezvous with our friends and our two watermaker pumps. We really had no idea of this place before coming and it was with some surprise that we discovered probably the most crowded place in Baleares. Pleasure boats by the hundreds laid their anchor here and there along this long beach where white sand rimes with monokini. In fact, for many the place rimed instead with zerokini! We’ve already been a few times in places where ladies found superfluous to wear the top of their minikini but the fact that this activity was mainly practiced by people generously affected by the work of time reduced significantly the interest in mentioning it. Here things were different. People were young and they were gorgeous; men as much as women. Thus it was surrounded by these young angels of Eros with their clothing made to drive to bankruptcy the entire world fabric production that we waited for over a week for a proper weather window to allow us to cross to continental Spain. With La Palapa moored nearby we spend a very nice week relaxing with them and lounging under the vapors of the excellent Spanish wine which is very likely the most popular beverage in the country based on the shelf space dedicated to it in the supermarkets.

Arrived in Spain.

2011-08-15T03:31:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Puerto de Mahon on the island of Menorca, Spain from Malfatano in Sardina, Italy after a passage of 225 nautical miles. Menorca is part of the Baléares archipelago East of Spain and South of France in the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t know how long exactly we took for that passage because we don’t even bother to monitor such small passages anymore. Note that at the beginning of our voyage this passage would have required 3 weeks of preparation and planning to ensure the boat is ready and that we have all the food for 3 months even though we will be at sea for only two days while now it goes about like this. “All right how long is the next passage already? About 225 miles, Danielle would answer. And when do we leave? Well the weather looks good today and if we leave this morning we should arrive at sunrise the day after tomorrow. A couple of days that’s not too bad, are we ready to go? Yep! Ok, so let’s raise the anchor and let’s get on the way.” Basically unless the trip is more than 500 miles we don’t quite stress much about it anymore. That’s what three years of cruising does to you.

The cost of Italy.

2011-08-13T03:31:00.000-07:00

It is quite a shame to sail in a country with so much to visit as Italy and to not spend any time doing so. That's pretty much what we did and the reason is very simple; the cost! Upon our arrival we stopped in a small town in Sicily where we could anchor but the waves where untenable and we had to leave shortly the following morning. We then crossed the Strait of Messina, which separate the "boot" of Italy with Sicily and were heading for some islands north of Sicily. Unfortunately the wind didn't allow us to sail in that direction and we had to turn east toward a small town called Bagnara Calabra where anchoring was not possible and we had to take a slip at the marina there. This is where we realized that Italians have completely lost their mind on how much things should cost. The so called marina, which was nothing more than a slip in a harbor, had no facilities to speak of and in a real world we should have paid about 15-20 Euros per night. Well they were asking 100 Euros!! This is $145.00 per night for a slip in a crappy harbor not a luxurious room in a 5 stars hotel! Weather was very bad and we had no choice but to stay. I argued with the guys in charge and managed to get it down to 75 Euros per night but this still was completely out of the realm of reasonability. Anchorages being quite limited in Italy it became very clear to us that we had to leave this country as fast as we could before we were forced into bankruptcy.

Even though our stay in Italy was very brief we still had the chance to see a few things worth mentioning. The first picture shows a boat used for swordfish fishing that we crossed in the Strait of Messina. Let's just say that I really wouldn't like to be the guy at the top of the mast! While waiting in the most expensive marina of our trip for a proper weather window we walked in Bagnara Calabra for shopping for food and to try an authentic Italian pizza. The first one was quite fruitful as if marinas were out of price food was either reasonable or cheap. We found the biggest red pepper we had ever seen and delicatessen was fairly cheap at least compared to what we pay in Canada. Cheese especially was very cheap and we could get our hand on a kilo of parmesan for 8 Euros and a brick of Swiss cheese for the same price. Cheese fondues here we are! As for the pizza we've never been able to find any. The problem is that people around here close their businesses between noon and an undetermined time late in the afternoon. So both days we went to the village around noon just to find all restaurants closed. Other than that we are moving west to reach the Baleares Islands in Spain where we know things are expensive but many anchorages are still possible in what many consider the most beautiful place in the Mediterranean.

Arrived in Italy.

2011-08-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the small town of Taormina Roads in Sicily, Italy on July 23rd, 2011 from Lixuri, Greece after a passage of 289 nautical miles in the Mediterranean Sea that took us 2 days, 6 hours and 30 minutes for an average speed of 5.3 knots. More precisely we crossed the Ionian Sea which lies between Greece and Italy. It was a fairly eventless passage with wind only during the second half of the way. The only noticeable fact during that passage was the regular warnings we would hear on the VHF radio broadcasted by NATO forces presently deployed in Libya just south of here and mentioning to whom it may concern that should we be operating any military equipment such as armored tanks or weapons of any kinds we would immediately destroyed. Same automatically applies should we fire at any NATO forces or civilian population! Can't say they didn't warn us!

Exploring the Greek Islands.

2011-07-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

It was time for us to say good bye to Turkey and to begin our cruise of the Cyclades; a group of islands in Aegean Sea between Turkey and continental Greece. Greek islands are considered as one of the most beautiful place in the world and it didn’t take us long to figure out why. Most of them inhabited and with a rich past dating back to antiquity these islands may have a relatively simple landscape and vegetation but their villages in their traditional architecture are breath taking. Under strong northerly winds called the Meltemis navigation in this group of islands is made by waiting for the proper weather window hence sometime forcing us to be “stuck” in places of beauty to make you weep with villages made of white cement, blue doors and windows, embellished by blazing flowers and surrounded by pristine blue Mediterranean waters.

Between Marmaris, Turkey and Mikonos Island, where Claudette left us heavyhearted to go back to Canada, we stopped at the following islands; Simi, Kos, Leros, Levitha, Amorgos, Naxos and Mikonos. Each of these islands had their unique charms and it is impossible to show them all in the limited time and space we have in the presentation of this blog. But here you can see in order Claudette admiring Levitha Island, the stunning interior view of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Simi and myself waiting for Danielle and Claudette in one of Kos’ streets.

One of the unique places we visited in this first part of our island tour was the Monastery of Panagia Chozoviotissa of Amorgos on Amorgos Island. This hillside built monastery was accessible only through its long and winding stairway in order to climb the hundreds of meters between the road and the entrance of the building. A big congratulation to Claudette for climbing it since despite the fact that she has a very young hearth has accumulated many years in her legs. The site became even more famous by the production of the movie “The great blue” in the 80’s and the bay you see behind Danielle and I was used, as well as the monastery, for the shooting. Ironically we had never seen the movie but this was not a worry since one of the bars around the bay in Katapola where Chocobo moored presented the movie every week. Hence we attended a wine and movie night to make up for this cultural deficiency.

Our visit of the Monastery of Panagia may have been unique but the highlight of our stay on Amorgos Island was without contest the village of Chora built on a hilltop. Obviously used for the shooting of the movie “The great blue” this place is by my appreciation the most beautiful village I’ve seen in my life. Relatively small, we go round the town in one afternoon, its streets are calm enough to relax the most stressed stock broker. White walls and blue doors and windows are everywhere while strolling about the meander of flat stone paved streets. Greek food obviously has the place of honor in the multiple small restaurants with their tables set right in the middle of the street and surrounded by vines in which small grape buds start growing and by all kind of flowers giving the rustic look of a mountain village. And the wine, the wine!

Arrived in Greece.

2011-07-06T00:48:00.001-07:00

We arrived at the Island of Kos, Greece from Marmaris, Turkey with a one night stop at the Island of Simi along the way on June 16, 2011. The total distance is only about 90 miles as the Greek Islands are very close to the Turkish continent

Pools of Pumakale.

2011-07-05T04:53:00.000-07:00

With its millenniums of history and culture, Turkey is full of sites to visit and obviously we have to choose which ones we want to see unless we plan to stay two years. With our visit of Istanbul behind us we came back to Marmaris in the south of Turkey where Chocobo was waiting for us. For this ride we took the bus. However here unlike Canada there is no quasi monopoly for bus companies. When we arrived at the bus terminal we were in the middle of a swirl of transport companies and trust me when I say that it makes your head spin when you don’t expect it. We already had dealt with that kind of bus terminal in Peru and Bolivia but yet we needed a few minutes to adapt. Nevertheless, without too much trouble we quickly found our bus and left for a nearly 12 hour overnight ride taking us back “home”! We were not back to the boat for more than one day that Danielle had already booked our next visit while I was busying at fixing the boat in preparation for our cruise to come in the Greek Islands. And hop we jumped again in a bus in direction of the site of Pumakale where lays an interesting geological formation. A water source with a high concentration of calcium bicarbonate flows down the hillside and creates these white pools. Unlike the site of Los Salinas in Peru, which is made of salt, Pumakele is formed by calcium bicarbonate. Like you I had no idea what is was so I tasted it. It was basically chalked or at least it tasted like it! Later our tour included the inevitable visit of a local business where they show us what they do then try to sell us their products. This time it was the visit of a Turkish carpet factory where they showed us their fabrication techniques and their huge inventory of magnificent carpets. We obviously didn’t buy any carpet but it is always impressive to admire a carpet on which every one of the million knots were handmade and took over two years for a family to complete. With fresh images of carpets of wool and silk in mind we resumed our trip back to Marmaris when the temperature inside the coach started to rise sharply. The diagnostic came out to be the air conditioner that decided to leave us for a better world despite our driver’s effort for reanimation. It is then with our sweaty forehead that we enjoyed the unique Turkish scenery along the way back to the boat while I felt a certain satisfaction knowing that continuous breakups happening at the worst possible time are not only the features of boats!

Istanbul the city of wonders.

2011-06-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

A short flight took us from Athens to the wonderful city of Istanbul. I say wonderful because Istanbul, a city of over 13 millions, has everything to make you dream from its rich past of Sultans, flying carpets, spices, religious monuments and the last but not the least; the Turks themselves who are warm, welcoming and very pleasant people. In this post I don’t have much to say but lots to show. So here’s a string of pictures with short comments and explanation to show you the colors of this city we will never forget. On this first picture you have a view of the European side of Istanbul and the river in the middle is what is called the Golden Horn which is not the Bosphorus that separates the city between Europe and Asia and leads to the Black Sea.

The Blue Mosque is probably the number one feature monument in Istanbul. This huge monument finished in 1617 is an active mosque and consequently the entrance is free of charge but also requires a proper attire to come inside.

Food is obviously a treat in Istanbul. First the baklavas. Usually you’ll find three to four varieties of baklavas to satisfy your palate but here they have entire shops dedicated to that treat and other sweets. We are talking about tens of different baklavas, and fruit squares! Ice cream is also something of trademark in the city of Sultans. You don’t just go ask for a cone, pay and leave just like that. The vendor in his traditional Turkish costume will play with his 3 feet (1m) long spoon, ring the bells, play with you to make you laugh and then you have your cone. A bit expensive but very good gelato. Another treat was these huge pretzels. As a matter of fact we had a hard time stopping Claudette from trying everything unhealthy sold on the street ;-)

Just next to the Blue Mosque was the famous Ahia Sophia (Ayasofya) built in A.D 537 and was first a Christian church then later modified as a mosque and is now a museum. Yet the duality of the two religious trends still remains as you can see on the first picture. In foreground is the stairs leading to the minbar where the Imam talks to the followers during the prayers while in the background painted on the roof dome are Holy Marie and Jesus! It is a crude contrast from what we saw in Egypt for instance.

One cannot go to Istanbul and miss the Grand Bazaar the pinnacle of shopping and mercantile trades. It is not a building, nor a street, nor a shopping mall but an entire section of the town covering many square kilometers. A huge section is a covered building but the shopping area now extends way beyond the walls of the original Bazaar. One thing that we may not be used to is the fact that for Turks it is the tradition to offer to customers a complementary glass of tea while discussing the deal. At first it is disorienting but we get used to it after awhile.

While in the Bazaar I couldn’t resist buying one of these beautifully handcrafted wooden backgammon boards you can find here in Turkey. The funny thing is that Danielle and I didn’t completely remembered the rules of that game when we sat in a café for a Nescafe (that’s what they called the kind of coffee we drink in western countries) and started a game. Playing backgammon in coffee and tea shops is quite common in this part of the world so nobody cared or so we thought. After less than ten seconds of playing and trying to remember the rules we were already surrounded by Turks interested in the game and quickly giving us advices on how to play. Of course the fresh varnish look of our new board also attracted the attention. Then this gentleman taught us the local game they play here, which is a bit more complex than the basic one, and I had the chance to play a couple of games with him and receive genuine advices about the game. The thing about backgammon is that the rules maybe extremely simple but the strategy and the skills to develop are huge. So no need to say that I miserably lost but it was nevertheless very enjoyable.

One night we went to a Turkish traditional dance show. The ten dancers gave us a good performance and we had an enjoyable evening.

The Basilica Cistern is an underground water reservoir built to store massive amounts of water to supply the city in times of drought or siege.

Although 98% of Turks are Muslims Sunday is the official day off and here is a picture of a street just adjacent to the Grand Bazaar on Sunday morning. We would have had a hard time walking in this street on any other days.

Topkapi Palace is where the Sultans used to live. We could see many of the different sections of the palace but the two most impressive were the harem, where at its most crowded housed up to 800 of the Sultan’s wives, and the treasure rooms where we saw a 64 carats diamond among many other pieces of jewelries displayed as a testament of the enormous wealth of the Sultans.

Finally we couldn’t finish this post without underlying the friendliness of the Turks who literally bend backward in restaurants and other services places to please the visitors and making their visit of the magic city an unforgettable experience. Talking like that I should really think writing travel guides!

The glory of ancient Athens.

2011-06-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Canada over we flew back to Athens to resume our travels. Danielle’s mom Claudette came to spend five weeks in the Mediterranean with us. With Chocobo in Turkey we decided to spend a few days visiting Athens before taking another flight to Istanbul and one of the very first thing we did after we arrived was to go visit the Acropolis. As we started our visit of the site we quickly realized something that for many might be obvious but not to us. When we talk about the Acropolis we immediately think of the huge stone monument with all the columns around it and the remains of a triangle top façade but as we quickly realized this building, or what remains of it, is actually called the Parthenon. Acropolis is in fact a much bigger site which includes of course the Parthenon but also a few other temples or monuments and the term simply means “higher city”.

Surrounding the Acropolis are many other sites such as the amazing and still functional Theater of Herodes Atticus with its round rows of seats made of stones but at least they provide a cushion for each seat. Sitting directly on the hard stone during an entire play would give the audience members more than what they paid for! All this looks good in pictures and they are indeed in reality but the trick is to actually get to the sites. No buses or anything, we must walk uphill. At the gate at the bottom of the hill we bought a ticket giving us access to about ten different sites then started walking the path made for that purpose. Along the way we would stop at a theater here then carefully observed a fallen column there but at one point an old site is an old site and we just kept going to the top to see THE monument namely the Parthenon. Of course the most difficult part at the Parthenon is to take a picture that doesn’t show all the cranes and scaffoldings used for the restoration of the old building. However, it is worth mentioning that Greeks are doing quite a good job with their ancient ruins. They are literally rebuilding the old sites by using existing stones still available but also by adding new ones where some are missing or adding cement to complete the broken ones. The result is that instead of looking at just a bunch of broken stones we are able to see a structure that looks just like what the original one was and is by far much more interesting to visit. Purists could argue that things should remain untouched but any building whatsoever needs maintenance to stay in place and I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Here are other pictures of the sites surrounding the Acropolis some of them very old others much newer but all standing as a remembrance of the glory of the cradle of civilization.

Athens is by far not only the old archeological sites but also a large modern city of about 5 millions of which we could have a good view from our hotel room on Konstantinou Street in the Omonia area. Some warned us that this area wasn’t the safest place in town but we didn’t feel such a thing. Of course walking at night in the area felt really out of place but during the day it was just another urban area where people just live their lives and see to their businesses. One interesting aspect of choosing that area was that it was not directly at the center of all touristic sites and therefore the hotel prices were a bit lower. Consequently we had to take the subway to get to the sites and as I said many times travelling in the public transportation system is always the best way to feel the real culture of the place. The Athens’ metro is a modern and efficient system and it was amazing to see that the payment of the entrance fee was somehow based on an honor system. The users buy their tickets from a machine, keep their tickets with them and simply enter the metro with no one to check at the gate. Apparently the tickets can be checked while in the train but we never saw such a thing. This kind of system would be simply inconceivable in Montreal for instance but here it seems to work.

A quick stop in Canada.

2011-06-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

After more than 28 months for me and 18 months for Danielle outside of Canada we really needed to get back in touch with our culture and to see our friends and families. During our short two week stay in the middle of May we had appointments with people in Montreal, Ottawa and Sherbrooke that made us travel over 1000 km. Even when we stop we still travel like crazy! In total we had breakfasts, lunches and dinners with over 37 different peoples, friends and family, and we even forgot a few. It’s unbelievable how good it feels to see our people again. Africa and pirates that’s nice but it’s always pleasant to go back once in awhile to see the peoples dear to us and 28 months straight of travelling that’s long, very long. We also took the opportunity to make it up with home food. During our passages along the Red Sea while the Sahara ran along the shore I had only one thing in mind; a large poutine, two steamed hot-dogs and a Sprite from La Belle Province’s! So, as soon as we arrived in Montreal while it was only 5am for us we rushed for a poutine and steamed hot-dogs. We took at least 4kg during our stay in Canada! Despite our fast pace to see everyone we still managed to take a few hours to revert back to a normal life to seed grass and to attend to the backyard in a sunny afternoon. It wasn’t my own backyard but what do I care? Finally, one of the important things we had to do was to renew our passports. Not because they were expiring but because they were now full and had no more available pages for new stamps! Do I need to say that we asked to keep our old passports?

While in Peru and Bolivia there were protests for social improvements, in Yemen protests targeted political reforms and in Egypt people were claiming the legal lynching of Mubarak. So when we came back to Canada even with our own conservative dictator recently reelected with a majority in parliament we were happy to leave the Middle East troubles behind us but it seemed that the troubles in question didn’t want to leave us. As we walked the downtown streets of Ottawa we came face-to-face with a protest …. for Libya! There’s really no end to it I’m telling you. An interesting point though was that we stopped and even took a picture of the protest. Around us people were going their way and although they were likely not insensitive to the horrors presently happening in Libya they were simply not touched enough to stop and pay attention to the object of the protest. Of course, wasn’t it for the fact that we now sail for months right in the middle of these Middle Eastern troubles we too would have probably not pay attention to these peoples trying to their best to make of their native land a better world.

Medieval Rhodes

2011-06-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

When we booked our flight tickets to Canada many months ago we thought we would be able to make it to Athens in time but sailing is always slower than planned. Our boat was still in Marmaris, Turkey and we found that the best way to go to Athens was to take a ferry from Marmaris to the island of Rhodes, Greece then to take a domestic flight from Rhodes to Athens. The problem was that the only available ferry ran three days before our flight from Athens. So we had to spend a few days in the magnificent medieval city of Rhodes on the Greek island of the same name. What a terrible life we have! But Rhodes or anywhere in Greece rimes with extraordinaire food and we sure took this stop on the island to enjoy Hellenic food, for sure, but also the unique ambiance of a small “taverna” somewhere in the multitude of stone paved streets of Old Rhodes. Greek salads, gyros and moussakas here we are! (Note that Greeks would tell us that gyros are not real Greek food but who cares? They make very good Pita Gyros down here!)

Greece is obviously a modern society but visiting Old Rhodes was definitively travelling back in times when templar nights were roaming the streets and mixing their own vision of the world with the millenniums old Greek culture. Prices were maybe outrageous but what a treat it was to spend a few days in Rhodes.

Turkey; Back to civilization and boat repairs.

2011-06-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

After a 2 day crossing from Egypt to Turkey across the Mediterranean Sea we arrived at the small town of Kas, Turkey. It was somehow refreshing to go back to a modern society after spending over six months in underdeveloped countries. Of course, developed means expensive but also the easy availability of goods and Turkey, with double digit inflation in the past decade, really caught up with Europe in terms of prices. But still we felt immediately at ease in this charming town where we did our clearance in the country. We spent only a couple of days in Kas before moving west but as we were there they had a family holiday of some sort and they were presenting the traditional making of a kind of large crepe stuffed with a plant tasting very close to spinach and with some local cheese. I don’t remember what the name of that crepe was but I know it was pretty good. Seeing the ladies rolling the dough with a long narrow stick was quite impressive.

Last time we hauled out Chocobo for refit was in Curacao a year and half ago. Since then we crossed the Pacific, South-East Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. So when we arrived at the city of Marmaris, in the south-west corner of Turkey, she was long overdue for some care. Besides, we had a long list of breakups that we managed to patch as we were going through a long string of countries where asking for a specific boat part was like asking for a part to fix our space shuttle! So for nine days we worked like little bees and at the end Chocobo had regained all her shiny look of before. Once done we quickly put her back in the water to get her prepared for the month to come during which we would be away as we had our plane tickets booked many months ago to go spend a couple of weeks in Canada then to visit Athens and Istanbul.

Crossing the Suez canal

2011-06-17T00:07:00.001-07:00

To get from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean Sea it is mandatory to go through the famous Suez Canal and this was our last adventure in Egypt. Maybe not less important than the Panama Canal the Suez Canal is not as impressive in terms of infrastructure or engineering feat. For one thing it is a direct canal all at sea level with no locks and the surrounding on both shores is simply sand and desert. The crossing process is quite simple. The total distance to cover is 90 miles and is crossed in two days with a stop for the night in the town of Ismailia right in the middle. Each day an Egyptian pilot comes aboard and leaves at the end. So the first one boarded in Port Suez and left in Ismailia and of course not without asking for a bakchich for his services. He did a rather good job so we gave him a good tip but obviously he told us that this was not much and asked for more. Note that it didn’t matter how much we gave him in the first place he would have asked for more by making you feel like a cheap person. That’s one of the too many cultural traits of Egyptians that make them impossible to stand for the rest of humanity. And don’t think this is because they are Arabs or Muslim because I have an Arab Muslim friend who went to Egypt for his honeymoon and came back discussed by them! Finally the second pilot came in Ismailia and left in Port Said. His English being quite limited he didn’t argue much about his tip and left rather happy with what we gave him.

Because of the lack of special features along the canal I don’t have much to say about it. However, one particularity is the limited width of the canal. Most sections were dug by hand and based on the size of the boat at the time I guess. The fact is that it’s pretty difficult for two large cargos to cross each other so they cross only at specific time in each direction and for both half of the trek. In the middle there are huge lakes allowing boats to cross both ways. In order to do that they gather at each end of the canal and leave all with 10 minutes between each other in a long convoy of about 20 cargos. Sailboats cannot cope with the fast pace of the ships so we leave in the morning no matter what. This means that inevitably we cross or get passed by a convoy of behemoths in channel that becomes very narrow at that very moment!

One thing worth mentioning though is that we cross the canal in company of another sailboat called La Palapa with Roger and Karla on board who happened to be celebrating their one year anniversary while we were in Ismailia. We didn’t know and thus didn’t have anything planned but wanted to have pizza on board Chocobo. The problem was that we didn’t have enough flour to make the dough so I went by La Palapa and asked Roger if they wanted to come over Chocobo for a pizza dinner. After he accepted this generous offer I asked him if he had a bit of flour to spare!!! Yes I know I’m pathetic sometimes but what can I do? Once on board they told us about their first anniversary so we improvised a candle on the pizza to mark the special event.

One last note. In my last post I unfairly compared Egyptians with mosquitoes, bank managers, matrimonial lawyers and used car dealers. I think that these words were too harsh and I would like to officially apologies to mosquitoes, bank managers, matrimonial lawyers and used car dealers for comparing them to Egyptians. Here, now I can sleep better.

Luxor; the baseness of Egypt.

2011-05-27T19:23:00.001-07:00

Ah Luxor! This last step of our visit of the Egyptian oldies will not stay engraved in our memories only for the greatness of the temples of Luxor, Karnak and Ashepsut as well as the Valley of the Kings but especially by the level of baseness the Egyptians are ready to lower themselves to get money out of the tourists pockets. Of course, we’ve seen peoples of debatable honesty everywhere we went in the world but rip-off and manipulation are to Egyptians what manufacturing is to Japanese; large scale, efficient and inlaid in their culture and the social fabric like the roots of a willow in the ground. But before I give you more details I would like to specify that when I talk about Egyptians in this article I’m referring to the people involved in the tourist industry and not of the normal population. There are obviously honest Egyptians in Egypt, about 3 from the last census, but we didn’t meet them!

Luxor it’s obviously the temples of Luxor and Karnak as well as the splendid alley of the sphinxes linking them long time ago. Our hotel room gave on Luxor Temple with the Nil in background and since our visit was scheduled only for the afternoon we got the brilliant idea to go for a walk around the temple and along the River Nil. But the idea of walking peacefully in Luxor after the January revolution and consequently the collapse of the tourist industry was as brilliant as going hiking in the Canadian forest during mosquito season! But here the annoying bugs are the crap vendors and the boat tour operators that felt on us like a horde of Ethiopians on two walking steaks. In all, we managed to cross the record distance of 300 meters and being stopped every 3 meters by people simply not understanding the meaning of the word ``NO!``. Each interaction inevitably ending by an aggressive and firm rejection from us that would ruin the little pleasure we were hoping to have from the walk. After crossing 300 meters in a Herculean effort we gave up and resigned to hire a carriage and to ask him to take us for a one-hour ride away from any hassle. In the afternoon we were able to visit the two temples in the company of a guide without too much hassle.

The next morning was planned for the visit of the Ashepsut temple and the Valley of the Kings. Our guide was theoretically supposed to avoid us the usual hassles from the Egyptians but turned out to be the one trying to sell us stuff or asking more money then agreed upon. But in contrast with the street vendors he knew the meaning of a firm NO and would stop quickly. Despite the burning sun and the swindle try outs of our guide this visit of the West bank of the Nile turned out to be very enriching and we were able to wander around the majestic temple of Ashepsut that you can see on the pictures and in the Valley of the King where cameras were prohibited. The Valley of the Kings is a large complex of tombs with only a section opened to the public at any given time. Every three months or so they rotate the list of tombs the tourists can visit in order to reduce the degradation of the sites. This, of course, excludes the tomb of Tutankhamen opened at all time and for which we needed to spend an extra 100 pounds ($17) to visit. Even though the tomb is not particularly impressive we decided to go anyway to see the young pharaoh’s mommy and to be able to say that we entered the famous tomb, a thing we will probably never have the chance to do in the future.

While in Egypt do like the Egyptians do. Since we arrived in Middle East I wanted to get my hand on one of these long tunics men wear everywhere and seem to be called a jalabee or something like that. You can obviously find them in the tourist shops everywhere but they are of very bad quality and no local resident would ever wear them in public which would be equivalent to go walk in the street wearing a clown costume. With Mustapha’s help, our carriage driver who is as honest as a bank manager or a matrimonial lawyer, we succeeded in getting a custom made one and of very good quality. I wore it all afternoon and it was very amusing to see the faces of the Egyptians for whom a tourist is just a walking wallet wearing jeans or shorts with a baseball hat and a camera around the neck! But the jalabee alone was not enough to be completely like a real Egyptian. I also had to sell my soul to the Devil, eliminate any kind of respect for the other human beings, to learn to rip-off a person in every possible quasi-legal ways, to have no self esteem, to have no remorse harassing a tourist and bluntly lie to him right in his face as much as it is necessary to sell him a stupid crap with Egyptian drawings on it and this for 20 to 30 times the price I paid and finally to be able to sleep at night knowing that I am a thief, a swindler and a liar ready to lower myself as low as a used car dealer to get money from tourists. Finally, as it was to be expected, our ride with our national Mustapha ended up by a violent quarrel as he was asking five times what was agreed in the first place and we were just too happy to leave this town of thieves by the 5 O’clock train in direction of Cairo.

Aswan and Philae Island.

2011-05-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

The second stop of our visit in Egypt was at the small town of Aswan about 800km (500 miles) south of Cairo. The place was relatively quiet, especially with the tourist shortage, and Egyptians would harass us almost in a humane fashion. There we could savor the Egyptian cuisine, modern or more traditional. Indeed at the end of our first day our guide took us in a Nubian village where the different dishes were served to us in ceramic or metallic pots and after the meal a group of children came in and danced and sang for us. It was obviously all organized but we let ourselves go at the rhythm of the drum and in the end had a lot of fun. To get to the village we took a small boat for a ride on the River Nile. Along the way we went through a narrower pass where an armada of boys sitting on their Styrofoam boards was waiting for us. Their plot was quite simple. When a tourist boat approaches they carefully position themselves on each side then grab the railing. They ask in what language we speak and then start singing a little song. I assume they know a song in each of the major languages and we were given a performance of “Il etait un petit navire” that would have chattered into pieces all the surrounding glass if we hadn’t been on a wooden boat! Obviously this was made in the pure Egyptian tradition which means that they don’t ask you if you want the song in the first place and after you have to give them money for their memorable performance. We then give them a coin but they look at you in a way to tell you that you are cheap and that it’s not enough and this no matter how much you give them in the first place! But they were only the Egyptian apprentices as the real pros were solidly waiting for us in Luxor!

Philae Island is the main attraction in Aswan where can be found the temple of the same name although it was originally located a little further down at a bit less than a kilometer of its actual position. It was entirely moved, brick by brick, to save it during the creation of Lake Nasser for hydroelectricity purposes in the 70’s, I think. It was really beautiful and very Pharaonic with nice sculptures on the wall and a very geometrical architecture. However, it was heartbreaking to see how many engravings were voluntarily damaged by religious devout of other religions finding offending the pagan ideas depicted on the temple’s walls. This was obviously yet another example showing how tolerance and religion don’t always go together! But beside the religious vandalism Philae allowed us to appreciate the scale of the post-revolutionary devastation of the tourist industry in Egypt. When we climbed on the boat taking us to the island we could see the hundred or so similar boats moored to the dock without work. In fact we were the only living souls when we arrived at the site. Believe me; it is quite impressive to be alone in one of the major tourist spot of a country. There is definitively no better time to visit a country than just after a good revolution!

Finally the two temples of Abu Simbel were the primary goals of our last visit in the Aswan area. The temples were lost in the middle of nowhere and getting there required a three hour bus ride then one hour to visit the temples and three more hours for the ride back. Despite the long distances to cover the visit was worth the trouble since the bus ride took place either along the Nile or in the Sahara desert. In the former case it was impressive to see how much people can pull out of the meager 200m or so of fertile shores along the river, the rest being just sand. The two temples of Abu Simbel are special not only because they are carved directly out of the mountain, which is certainly very impressive, but for the fact that, like the Philae temple, they were moved stone by stone by UNESCO at the creation of Lake Nasser! But in this case it was not only the fact they had to move the stones and the four magnificent statues of Ramses II but the workers also had to recreate a mountain behind them!!! A temple carved in a mountain without a mountain isn’t simply the same.

Cairo; the greatnesses of Egypt.

2011-05-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Without a single exception all sailors visiting Egypt are in awe before ancient Egypt and totally disgusted by the Egyptians themselves! But in Cairo, a city of over 20 millions, it was the greatnesses of Egypt that greeted us. As for the Egyptian baseness’s we will talk more about them in our post about Luxor. Cairo is obviously the Great Pyramids and we wouldn’t miss the opportunity to go for the traditional camelback ride at the base of these 5000 years old monuments. It is even more impressive when we think that the Montreal Olympic stadium has a hard time holding 20 years without losing a 20 tons concrete beam once in a while! For those more attentive, it is fair to say they were in fact dromedaries but let’s not go there shall we!

Of course Cairo is not only the pyramid. We left Chocobo at the Port of Suez near the entrance of the canal of the same name and jumped into a bus to Cairo with the intention to take the train from there to the other points of interest, namely the towns of Aswan and Luxor. For our visit of Cairo we were in the good company of Gillian and Graeme who also left their sailboat Kathleen Love in Suez and with whom we sailed on and off with since our convoy in the Maldives. We then enjoyed a good coffee at the feet of the sphinx and the Egyptian Museum was also very interesting especially the section about Tutankhamen with the golden sarcophagus and all. The young pharos’s mommy wasn’t there though since it is in display in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. Of course one cannot go through Cairo without a short walk along the shore of the River Nile one of the longest in the world. Note that I say a “short” walk since it is nearly impossible to have a quiet walk there without the constant hassle from the street vendors and boat tour operators.

Beside the oldies we were also able to appreciate the unique charm of the city itself which is worth spending at least two weeks visiting. Unfortunately, time constraints being, we could only stay three days. Friends recommended us the City View hotel located directly in front of the Egyptian Museum and we decided to follow their advice. But what they forgot to mention is that the hotel in question also gives directly on Tahrir Square which is precisely where the main protests were held the month before leading to the fall of former President Mubarak. Tensions have calmed down since then with the militaries taking control of the government until the November elections but the population still maintains a continuous protest in Tahrir Square in order to maintain the pressure on the authorities. Thus we were able to enjoy a nice cold beer on the balcony of the hotel, located on the 5th floor of the building, while admiring the majestic museum and especially the crowd of the protest getting excited once in a while in front of us. The mood of the crowd was generally calm, no gunshots such as in Yemen, and we could even observe the street vendors taking advantage of the situation to sell hot peanuts and Egyptian flags at high prices. In the end the biggest impact these protests had on our time in Egypt was the total annihilation of the tourist industry in the country and consequently the tourist sites were virtually empty hence making the visits more enjoyable for us. However, all Egyptians living off tourism ended up with no customers in a matter of days and saw us coming like steaks in Ethiopia. Everywhere we went we were swarmed by the crap vendors assailing us like a horde of mosquitoes that, with their deficient English, had completely forgot the meaning of the word “NO”. However, if we were interested in buying something the negotiations were turning in our favor. Thus the price of a gismo would quickly drop from 15 Egyptian pounds down to 2 pounds after a few refusals from us!

Arrived in Turkey

2011-05-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the town of Kas in Turkey from Port Saïd in Egypt on April 26th 2011 after a passage of 329 nautical miles that took us 2 days and 14 hours for an average speed of 4.8 knots. This was our first sailing in the Mediterranean Sea.

Back in time in Sudan

2011-04-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

When we arrived in the small town of Sawakin in Sudan we had the impression of having travelled back in time a couple of centuries for the people in this place sitting along the shore of the Red Sea live in what we would call “traditional” ways. We couldn’t say much about the rest of Sudan since Sawakin was the only stop we would make in this country and only for a couple of days, which is almost a shame but time being limited and the Red Sea having huge distances to cross we couldn’t afford to stay longer. Nevertheless, we still had time to go wander in the streets and the market to get some bread and other staple food we could find while walking between donkeys and camels used for carrying stuff around town. By the way, the flat pita bread they have here is the best we found so far. Probably cooked directly on a hot stone it tastes good and is dirt cheap which are the only two things you really want to know about it anyway. Details about the cooking, storage and transport are probably better left unknown! Of course as it would be expected in a remote place like this people don’t really speak English but are extremely patient and welcoming. In the market we took a few pictures and one of the merchant asked us for a printed copy of the picture. Having a digital camera it was hard to explain that we don’t print the pictures but keep them only on the computer. But back to the boat we remembered that we still had a few sheets of photo paper and printed four pictures and went back the next morning to give them to the people on the pictures. They were very pleased by this gesture but like it is the case in this part of the world they expressed their gratitude very quietly; a characteristic we started noticing in South-East Asia and which prevails up to here.

This picture shows what we would call the “Central City Water Facilities”. I could go on with sarcastic comments about the infrastructures of this town and the way they live but this would be disrespectful for this little community whose peoples try to make the best of what they have. Yes, water is carried by donkey carts and market goods sold on stalls made of a few planks or palm baskets but what can we expect in a country made of sand and shredded by years of civil war? From what we heard and saw Sudan is now politically stable and plan to split into two countries by next July or so. But this really seems remote events in the calm and peaceful town of Sawakin

The poorest countries in the world.

2011-04-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

According to our Atlas published in 2004 Eritrea is the 4th poorest country in the world. So when we arrived from Yemen to the small town of Assab, Eritrea we expected the worst. There is no doubt that Yemen is poor but when you think that people run away from Ethiopia and, if they can, from Eritrea to get a better life in Yemen then this gives an idea of how desperate things can be in this West African country. In company of the crews of three other boats from our convoy we expected to arrive in the middle of an infomercial of World Vision with kids swamped by flies in their eyes and inflated bellies. But reality was quite different. Obviously, people here are not swimming in gold but they definitively have dignity. Assab was a town with low means but was incredibly tidy if not clean. No smells, no litters anywhere, people clean with humble but clean cloths. People as expected were very welcoming.

Eritrea just came out of a long war with its neighbor Ethiopia, of which it was part before its independence, and abandoned rundown buildings can now be seen everywhere. The exact justifications to why these two countries were fighting together are still fuzzy in our mind. You really need to land here to understand that there is nothing in this country. Normally, wars usually target the acquisition of resources of some sort but when I say there is nothing here it is not a metaphor. Everywhere we went, the ground was so arid that I think the only thing that can grow here is sand! Nobody makes a war for sand!!! Well, I assume they have somehow an idea of what they are doing and that they had very good reasons to make themselves even poorer by fighting each other. As a consequence the country and consequently Assab are not the most popular places for tourists and at our arrival it was made very clear to us that the town was very safe and we should walk the streets anytime with no worries. Of course the goal of having us to stay a few days in town wasn’t about the cultural enrichment travelers from all over the world could bring to them but for the money we would inevitably spend while probably paying 2 to 5 times the price normally granted to locals. But with that there was a small problem. Not on the prices themselves, which even at tourist prices things were relatively cheap, but on the fact that money is useful only when there is something to buy. As I said already there was almost nothing there so it was somewhat difficult to spend any money! Nevertheless, we still found a small bar where we had a well deserved beer. Well ok, we had a few more than one but this is really academic. The bar owners generously found us a nice and copious meal and even if it doesn’t look very appealing on the picture I can assure you it was very delicious and cleanly prepared. We are not sure what kind of meat it was though chances are it was goat meat. But anyway it was good and appreciated. Bread and meat were abundantly offered and it was obvious to us that even if we were paying a good price they were not products that easy to get by in this town. Also, when I say we were paying a high price I mean relative to what a local person would have paid for the same thing. At the end we still paid only $4.00 per person for a meal and 3 to 4 beers each! Really we can’t say it was expensive.

But even though we had a good time in Assab we had to keep moving north since the Red Sea is still about 1200 miles long. We stopped many places but the one worth mentioning was Mersa Dudo where we were able to visit the crater of an extinct volcano. The place was entirely empty but for the occasional passage of a few local fishermen who had a fishing camp on the shore. The landscape was so dead we felt like landing on the moon. Some trees of the type you see on the picture were growing here and there but otherwise it was only volcanic stones. Too bad we didn’t have a barbecue for which the stones would have been perfect. However, asking for burgers in Eritrea was maybe asking for too much. But we still walked around the crater by following the edge where it was so windy we had hard time breathing.

After a few days of island hopping we arrived in Massawa our last stop in Eritrea. Bigger than Assab the town had also suffered from the war. Around the port the buildings had seen better days and honestly the place must have been awesome before guns and grenades remodeled it. Again we were able to enjoy the Eritrean cuisine in good company even though it meant a mild gastric adaptation to the local bacterial fauna. But hey, we don’t travel all over the world to eat at McDonald when in West Africa are we? Food was interesting but people too. The government controls the population and we learned that people can simply not leave the country and god knows many would gladly go. We found it heartbreaking to see young men asking us to take them with us on board, without the government’s knowledge of course, to go anywhere as long as it is elsewhere. There’s maybe nothing for them here but to the point of being willing to leave their home and families to hope for a better life even if this means living illegally is something hard to hear. Obviously this was out of question for us to take them as stowaways so we gave them a few T-Shirts, watches bought at cheap prices in Singapore and a few packs of cigarettes and this made them happy. For lack of going to earn some money in exile they could at least smoke a good cigarette while wearing a T-Shirt with “I Love Singapore” written on it!

Despite the blatant lack of resources in the area we were nevertheless able to go to the market for provisioning. We stepped on a bus along with the crews of the other boats and as it is often the case the bus ride was as exciting as the place we went. We sure were squeezed a bit but as I said it already people here are courteous and clean. So no stench or any alike what we find in the buses during winter rush hours in Montreal! The market was after all well garnished with limited varieties but still with fruits and vegetables available. Bread was still a bit hard to get by. Flour is limited in the country and we were able to buy only certain breads while the others were for locals only. We also found an Internet Café but the government slowed down the transmission speed to and from outside the country to prevent the planning of rebel operations. The speed was so slow in the end that it would have taken us about 10 hours just to download our emails so we simply gave up. Like for the burger, internet in Eritrea was maybe asking for too much!

The Gulf of Aden.

2011-04-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

We left Al Mukalla early on February 24th, 2011 and set sails to cross the Gulf of Aden once the most dreaded waters in the world. Now, although it is not the safest place on earth, we were not as worried about this passage as we were in the Arabian Sea. On the other hand we still had to be careful as Danielle and I had to remind everyone once in a while during that passage such as this afternoon when we had to stop for about half an hour for one of the boat to fix his transmission. It was sunny, hot and the sea very calm. The crews of two boats then decided that it was a good opportunity to go swimming! In normal places that wouldn’t be a problem but a calm sea in plain daylight and in the middle of the Gulf of Aden constitute ideal conditions for a pirate attack! But after three weeks of being on our guards at all time we just reached the point where we simply don’t care anymore. Things went pretty smooth but it was very tiring and we took a bit more than three days to sail the 400 miles or so between Mukalla and Bab El Mandeb, this strait marking the south end of the Red Sea. Once in the Red Sea, which is now considered pretty safe to yachts, it became clear that everyone was stretched to their limits of sailing in close formations. After sailing 16 days and 1900 nautical miles together it was time to split up now that the conditions requiring a large convoy were no more present. We then said goodbye to each other and split into two groups. Four of us decided to stop immediately in the town of Assab, Eritrea while the other five boats wanted to take advantage of the strong southerly wind to make a good way north and kept going.

This was the end of an incredible adventure we’ve had shared together and that would stay in our memories forever. Together we sailed through the most dangerous waters in the world and prevailed, maybe by sheer luck, or maybe not and if this trip together was over our friendship was definitively not. We would necessarily meet along the way North in the Red Sea and when this happens we will not simply meet with other boaters; we will rejoice with dear friends.

In the past few articles of this blog I told you our story of how we sailed through the pirate infested waters of the Middle East and how we made it safe and sound to the Red Sea but I didn’t answer the one question all of you must have in mind when reading this; Why in the world did you go through this hellish area in the first place? And this would be a very valid question since we could have decided to sail directly from Australia to South-Africa or to forget about this stupid idea of sailing around the world altogether and just stop in Australia or stay in the Caribbean Sea like so many others do. Well the answer can be summarized in one word; freedom. We all try to do the best of our life. We work, we raise our kids and we try to make our life worth something. But in the end, one day, we will be dying and we’ll sum up what we’ve done of our life. We’ll ask ourselves what have we done that was unique, that was really us? Not something imposed by others but really chosen by us. All our lives are mostly dictated by others. The government tells you how to work, how to raise your kids or how not to die from smoking. Even when you decide to jump on a boat and go around the planet the tourist industry tells you what you must see, the authorities makes things expensive for you, the weather tells you when you move and when you don’t and the pirates tell you where you can sail or not. Where is freedom in all this? The goal of this trip is not about travelling around the planet and crossing all the meridians; it is about the trip itself. If your goal is to travel around the world then all you need to do is to buy airplane tickets and in less than a week it will be over. We are living what many only dream of. We are achieving something unique, something we decided to do even though everyone and everything is against us. We wanted to see the world and to decide how we do it; to do it our way. Not the pirate way. Yes we had the choice to either chicken out by sailing around Africa and missing all these amazing countries or to say “No! That’s where we want to go and that’s where we are going!” What you do with your life is always a matter of choices and we made ours.

Al Mukalla in Yemen.

2011-03-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

Al Mukalla is a small town on the coast of Yemen where we decided, with the other members of the Seabirds convoy, to stop for rest and provisioning. As most countries in the middle east this year, Yemen is under some political unrest and we heard that demonstrations were held in Aden, further West, but no reports of any activities in Mukalla. We arrived all nine boats at the same time in the tiny harbor causing some headaches to the port authorities but nothing they could not handle. While being anchored just a few feet apart we met with Maher who acts as a local agent helping yachts with their clearance and supply needs. Danielle and I got our organizational skills in action again and by the end of the afternoon we had arranged with Maher to get 2000 liters of fuel for all the boats, water and booking buses the next morning for the 19 of us to go at the bank and supermarket. We were told at this time that the authorities didn’t want us to go ashore after 1:00pm because of a demonstration in town. After all it seemed that Mukalla was maybe not as quiet as we had expected! Everyone was very happy of the work Danielle had done to organize everything in Mukalla and they let her know.

The next morning the crews of the nine boats all gathered on the main wharf, which was the first time we would all meet since we left Uligan 14 days ago, and after kisses, handshaking and group photos we all stepped into buses and went shopping. Yemeni are extremely welcoming, almost to the point of being embarrassing. They would help us at the grocery store, talk to us on the street, obviously some would ask for money but in general we felt at ease. We came back at the harbor before noon, again because of demonstrations in town, and got the fuel in the afternoon. Our plan was to leave early the next morning but the extent of the boat repairs we were facing made us extend our stay for two more days.

That night we had a little party on Chocobo, yes 19 peoples do fit in our cockpit! We had a very good time and it was the time to celebrate our achievement so far as well as confirming that we were still a strong team ready for the next leg. Indeed, the experience of sailing so many days at sea together can be so daring that many members of other convoys would never talk to each other afterward! But the Seabirds were now very good friends and chances are we will remain so for a long time. The next day was time for repairs. Our hydraulic autopilot was, I thought then, completely gone but Brian on “Glide” apparently can fix anything on a boat and after a couple hours of twinkling we managed to get it back on track. As a matter of fact that day it became obvious to us how much can be done with the crews of nine boats working together to fix stuff and getting things going.

Even though we had almost every part between the nine boats to fix every issue we had we still needed to go shopping for some parts and spares. Jean-Claude, Graeme, Martheen, Max and I went the next day with Maher to shop for what was missing and get some internet. We first stopped at a computer shop for Graeme to get a charger for his laptop. The store was on the West side of the river while we could see demonstrators on the other side. Apparently, a demonstration was being held even though we were still early in the morning. We then went to a tiny hardware store where, although it’s apparent small size, we found pretty much everything we wanted such as my seals for the hydraulic RAM, bearings, engine coolant, tools, connectors, lubricant etc. We dropped Martheen, Graeme and Jean-Claude at the Internet Café while Max, Maher and I tried to get propane for the boats but were unsuccessful due to incompatibility with the bottle connectors. We then stopped at the supermarket where I went alone to get a sort of cream cheese they make that is just to die for. There I met John from “Amante” and chat with him for a couple of minutes then we went our separate ways. From the grocery store to the internet café we had problems with the traffic in the streets. The demonstration was turning sour and we could hear gunshots from the police probably shooting in the air to disperse the crowd. When we arrived at the internet café Jean-Claude was outside chatting with some local vendors. I went inside and told the others that things were getting ugly outside and we had to go now. Thirty seconds later they were out of the café! We then had to go back to the harbor but the streets were jammed by the demonstration.

Maher took a backstreet and was able to move forward. Around us we could see people running while on the adjacent streets people were shouting and the police shooting. Maher was nervous but he took us out of there and drove around the hill, which took us about 20-30 minutes to reach the port instead of 10 minutes. Danielle started to be worried because when John, who I’d met at the supermarket, came back he told her that he had met me alone at the supermarket and that things were getting very ugly in town. She was then imagining me running in the street of Mukalla from a mob of Yemenis with sticks in their hands! Of course there was nothing so dramatic; I was just trying to dodge bullets from the police! Anyhow this was our clue that we had to get out of this place first thing the next morning. We tried to relax that afternoon but it was more a panacea than anything else. However, that night we all felt deeply asleep under the chants of the call for prayer coming from the nearby mosque in this city of the Middle-East which beside what it may appears at first, still makes us dream.

Arrived in Egypt.

2011-03-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the Island of Wadi Simal, Egypt on March 22, 2011 after a 384 nautical miles (714 km) passage sailing north in the Red Sea from the village of Suakin, Sudan that took us 3 days and 1 hours for an average speed of 5.3 knots.

Pirate waters: The Arabian Sea.

2011-03-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

On Feb 7th, 2011 at 09:00 sharp ten boats raised their anchor off the shore of Uligan in the Maldives for a trek they will all remember for the rest of their lives. The Seabirds convoy, as we called ourselves, was to sail 1503 nautical miles (2796 km) in formation for over 13 days in what is considered today as the most dangerous waters in the world. Many challenges awaited us on that sunny day of February. Sailboat convoys are not uncommon in this part of the world and the goal of a convoy is to make the boats a less attractive target for the pirate attacks. But in the past they were targeted to cross the Gulf of Aden, a much shorter distance, during which boats would go under motor only in order to have control on their relative speed and stay in close formation for many days. But the pirates have moved from the Gulf of Aden to the Arabian Sea hence more than doubling the distance to cover in groups which now exceeds the fuel autonomy of almost every sailboat and therefore forcing us to move under sail, which makes it extremely difficult to control our speed due to the large disparities in the different boat characteristics. Sailing in formation for 6 days under motor is considered very difficult but sailing under sail for 13 days is insanity, and insane we all were no doubts about that! The map here shows you the two legs we would eventually cover in this trip and the first one, in red, was the one we were beginning when we left Uligan.

One thing about sailboats is they break all the time. On a long passage, such as this one, it is expected that a few things could go wrong. When you put 10 boats together it becomes a certainty. Our first problem came at the very start of the journey when everybody were leaving the anchorage and getting into position. Njord, a Scandinavian boat called the group to notify that their engine was overheating. We all slowed down and a few minutes later they had managed to get their cooling system back on track. Not 30 minutes later, another boat, Amante had also a cooling problem and also was able to fix the problem in matters of minutes. If the first couple hours were to be at the image of the entire trip it would take us six months to go through that sea! We all got to our rally point about a mile off Uligan and positioned ourselves into formation but as we all started to get used to sail together Njord called again for an engine problem. Their cooling system was just not up to the job and they now considered their boat unfit for such a passage. Njord then decided to turn back with the intention to sail back to Sri Lanka to fix their engine correctly. The Seabirds convoy was then down to 9 boats and will remain so for the rest of the ride.

There is not much one can do against pirate attacks. They are fairly organized and very well armed with automatic and semi-automatic weapons as well as rocket propelled grenade launchers (RPG); all kind of things a sailboat is unable to deal with when comes the worst. The only thing we can really do is to sail in group in a seemingly organized fashion and hope that we then become too much of a hassle for them to bother with us. Should we be approached by threatening boats our procedure was to execute “Excalibur” which consist in regrouping quickly in a very tight formation at maximum speed to make it harder for the pirate’s skiffs, small boats used for boarding, to isolate their target and board them. We obviously had to practice getting into our attack formation and we did so the first day once everybody was getting comfortable with sailing as a group. We were able to regroup in about 12 minutes, which may sound long but under the circumstances was not that bad really, and if anything else it was a very good photo shot opportunity with all the boats sailing just a few meters apart.

Nights are very demanding. We need to be on watch at all times and constantly monitor our relative position to the other boats. To reduce our exposure we sail with minimum lights, most people using only small single LED garden lights. One of the boats, “Margarita”, positioned roughly in the middle of the pack became our de-facto night coordinator with Anders and Birgit spending all nights, eyes on the radar, telling one to move a bit starboard then another to slow down while the next boat should speed up. After 13 nights at sea their characteristic voices, tinted by a distinctive Danish accent, became so part of our nights that one member later joked that he should have recorded them because he was unable to sleep at night without Ander’s voice in the background! On one cold and rough night, with winds up to 25 knots, everybody was struggling to keep the boats steady. It was daring but Anders and Birgit didn’t give up and for 12 hour straight they would place a call on the radio to correct the position of the boats at an average interval of 5 minutes. Doing that kind of work for four hours would be considered a marathon but for 12 hours they guided us through the night like the beacon of a rocky shore. That day, Anders and Birgit gained our respect and our gratitude and after that their authority at guiding us at night remained unchallenged. This was the spirit of this convoy and that’s what made this whole endeavor possible in the end.

Of course we had our share of mishaps and breakdowns; engine cooling problems, sails being ripped off or autopilots dying along the way. On Chocobo we even had the knuckle of our port shroud half snapped, even if it was less than two years old, and had to stop the convoy to lower our sails and were able to change the broken piece in less than 20 minutes before resuming our course. Boats were causing many troubles and people too with some falling asleep then drifting toward the other boats or having difficulties in slowing down the boats. But as demanding the whole endeavor was, everybody kept a reasonable control over their emotions which showed to be crucial in keeping the convoy safe and coordinated. It was indeed physically exhausting but the psychological side was not at rest either. All along we would be in daily contact with UKMTO who would keep track of our position and update us with the possible threats in our area or the most recent pirate attacks. During our crossing there have been many pirate attacks but none of them affected us more than the attack on the American sailing yacht “Quest” who was boarded by the pirates and redirected toward Somalia while the four crew members were taken hostages. The psychological blow was immediate and shattered in pieces our main assumption that pirates were after large cargo ships and didn’t bother with small yachts much. It was even more difficult that, although we didn’t personally knew the crews in question, Danielle is quite certain that we were moored not too far from Quest in Ao Chalong during our stay in Thailand. This put the whole thing into a very different perspective. However, when this news came we were well past the point of no return and all we could do was to keep going.

The Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea are constantly patrolled by military warships dispatched by different countries and once in a while we would cross one of the ships or be flown by a surveillance airplane or helicopter. But as reassuring as the presence of these forces might be the fact is they cannot do much for us in case of an attack. For one thing, the Arabian Sea is about 1500M wide and this represents about half the size of Canada! The whole area is simply too big to be kept under strict control and adding to that the rules of engagement of the militaries who will not engage unless they are being fired at even if they very well know where and who are all the pirates in the area. They simply have their hand tighten by the western moral rules because the populations of these countries, living in their comfortable and seemingly safe environment, do not consider proper to shoot the poor pirates at sight and instead lead the situation in the area to degrade to the point where the lives of hundreds of hostages are ruined and destroyed every years!

After a bit more than 13 days at sea together all nine boats of the Seabirds convoy safely reached the port of Al Mukalla, Yemen for rest and resupply. But during our approach of the coast, the night before, three of the boats got caught in fishing lines but with no permanent damages. At about the same time, the four crew members of Quest were shot dead by their captors. This news was very depressing especially after we heard that another boat, Danish this time, had been taken hostage. The whole family, parents and children, were taken toward Somalia as we entered the Yemeni port. But we had other concerns more immediate to us since Yemen and pretty much all Middle Eastern countries were under political unrest which would just make our stay in the area more exciting. Why would one want to stay and work in an office when he can go sailing with merciless pirates at sea and riots on land? What we just had achieved, sailing 1503 nautical miles (2800 km) in a convoy was impressive and we were all proud that we made it safe and sound to Mukalla but this was not the end of the story. We still had the Gulf of Aden to cross and although the goal of the Seabirds convoy was only to cross the Arabian Sea it was clear in everyone’s mind that since we were now so used to sail with each other it just made sense to keep going all together for that last part of the pirate alley.

Maldives, the organization of a convoy.

2011-03-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

We spent probably the weirdest, or for sure the least expected, five days of our trip in Uligan Island in the Maldives. We arrived mid day on Wednesday and were very tired since we didn’t have any time in Sri Lanka to rest and we just stayed on the boat after the custom people had come aboard for the clearance. Our original plan was to sail directly from Galle, Sri Lanka to Salalah, Oman but just before our departure from Sri Lanka we received an email from the crew of “Imagine” telling us we could stop in Uligan for a few days without paying the exorbitant cruising permit fees demanded by the Maldivian authorities. We then decided to stop to cut the passage in two and get some rest. On the first day we heard there was a 4 o’clock meeting ashore among the 20 or so boats anchored in Uligan to talk about pirate attacks in the area. We didn’t go since we understood this was a daily meeting anyway.

If I had a definition of the Garden of Eden I would point Uligan as a reference. The 400, or so, inhabitants of Uligan are probably the nicest people in the world living in this clean and peaceful island where the word stress exists probably only in the dictionary. They understand our position and don’t look too close when we stay a few more days when our 3 day permission is over. The second day we went to the meeting and witnessed the most amazing collective paranoia we’ve ever encountered. About 30 to 40 people were gathered and sharing the reports of the latest attacks in the Arabian Sea. There was lots of info but nothing useful in any practical ways other than scaring everyone. We hadn’t until then appreciated the extent of the treat in the Arabian Sea where pirates now seem to have moved to operate instead of the highly military patrolled Gulf of Aden. We obviously didn’t have any convoy in line for that long 1500 miles leg and were hoping to join up with “Imagine” and maybe another boat “Pegasus”, with who we briefly met before our departure in Sri Lanka, for a buddy boating of some sort. Everybody looked genuinely scared but simply didn’t know what to do. Some were there for more than two weeks and didn’t know on what foot to dance. Danielle and I looked at each other and, without any words, the message was pretty clear. “We need other boats in a convoy and if we don’t do anything about it ourselves nothing is going to happen.” Then we did something many would find unbelievable at first, and we are still scratching our head to figure out how we pull that off; we put together and organized a 10 boat convoy in 3 days with formations and procedures and all. Usually people take over 3 months to do that! To fully appreciate what happened in our head at that moment you have to remember that Danielle and I are two professionals working in the high tech world; Danielle as a computer scientist and me as a microchip designer. Years of university education and a decade and half of working in very competitive fields trained us in operating in an environment where being structured and organized is not a choice but a matter of survival. When we saw the situation in Uligan our brains automatically switched into “work” mode and our instincts kicked in; we didn’t think, we didn’t rationalized we just got to work like two wolves unleashed in a hen house!

We started immediately at the end of the first meeting when everybody were exchanging useless info and scaring at each other but on guy stood out of the crowd, John from “Seeamia”. He was standing with a chart, showing a southern route to go to Salalah, and trying to convince people to join up and go but no one was really listening too busy they were at being scared. Obviously the guy had never worked in an office and tried to gather everyone to go at the same restaurant for lunch. Danielle and I took a piece of paper and asked the few people around John if what he was proposing was something they would be interested in and wrote the names of their boats. Then we moved to another group and told them “We are a group of boats who are going together to Salalah following a south route. Are you interested? We will call a meeting tomorrow at 10:00 to talk about it.” After 10 minutes we had a list of 10 boats, which would grow up to 19 and in the end we would be 10 boats to actually leave. At 0800 the next morning I placed a call on the VHF radio telling everyone there would be a meeting at 10:00 for the convoy. About 14 boats showed up and we discussed many tactical concerns but were not moving fast enough to sort out all the points we needed to organize a bunch of people to sail together in formation for 12 days! The best way to describe this is “to try herding cats and make them walk in a straight line!”

For 3 days we gathered information on the boats, the documentation we had on convoys and on MSCHOA, UKMTO and MARLO the 3 military organizations supervising the military activities in the area. At the second meeting, Martin from “Anima III” brought a copy of the procedures used by a convoy last year organized by Tom Sampson who had 27 boats sailing from Salalah to Aden. This document was a breakthrough in our time schedule and was key in speeding up the process. While Danielle busied at sorting out the communication with the three military organizations I modified Tom’s process to match our reality of 12 days under sails, instead of 6 just motoring and the possibility to split up should the speed of the boats be too different and impractical. Of course we had boats getting in and out of the group until 18:00 the night before departure but in the end we managed even though we were exhausted especially since we also had to prepare the boat for that leg. But as tiring was the whole process, on Monday February 7th, 2011 the Seabirds convoy, formed of 10 sailboats, left Uligan in an amazingly organized fashion for three possible destination; Salalah, Oman, Al Mukalla, Yemen or Aden, Yemen. One note about convoys for those of you less experienced in sailing, we might just say that most people would find sailing two boats together for a couple of days under sail a very tough experience. If asked about 10 boats in close formation for 12 days over 1500 miles chances are they would tell you it is almost impossible! Danielle and I were very proud of what we had achieved and the crews of the other 9 boats were very happy that someone had stepped out of the collective paranoia with a positive attitude and took them out of their psychological misery. But at this point we had only succeeded in organizing the convoy in a record time but the real test was still to come in actually performing the passage in question; organizing is one thing but delivering is another!

The ten boats who left that morning to cross the Ariabian Sea were; Anima III, Tiku Moyé, Chocobo, Seeamia, Asia, Margarita, Kathleen Love, Glide, Amante and Njord. The crew members were to the image of the UN coming from Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, England and USA. And although the threat of sailing these daring waters was real and that we always had to possibility to sail south around Africa, which means sailing the dangerous East coast of Africa then through the very rough waters around South Africa and adding two ocean crossings as well as one more year to the trip, we decided to sail through together mainly on the calculated assumption that Somali pirates are after the multimillion dollar cargos for the huge ransoms and that no yacht as been attacked in the past year or two especially when sailing in convoy where the fish school effect acts as a deterrent to their attack. But like any stock broker would tell you, the past is not always a guaranty of the future. And that’s what we would eventually find out but only when it is too late to turn back! Read the rest in this amazing adventure in the next post…

Arrived in Sudan.

2011-03-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

We arrived in the Bay of Nawarat in Sudan, from Massawa in Eritrea, on March 12th, 2011 after a short but though ride of 187 nautical miles (348 km) that took us 1 days, 14 hours and 0 minutes for an overall average speed of 4.9 knots.

Five days of visit in Sri Lanka.

2011-03-08T00:27:00.000-08:00

The North-East monsoon being very short we didn't have much time to spend in the amazing country of Sri Lanka so with only one week in front of us we decided to open our wallet and arrange with Dee Dee Yacht Service a 4 days/3 nights tour around Sri Lanka and one day in Galle itself. Dee Dee was quite helpful and efficient at arranging everything as well as taking care of the laundry and refueling while we were visiting. We took 484 pictures of Sri Lanka and I could write an entire book on what we saw during that week. We give you here only a snapshot of this land of wonders. On the first picture you can see two fishing boats in the port of Galle. Fishing is a huge economic activity for this sea town which was half destroyed by the tsunami few years ago. Tens of thousands of deaths and huge inflation later peoples of Galle still know how to enjoy their national sport; cricket!

While visiting Fort Galle, an old Dutch fort built a few centuries ago, the street entertainers would tame their cobras while playing a little flute or let us pet a little macaque while some boys would just have fun jumping off a huge rock into a shallow pool of water underneath.

Fishing means catching fish. The way you do it can differ greatly from one place to another. We were also shown amazing stone carvings of Buddhism symbols or simply admiring the simple life of the charming Singhalese Sri Lankans and the overwhelming presence of foliage everywhere.

Buddhism being the main religion in the area we couldn't visit Sri Lanka without going through many Buddhist temples and somehow the followers of this religion seem to like huge Buddha statues. It is, no need to say, in sharp contrast with one of the main dogma of this religion being the simplicity of a material life but surely not more than the other main religions claiming the same thing. This temple built mainly underground presented no less than 40,000 paintings of the life of Lord Buddha dating many centuries.

On our way to our first night stop in the town of Kandy we stopped to a nice waterfall in the surrounding valley where some people were taking a bath, not swimming but really washing up themselves, while tourist vendors would try to sell us fake old dutch coins or simply ask for money. Some more clever would ask us to change some Canadian coins that were likely given to them by other tourists. Our room in Kandy was very comfy with mosquito nets and a stunning view over the valley. No need to say that the food offered on the first floor was exquisite. Curries, spiced vegetables and rotis were real delicacies.

The second day we took a train for a three hour ride from Kandy to Nany-Oya to admire the unique landscape of Sri Lanka composed of hills, jungles and of course tea plantations. You can see me here with Sana, our driver for this tour, as well as the old style train that was a treat on itself.

Just a few more pictures from the train ride. On the dock with a red shirt is our guide Ekka with his stunning smile. Our Tamil seat neighbor was too young to remember the troubles that his people went through a few years ago in the North of the country but was quite curious about these two fellows beside him with such a pale skin. Maybe he thought we were sick or something probably because we didn't have this black painted dot between our eyes that protects him against the bad spirits and illness.

A tour of Sri Lanka wouldn't be a good tour without the visit of a tea plantation. Here we stopped at Mackwoods tea plantation and processing plant where we were introduced to the seven steps of tea processing and, of course after the visit, invited to take a look at the visitor's boutique to buy at high price a sample of their excellent tea.

Here you can see pictures (really too few for what can be seen) of the Cave Buddhist Temple. The statues in orange robe you see on the first one are all man size statues in line for an offering to Buddha. After climbing for 15 minutes or so we arrived at a set of five caves where statues, mainly Buddha, were carved directly in place from the rock bed. Many though were brought in over the centuries. One interesting thing here was that among the many Buddhist sanctuaries was built a small Hindu temple! This is just reflecting the reality of the region where all religions live in the same place. In Galle we saw Buddhist temples, Mosques, Catholic Churches and Hindu temples all living in peace together.

Then the visit continued with a stop at a spice garden where a guide showed us many spices from the plants and asked us to identify them. Strangely I was able to give the right answer for almost all of them but a very few. Of course if I was able to recognize vanilla, cinnamon and mace I miserably failed to name .. black pepper! At the end I could enjoy a spice massage that was actually quite relaxing after three days of visiting. In the evening we assisted to a traditional dance show along with about 100 other tourists. Of course, local Sri Lankans are more interested in modern pop music like everybody else. That type of shows is for tourists.

After the dance show Ekka and Sana took us to an amazing temple called the "Toot temple" in Kandy. Beside the splendid architecture and the many stunning artifacts, such as this marble statue of Buddha and many others, the temple claims to be the host of one of the teeth of Buddha himself that was recovered from the cinder after his cremation. The whole story of the path followed by the toot during the last 2500 years or so is all depicted in one of the halls and people gathers here every day to see the "toot" which supposedly reside in this golden vase. Now whether Buddha's toot is really in the vessel or not is something we would never know but tons of people gathers here to have a peak at it. I mean, Lord Buddha himself was surely a great figure of humanity and worth veneration to many but to think that his toot bear any spiritual signification is a bit a stretch of the imagination. But at least it sure brings many paying tourists including, of course, your two favorite world explorers who never miss an opportunity to help the financial situation of the tourist industry!

The only thing worth showing of our last day of visit was a stop at a bathing site where a herd of elephant was brought by their rightful owners at this location for the tourists to see. It was actually quite fun and they were even selling small bags of bananas to feed the pachyderms. They were even selling a sort of handmade paper made out of elephant . dung! Do I need to tell you we passed on this one? After returning from our tour of the country we had one day left to get our fuel delivered, to shop for food and get ready for our next leg. Sana took us in his tuk-tuk for shopping and in the evening we were invited at Ekka's place for dinner with his wife, Sana and Dee Dee. We stupidly forgot the camera but it was very nice. Our plan after that was to sail directly from Sri Lanka to Salalah, Oman but we received an email from another boat, "Imagine", telling us it was straight forward to stop a few days in Uligan, Maldives without paying the exorbitant cruising fees imposed by the Maldivians authorities. So, we decided to make a pit stop in Uligan in order to cut the pear in two for that 1800 miles crossing but we did not realize the extent of that decision until we arrived in this remote island of the Indian Ocean as what we found there was not at all what we expected! But this is a story for the next post..

Crossing the Gulf of Bengal.

2011-03-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

As we left Chalong, Thailand we were entering a new phase of our trip by leaving South-East Asia and commencing the crossing of the Indian Ocean that would lead us up to the Red Sea. Covering over 3400 nautical miles (6300 km) this section of our trip is unique in many aspects. For one it can only be sailed during the North-East monsoon in January and February as the rest of the year the wind comes from the West making it impossible for a sailboat to go that way. But the biggest problem resides in the fact that we need to go through the Gulf of Aden in the West, the most pirate infested waters in the world. However, if you sail around the world the options are not legion. You either go through this area or you skip all South-East Asia and sail directly from Australia to the rough waters of South-Africa then into the Atlantic and if after that you still want to see the Mediterranean Sea you need to add one more year and two ocean crossings to the trip. We elected to go through the pirate region but to sail the Gulf of Aden in a convoy of sailboats we would meet in Oman at the entrance of the Gulf too reduce the chance of an attack. We left Chalong, Thailand on Jan 6th in direction of Sri Lanka but after a few hours of motoring on a flat sea we realized it was a bad idea to try to cross 1200 miles with limited fuel we had and decided to turn back to Chalong to wait for a better window and get more fuel. Besides the forecast showed the coming of a huge storm in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and we learned later that indeed the storm was pretty bad and a sailboat was lost at sea. We finally left on Jan 13th, 2011, had a nice smooth ride and nine days later we landed in Galle, Sri Lanka. The picture of this beautiful sunset over the Bay of Bengal, somewhere between Thailand and India, speaks for itself.

Arrived at Assab, Eritrea, Africa

2011-03-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

We arrived in the city of Assab, Eritrea in Africa on February 27th 2011 after a passage of 457 miles with the Seabird convoy.

Arrived in Yemen.

2011-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

We arrived in the beautiful city of Al Mukalla in Yemen, from Uligan in Maldives, on February 20th, 2011 after a passage of 1503 nautical miles (2796 km) that took us 13 days, 3 hours and 0 minutes for an overall average speed of 4.8 knots. This passage was the most amazing passage we did. In the Maldives we organized a convoy of 9 sailboats with who we sailed in formation all the way from Maldives to Yemen to ensure some safety while sailing through these dreaded waters. We arrived tired but safe and sound in Mukalla where we are trying to get some rest, resupplying and getting prepared for the Gulf of Aden passage, while dodging the gunshots of the police forces trying to disperse the daily manifestations in town. We will sail the Gulf of Aden in convoy as well. We know we are not giving you much stories to read lately but we spent most of the last two months at sea where it is very hard to write. We are sailing the most dangerous pirate infested waters in the world and every Middle Eastern countries around us have either no government or is under serious political unrest. The short periods we spend ashore were 100% busy with either visiting (when possible) or resupplying. Just stay with us and I promise you to come with tons of pictures and crunchy stories as soon as we reach safe waters and decent internet in a country where people don't shoot at each other.

On Passage toward Red Sea

2011-02-11T04:43:00.000-08:00

Chocobo is on passage toward Red sea and will update the blog as soon as we got internet access. Lots to say...

Arrived in Maldives

2011-02-04T02:32:00.000-08:00

We arrived in the northernmost part of the Maldives on February 1st 2011 after a 457 miles passage leaving Galle, Sri Lanka that took us 3 days and 3 hours for an average speed of 6.1 knots. We are now anchored at Uligan Island, Maldives.

Arrived in Sri Lanka.

2011-01-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

We arrived in at the city of Galle (pronounced gawl) in Sri Lanka, from Chalong in Thailand, on January 22nd, 2011 after a passage of 1150 nautical miles (2139 km) that took us 8 days, 17 hours and 30 minutes for an overall average speed of 5.5 knots. This very long passage was actually pretty quiet as we motorized the first 4 days by lack of wind then had a slow sail for about 4 more days. Then, as we reached the vicinity of Sri Lanka, the wind picked up and on top of a 2.5 knot current we were flying at more than 8 knots for the last day!

Phuket (pronouced Poo-ket).

2011-01-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas was already behind us and 2011 was on the horizon. For us it was time to leave Phi Phi Don and set sail to the Island of Phuket, more precisely at the town of Chalong, where it is possible for us to resupply in fuel and food before leaving Thailand in direction of Sri-Lanka. After two days of grocery shopping and working on the boat, oil changes and inspection of the riggings, we wanted to visit the place a little. On this new-year’s eve we hired a taxi driver who took us across Chalong on board of his red “vehicule”. Of course, the ride in this 4-wheeled smurfette was more exciting than visiting the tourist sites themselves! Note: if you find that I look a bit sloppy with my unshaved beard it’s because I’m presently growing a beard and I’m still in the phase of looking like an homeless but in a couple of weeks it should look better.

Our first visit was to see the Big Buddha, which is visible from almost half the Island of Phuket. The 45m (145 feet) high marble covered statue was very impressive even though the construction of the site was not yet completed. A stairway is planned to provide access inside the statue and that, we can assume, should help the Buddhist followers to get closer to the Nirvana although I personally believe that taking a plane is a more efficient way, in terms of the height achieved, to do the same! Of course, here we assume that getting closer to the heavens means getting away from the center of the earth because if we climb inside the statue then for a Canadian, who is on the other side of the earth, we are in fact going down! All right, I guess I am asking too much for a philosophy developed at a time when the earth was flat! More seriously, look at the statue and can you determine the sex of Buddha? I am not an erudite on the question but I think that, although the first Buddha was indeed a man, he/she represents the ultimate state of a conscience or the state of a being at the end of the line of rebirths and in which case the sex of the being is not really important when presented in its spiritual representation. Wow, did I just say that?

On our way back from our visit of Buddha our driver suggested that we stop for an elephant ride! We thought we’d seen everything after climbing at the top of hill on board of his taxi propelled by a lawnmower engine but apparently Thailand had more for us to experience. Then hop we jumped on Mary’s back, a 21 years old elephant and already mother of a little 5 years old pachyderm, for a 1 hour ride in the surrounding trails. No doubts that an elephant ride is something special but let’s say that the beasts are not really driven to exhaustion by their owners. In the first half hour Mary made us cover the impressive distance of 500m (540 yards), which represents a speed of 1 kmh (0.6 mph) or, if you prefer, twice as slow as a human being walking at a comfortable pace! During the second half hour we simply came back on our steps. Of course, to attain this racing snail speed Mary had to stop once for her physiological needs, and God knows how impressive the needs of an elephant can be, three times to eat some bushes and twice to drink in the little water ponds along the trail! Well, we were not there to cross half of Thailand on the back of an elephant but it was still impressive to find a mean of transportation slower than a sailboat!
Finally, for our New Years Eve dinner we didn’t feel for something too exotic so we went to a little French restaurant, L’escale, in the hearth of Chalong where we enjoyed a very good magrès de canard, with the little sweet sauce, prepared by the French chef and owner of the restaurant who expatriated from his native France to offer his culinary talents in South Asia. After the meal, we came back to the dinghy but without realizing it we arrived at exactly midnight and as we put our feet in the little inflatable fireworks went off everywhere at the same time including on the pier just a few feet from us! It was really impressive to see but knowing that the guys lighting the rockets in question are far from being certified firework experts we quickly motored away in the middle of the water and far from the shores to watch the fireworks, which fired up in all directions we would look. We saw many fireworks in this trip but this one was really the most impressive.
Happy New Year 2011 to everyone and Danielle and I wish you Happiness, Health and Prosperity for the coming year.

Christmas Hollidays in Thailand.

2011-01-03T06:58:00.001-08:00

When we arrived in Thailand we knew we would spend Christmas and New Years day here since the NE monsoons, required for crossing the Indian Ocean, don’t settle until January. So we stopped in Ko Phi Phi Don for almost two weeks to pay ourselves some “vacations”. We took a mooring ball in the main bay and this is the view we had for two weeks from the boat. Not bad isn’t it?

We thought we would be bored during the Christmas period away from our families and the snow but it turned out we had quite a blast. Phi Phi Don is a tourist place that was completely wiped out during the Tsunami, in the middle of the decade, but as you can see is now quite rebuilt. For us it really started on my birthday on Dec 23rd when we decided to go have a nice dinner in a restaurant on the beach front with candles, the wine, the drinks and everything. It was very nice and in the evening we went to the “Reggae” bar where they presented fights of Thai Kick Boxing. Sorry we didn’t bring the camera that night so we can’t show you what it was like. But in the bar there was a ring and they would offer a free “bucket” to anyone who wanted to fight for fun. Many went and it was indeed fun, at least most of the time as some guys where a bit rough but nothing to be too worried about. Then at one point two real fighters showed up on the ring; they wear gloves and short, no other protection gears. They were pretty small but incredibly fast, which is a characteristic of Thai Kick Boxing as far as I know. After the fight the fighters would go in the crowd to shake hands and collect whatever money people would give them. After a few more amateur fights two other real fighters came up. These guys were much nastier than the first two and during the fight they would kick themselves outside the ring or thrown on the floor in near KO state after being kicked in the face at full force by the opponent. Do I need to say that you need to be flexible like hell to kick someone in the face? I must admit that this was not as fun as the first fight, which was much more technical, with a level of aggressiveness that made the whole crowd a bit uncomfortable. At the end the winner, who was by far the most aggressive, even took the large aluminum saucer they used to prevent the water, they pour on their heads, from wetting the entire ring between the rounds, and hit his opponent with it! The crowd started to shout its disapproval especially Danielle who was shouting “LOOSER!” repetitively to that killer oblivious of the fact that I wouldn’t last 6 seconds against him should he get angry about us! By then we were getting pretty drunk and decided to leave. We walked back to the beach where we left the dinghy to find it completely filled with water and sand as the huge tide came up a bit higher than we expected! Of course since our alcohol level in our blood would have blown any alcotest to the roof we started to laugh out loud like two kids while trying to bale the water out of the boat. We finally managed to put the boat back in the water in a floatable condition and zigzagged our way between the boats, real or imaginary, along the way. Let’s say that it took us about twenty minutes to cover the few hundred meters from the shore to Chocobo and we both arrived completely naked and swimming back while pulling the dinghy behind us. I leave it to your imagination to figure out what happened in between but like we say; what happened in Phi Phi Don stays in Phi Phi Don! After refreshing ourselves a few minutes in the water we climbed back on the boat and felt something that disappeared long time ago in Canada; it’s called freedom!

But then we still had Christmas coming despite our huge hangover, which took us two days to recover, and we went to enjoy a pretty amazing experience. This place, on the picture, sells what I would call piciexfoliation, where you basically put your feet and legs in fish tank filled with hundreds of tiny cleaning fishes eating all your dead skin for 20 minutes. We screamed our lungs out the first 10 seconds, not that it hurts at all, but because of the weird feeling coming from hundreds of little mouths sucking our legs! It was really fun and after our legs and feet were as smooth as a baby’s skin. As for Christmas night we booked a restaurant offering to the tourists a Christmas buffet of roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, ham, duck and even cranberries! The brown stuff on my pile of potatoes is actually gravy, which was pretty good I must say and if you think our plates where full you should have seen the one of the small women, about 90 lbs (40 Kg), who filled her plate with at least 1 ½ time what I put in mine! I’m not kidding some people are so greedy in front of an all-you-can-eat counter it’s unbelievable. Since we are 12 hours ahead of Canada we waited the next morning to call home to wish Merry Christmas using MSN Messenger with video and all. We were maybe at the other end of the world but with technology not that far after all. We had a few drinks that night but reasonably came back with all our cloths to the boat ;-)

The Beach.

2010-12-28T06:24:00.000-08:00

If I tell you we can find Ma Ya Beach on Phi Phi Leh Island in Thailand this may not ring any bell but if I say “The Beach” featured in the movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio then it may be a different story. The movie is a bit old, it came out in 2000, but quite good so, if you haven’t seen it yet, go to the video store and rent it. We indeed went to that paradise beach and were wondering how in the world did they managed to empty it from the 500 or so tourists visiting the beach every day! Chances are that the tourist rush significantly increased after the movie came out and the place became the major economic drive of the area. We were maybe not on a deserted island lost in Asia but the place was still one of the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen so far; crystal clear water and powdery fine white sand you find nowhere else.

We couldn’t go with Chocobo as the bay is relatively small and shallow so we did like everybody else and moored at the neighbor island of Phi Phi Don and hired one of these Long Tail Boats who took us at Ma Ya Beach as well as other places around the island. Of course the name of the boat comes from the long propeller shaft that allows them to maneuver in very shallow waters. We walked a bit on the island but unfortunately the scenes of the village and especially the ones in the marijuana field were shot somewhere else as the island is made only of high peeks surrounding the bay with barely any flat area. We so much wanted to see … the village! As for a shark attack you need to actually go somewhere else to get one as the local reef sharks are as dangerous as a cow in a hay field. By the way, the name of the island, Phi Phi Leh, is pronounced “pee-pee-lay” and no I’m not kidding!

Arrived in Thailand

2010-12-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Pulau Bunting, Thailand from Kuah, Langkawi, Malaysia after a bumpy ride of only 25 nautical miles but that was good enough for one day in those conditions. We are on our way to Phuket, Thailand where we will proceed with our official clearance in the country. To get to Phuket we need to do day hoppings by jumping from one island to the other and anchoring during the night since sailing overnight in the area is nearly impossible.

We love fishing nets in Malaysia

2010-12-16T00:18:00.000-08:00

We are on our way along the Malaysian coast through the Strait of Malacca and unfortunately we don’t have much time to visit this part of our route. We must be underway every day that the weather permits it and since we can only sail during the day our progress is very slow. Two reasons prevent us from sailing during the night. The first reason is the weather and every evening or so we get severe thunderstorms which are really not ideal while sailing in pitch dark! But the main reason is the Malaysian fishing fleet. Fishing boats are everywhere and we need to have a very close watch while on the way to avoid them but mostly their fishing gears. On the picture you can see a large fishing boat with a huge floating net, these are easy to deal with as they move slowly and the nets are pretty obvious. The problem for a sailboat comes from the small ones. These little wooden boats, about 25 feet in length, drop nets staying just below the surface and are fishing everywhere by dozens. You really don’t want to be a fish in the area that’s for sure. They also leave hundreds of fishing cages scattered everywhere and marked only by a little flag and when I say “little” I mean it. In fact the flag is usually made of a small wood stick floating on 2 plastic bottles and mounted with a square flag that so deteriorated that they look like the surrender white flags during the Napoleonian wars after two weeks of battles.

But the best story happened just after we left Pulau Bunting an island that offered us a good shelter against the daily thunderstorms prevailing in the area. In front of us was a line of fishing boats, maybe 20 of them, all seeming to fight for the same school of fish. We proceeded cautiously trying to evaluate the erratic driving of the fishermen and to stay as far away from them as we could. At one point one of the boats came in our direction and turned at the last minute to pass us at our stern. We were at that moment motorsailing, which means that one engine was running but both sails were fully open and even though the wind was weak we were still sailing and our maneuverability very limited. As I was looking at the fishing boat passing just right behind us one of the fishermen then pointed ahead of Chocobo urging me to look. Another fishing boat was sailing at full speed toward us at angle and I had to put the engine quickly in neutral to avoid a collision. Putting the engine in neutral significantly reduced our speed and was enough to let the fishing boat pass but we were still sailing full sails open! I was looking at the boat sailing away from us and wondering what exactly this guy was doing. In less than two seconds the horror jumped at me; they were dropping a fishing net!!! The bunch of morons passed at full speed right in front of a sailboat and dropped their 300 feet (100m) long net. Of course we caught the net as we were yelling at them to stop and not to start pulling the net. Danielle rushed to lower the sails in order to stop the boat but without turning the boat into the wind this can be quite a challenge. Nevertheless, she managed to do it while I was trying to spot the net and see where it was tangled. The fishing boat came behind us as we were trying to assess how the net was tangled and how to release it. One of the guys on the fishing boat shouted to us to put the propellers in reverse. Of course, how come I didn’t think about this myself? The best thing to do when you have a line tangled in your propeller is to spin it even more! Geez how can someone be so stupid and yet be allowed to breath. Then another of the geniuses on board suggested that we cut it, and of course was oblivious of the fact that this net was what would bring the food on his table the next week. But by then Danielle and I had had a couple of minutes to assess the situation and at the same time we said “we have to dive!”. I was quickly putting my swimming suit and grabbing my mask and snorkeler while Danielle was setting a line for me to hold in case there was a current under the boat. I jumped and fortunately the net’s top cable was simply sitting on top of the propeller blades and all I had to do was to release it from the two propellers and free we were. We waited a minute to let the net sink and to be sure it was out of range, waved goodbye to our bunch of monkeys on the fishing boat then engaged the propeller and off we were. Now, the exact reason why the guy went dropping his net right in front of us is still unclear but the fact is that this happened in a region that was well known for piracy not so long ago and the fact that pirates attacking the small yachts were usually fishermen trying to round up their ends of the month a little! Well this struck me only way after the events and honestly we never felt treated in any way during the whole time; we only felt victims of blunt stupidity!

During our day hopping we stopped for the night in Port Klang, Malaysia, which appears to be probably the largest cargo port in Malaysia. It was far from the dimensions of Singapore but still quite impressive. Have a look at the large container ships being unloaded by the giant container cranes. I am sure you didn’t think it was possible to fit that many containers on a boat hey? Note, by the way, that the containers are simply sitting there untied on the ship. What do you think happens when one this big guy gets caught in a huge storm? But again the best part came later. Just after the first docks we turned into a side river and anchored in what appeared to be the stinkiest place we’ve ever anchored. The stench was so bad that Danielle had a hard time to sleep while I slept like a baby. Apparently, I have no problem sleeping over a dump. Obviously, the smell was coming by the untreated sewage waters released by the surrounding industries and towns not caring much about that costly concept of environment protection. Note however that Malaysia is poor, very poor and talking about environment protection is easy from a guys coming from a country where the average family revenue is about $60K/year! Anyway we had no choice but to stay there since it was sunset and we had no time to find another place to anchor.

The only place we really stopped in Malaysia was the town of Kuah on the Island of Langkawi where they somehow erected a giant statue of an eagle as the main landmark of the very crowded but also very roomy harbor. We took a few days to stretch our legs in the city streets and markets since we hadn’t go ashore since Puteri eleven days ago and all our muscles started to feel like jello! Of course, we enjoyed the delicious and very cheap food the many restaurants had to offer. Indeed, with $7.00 to $18.00 for the two of us we could enjoy Thai, Indian or Malaysian meals that mix curry, ginger and chili in ways only Asians can do. We also went to McDonalds once but to our defense for this culinary offence in this kingdom of spices, which is South-East Asia, I must say that we were on a hurry and just went for what fast-food stands for! Another aspect of our life in Indonesia and Malaysia is the daily Muslim call for the prayer. I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Bali may be mostly Hindu but the rest of the country is definitively Muslim and Malaysia is the same, just smaller in population. This beautiful mosque happens to be very close to the shore and like every mosque they have loud speakers to make all the followers to hear the prayer, which as you know happens five times a day. I am not sure if the call is made in Arabic or in Bahasa but it sure sounded Arabic to me. Nevertheless, if you never heard a Muslim call for prayer before let’s say that it sounds like a long song where words are stretched in a slow and harmonious complain. One thing about this call from the mosques is that we are not sure exactly how they chose who sings in the speakers. Here in Langkawi the guy from the nearby mosque was quite a good singer and Danielle and I enjoyed hearing him every day. However, in some remote islands of Indonesia the Imam or whoever was yelling in the microphone from the temple sounded more like an old rooster with a hangover trying to still impress after it was long overdue! I mean, seriously, some were so bad that it would be a valid reason for the entire village to change faith just to stop hearing the guy five times a day!

Arrived in Malaysia

2010-12-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

We arrived at Puteri Marina in Malaysia after simply crossing the Johor Strait from Singapore, a short 7 miles ride. We stopped here simply to clear in the country and to refuel before attacking the Strait of Malacca as the fuel is much cheaper in Malaysia than Singapore; $0.83/liter instead of $1.09/liter. Our plan is to day hop from here to Langkawi, Malaysia through the Strait of Malacca, which is well known for two things; pirates and no wind. The good news about pirates is that this was mainly an issues in the 80’s or beginning of the 90’s and involved mainly large cargo ships for which large ransoms were demanded. Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia joined together and seem to have cleaned the area so we are not too worried about that. Anyway after all boat expenses we had in Australia and Singapore we could maybe pay them $3.96 for our lives since this is about what we have left in our pockets. Oh wait, even better we will give them the boat so they will become totally broke after a few months of trying to keep it in working order! As for the wind, as far as we know, the authorities have not done anything about that ;-) so we will have to motor our way up toward Thailand but since fuel is relatively cheap in the area it is no biggy.

A glimpse of Singapore.

2010-12-06T16:57:00.000-08:00

Although we spent over 11 days in Singapore we didn’t do anything special really. We first started by getting a new refrigerator unit and replenishing our meat since we lost most of the one we bought in Australia. But the very day we got the new unit in place we decided to have a quiet evening and just sit down to watch a movie. Danielle turns on the TV but oh surprise the screen stays black! We tried another time, then another, no success the nice flat screen TV we bought only 2 years ago had died probably by suicide to relief itself from the unbearable heat and humidity level of this area of the world. So we went all over the city to find a new television that would actually fit in the enclosure we have for it, that would work on 120V and support NTSC, which is the signal encoding standard in North America because of course in Singapore and in most of Asia the power voltage is 240V and the encoding is PAL! But don’t worry, if we could find diesel in Benoa we can find a TV in Singapore!

So off we went in this Mecca of shopping which is Singapore. Jurong Point, Sim Lim Square or Orchard Road now have no secrets to us. It is simply impressive how many shopping centers this city has and this really made us wonder who in the world buys all this stuff? Anyhow, we found our TV and other stuff we needed and cannot be found anywhere in the underdeveloped surrounding countries. But Singapore is not only about shopping it is about eating. Food is everywhere and it is cheap; usually under $10 for two meals! We filled up our refrigerator but it was really cheaper to eat outside especially with meat being quite pricy at the grocery store. Danielle sure enjoyed the local food but at one point just needed to go back to “occidental” food such as fish&chips and club sandwiches. As for me, I just couldn’t get tired of noodle soups, mee gorengs (fried noodles with tons of stuff and spices in it), dumplings and all the good stuff Asia can offer.

Singapore is obviously a clean, developed and modern city and one if its beauty is the subway or MRT as they call it, which is a very modern rail system running over and underground. Public transport is the always the best place to take the time to look at what people look like and Singapore appears to be a very cosmopolitan city with mostly slim people coming from all over Asia mainly China but also Indonesia, Malaysia, India and all the other countries finishing by “a” in the region.

Other than sinking our retirement fund with refrigeration units and TV sets we also wanted to see what Singapore had to offer to tourists. We sure went to Little India, Chinatown and the Colonial district to admire the unique architecture but there are two things we didn’t do and wanted to. The first one was to see the city at night, which is apparently quite unique. But what the travel guides forget to tell you went recommending visits is that in Singapore in the evening it rains! No I should say it pours in biblical proportion as if the heavens had suddenly liquefied and decided to fall on the city all at the same time! When it rains here you can literally take a shower, which I actually did once on the front deck of the boat! So, needless to say that our trial for a night visit was washed away by the weather. The second thing we wanted to see was the Singapore Zoo but again weather was not with us. As we arrived at the MRT station for the zoo the rain was rumbling the city like the Niagara on the tourists in their tour boat. We simply stayed in the train and stepped out in Chinatown, which is actually quite a paradox. You see, Singapore is by a large majority populated by Chinese immigrants who came here over the last centuries. Therefore, can anyone explain to me what does a Chinatown mean in a Chinese city??? After that I am certain that if we even go to Beijing we would find a Chinatown district!

Here you can see Chocobo moored at Raffles Marina and behind is the majestic replica of a true Spanish galleon called Andalucia with guns and all who just arrived a couple days after us. This boat was by far the most beautiful boat we saw during our trip. Here you can see Danielle changing the line holding the trampolines at the bow and we were amused to see that during the whole week Andalucia was beside us the entire crew was buzzing doing what? Fixing their boat of course, this is obviously what the sailing life is all about!

Crossing of the Singapore Strait.

2010-11-20T20:19:00.001-08:00

Danielle dreaded arriving in Singapore since the beginning of this trip for a very simple reason; Singapore has one of the busiest maritime installations in the world and sailing in these waters with Chocobo made us feel like being a chicken in a herd of elephants. Seeing a supertanker is a very impressive but rather rare event when sailing around the world. But here it is not one but over a hundred of these behemoths we found maneuvering or anchored along the 40 km or so of the Singapore waterfront all of it filled up with docks or refineries. We show you here some pictures but I really don’t think you can feel what it is like without being physically here yourself. The place is huge, immense, gigantic! In fact, the engineering feat of building such a group of installations is so titanic that I wouldn’t probably believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. In many places they reclaimed the sea to create more waterfront length for the cargos. The new lands cover many square kilometers and were claimed over 100 feet (30m) of water. Can you imagine the amount of rock and sand they needed to carry to do that???? And I am not talking about the docks and cranes everywhere required to move the containers around.

But let’s start with the beginning. We were in Batam, Indonesia and all our efforts to fix the refrigerator were unsuccessful so we had to go to Singapore, more precisely at the Raffles Marina on the western side of the island as it is not possible to anchor in a convenient place anywhere in Singapore. Only about 8 miles separate Batam from Singapore but those few miles represent the Singapore Strait. The fact is that all ships sailing from the Middle East or the Mediterranean Sea to Asia must go through the Singapore Strait and this makes this narrow channel looking like a highway of super cargo ships and supertankers. Being in such a strategic location it is not surprising that Singapore developed an impressive array of oil refineries and maritime installations. Our first goal was to cross the channel to get on the Singapore side. This is not very complicated but it has to be done with care unless you want to end up crushed by a ship so huge they would probably not even noticed the impact. We chose the narrowest spot of the channel and literally looked on both sides to make sure we could cross without interfering with the continuous traffic going on in both directions. The crossing itself took about 20 minutes with the engines running at maximum speed (we were making 7.5 knots!) but there was a ship every 12 minutes on each side! We timed our crossing carefully and we didn’t make the front page of the newspapers the next day. Once on the other side we entered the Singapore harbor, which is an amalgam of anchorage areas for the cargos and fairways for them to move about. Note that in a world of giants an ant like us has no rights of way whatsoever and all the responsibility of maneuvering safely falls on us. But since in this area the vast majority of the ships were anchored and even if they were of titanic proportions it wasn’t too difficult to avoid them and move about. At mid distance to our destination we had to stop to clear in the country with immigration. Usually, when entering a new country, it is necessary to stop at a given location and go ashore to see the local authorities for the clearance but here they came up with a much more efficient way of doing business. Arrived at what is called the western anchorage we called immigration on the VHF radio and announced our arrival. They told us to stay put and wait for them. The anchorage is 26m (80 feet) deep, which is too much to drop the anchor, so staying put means floating around and wait. But we didn’t wait much since as soon as we arrived at the rendezvous point the immigration boat was already there. They came by us and pull a net at the end of a pole and asked me to give them our passports and three copies of the crew list. I put the documents they asked in the net and then we waited about 5 minutes for them to process the papers. They came back with the net and a form I needed to sign, which I did, and then they gave us our passports back along with our clearance paper. Everything from beginning to end took less than 10 minutes and we were on our way!

But at this time we were already too late to cover the remaining 20 miles and reach our marina before sunset and had to find a spot to anchor for the night. The western anchorage was already ruled out because of the depth and anyway who in his right mind would like to anchor for the night in the middle of 30 supertankers, seriously? A few miles west there were a few islands and shoals in which we found a nice spot to drop the hook in 20 feet (7m) of water and safely spent the night out of the way of the ships and who knows what. All around us the waterfront was occupied by refineries and these installations don’t stop during the night. We had no smell as we were windward and no noise but instead could witness something impossible to see but from the water. A refinery somehow needs lights all over its pipes and towers, pretty much everywhere and with 10 km or so of refineries around us after sunset we had the impression of being in the middle of Christmas tree! Sorry our camera cannot take night shots like that because of the slight movement of the boat during the one or two seconds of exposure it requires. But take my word for it, it was a scene we are not about to forget! The day after we continued our way between the enormous ships, which were defying the reason but yet respecting Archimedes’s principle, in our Lilliputian boat and made it safe and sound to our berth. While on the way I estimated that there were about 150 ships anchored in the Singapore area. When we crossed the Panama Canal we were impressed by the 50 or so cargos that were waiting at both ends but here we realized that this was merely a maritime sand box. Singapore is the yard of the grown up and in fact I am pretty certain that most of the behemoths we saw here are too big to even go through the Panama Canal!

Arrived in Singapore

2010-11-17T05:54:00.001-08:00

We arrived in the nation city of Singapore from Batam in Indonesia, on November 11th, 2010 after a passage of 24 nautical miles (45 km) that took us just a few hours. In fact Batam and Singapore are so close we can see one from the other assuming we can see through the stream of super-cargos crossing the Singapore Strait! What makes this arrival in Singapore special is not the distance covered but the crossing of that strait and the port of Singapore. This is one, if not the, busiest port in the world and crossing the Singapore Strait must be done with care. First we got to our crossing point where the channel is the narrower, and then we looked on both sides and put the throttles to max speed and crossed the main ship channel at right angle. But this was just the beginning of the fun. Once on the other side we had to manage through the 50 km length of the Singapore maritime facilities but I’ll talk about this only in my next post…

Orangutans of Borneo.

2010-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

One thing we really didn’t want to miss while in Indonesia was to see Borneo’s orangutans, which only live on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia. These great apes are obviously, like all other large animal species in the world, threatened of extinction by the destruction of their habitat. Here in Borneo it’s the palm oil farming and deforestation that are finger pointed as the great culprits but obviously the situation is much more complex than simply telling Indonesians to stop growing palm and cut wood for living. Big monkeys are great but they need to eat.

To see our distant cousins we stopped at the Kumai village in the province of Kalimantan in the Indonesian part of Borneo. I make this precision because if you look at a geographic map you’ll see that a large part of the island of Borneo actually belongs to Malaysia and another small section form the Brunei sultanate. But in Kumai we felt in deep and very authentic Indonesia which has nothing to compare with the authentically touristy island of Bali for instance. From an occidental point of view the place may look rundown and the populace poor but look carefully at this young girl’s eyes and tell me honestly if you really think she’s starving and unhappy? In fact, people here are maybe poor, from our standards, but they eat very well and seem quite happy, thank you very much.

Although the jungle, where live those primates so coveted by picture cameras, is only accessible by boat it was out of question to venture in it with Chocobo. In fact, many places were too narrow for our catamaran to fit. We hire Adys’s services who, on board of his boat Mama-2 and helped by a crew of three others plus a guardian who stayed on Chocobo while we were away, took us through the meanders of the Indonesian jungle. But even though the rivers and the boat itself gave us at some point the impression of coming directly out of the movie “The African Queen” we must admit we were quite comfortable. The trip lasted two days and one night in the Tanjung Puting National Park and we slept comfortably on the deck, with a mattress of course, and a mosquito net. Do I need to mention that the Indonesian meals prepared by Ana were delicious?

The best way to see orangutans was to go to feeding stations where they offer them bananas. The boat would stop on a nearby dock then, after a 15 minute walk in a trail in the jungle, we arrived at a place where a platform was erected for the guides to place bananas they brought. Meal times being fix every day, the families of primates were sure to show up even if this means eating under the fire of the cameras and in front of twenty something peoples looking at them! But from the expression they had I believe that for orangutans as long as they had free bananas they were really not bothered if another group of primates was looking at them during their meal. They were also pretty agile in tree climbing and, even though they could be up to 8 times stronger than their homo-sapiens cousins, they still needed their four “hands” to climb. So, to take away some bananas for later consumption the female you see on the third picture had to use some imagination at the cost of her dignity it seems. But seriously is she greedy or what? She’s maybe a monkey but still!

But Tanjung Puting National Park is not only orangutans land. Scenery is beautiful and we saw from afar other monkeys with funny noses and even a jaguar! Apparently, no other tourists ever saw one in this region since they usually live about 25 km from there. The water was brown in the first part of the river as it is usually the case in rivers but we turned into one of the tributaries and the water then turned clear with a reddish tint. According to our guide, the brown color of the main river comes from the industrial byproducts of the gold mining activities upstream and of which the environmental practices may be debatable. Tributaries not having to suffer the effects of exploitation have clean water and the red coloration is naturally produced by the roots of the plants giving it a spectacular mirror effect reflecting the surrounding vegetation. Also, this region is populated by an abundance of butterflies of all kind such as this one who came resting on Danielle’s finger and stayed quiet long enough for me to even take a decent picture of it. We also saw butterflies with whitish wings measuring close to 20 cm (8 inches) across!

Once back on Chocobo we took the opportunity to give our guides a few gifts to show our appreciation of their good services. Nothing very fancy just a few lines we didn’t need any more, some clothes, toys and candy bags for their kids and a few things we needed no more. They were all pretty happy and thanked us more than once. After chatting, taking pictures and having a laugh for a while they left and I then came inside the boat and noticed that the temperature of the refrigerator was abnormally high. After a closer inspection we realized that the cooling unit was kaput! With a freezer full of meat and in a country with an average temperature of 30°C (85°F) day or night it was a catastrophe! The problem is not only money we also have to find replacement parts and it’s surely not in Kumai we would find that kind of parts. I then went to the village to find some ice to conserve our food until we get to Batam or Singapore where we’ll be able to fix. Yet again, not speaking Bahasa Indonesia makes things quite interesting. How do you describe ice in a village located almost right on the equator? Luckily, after a few twists and mimics giving the ladies I was speaking to the impression that I may have stayed too long with the orangutans, I felt on a guy speaking decent English and put my hand on 15 blocks of frozen solid ice. This would be nice for the moment but would it last long enough for the five days of our passage in the South China Sea to get to Batam our next destination?

Getting fuel.

2010-11-12T02:37:00.000-08:00

This is Lembongan an island just a few miles East of Bali with a nice village and plenty of activities for the many tourists brought here every day from Bali by the big ferries such as the yellow one in the picture. We had no plans to stop here and the story I want to tell you is not about the place but the reason we had to stop here. It is about getting fuel. In Bali we moored at Bali Marina where they actually have a very rare infrastructure in Indonesia called a fuel dock at which we can attach the boat, pull the nozzle from the pump and just fill up the tank. Ahhhhh the beauty of modern technology! Of course this is in contrast with everywhere else where we need to find a guy who will come in his boat, sometime a dugout canoe, filled with jerry cans dating probably from the last ice age, and then siphoning it into the tank. This is a lot of trouble but on the other hand I must mention that the local guys who help us with this are very helpful and are not afraid to literally bend backward to help us with our fuel needs. As the marina guy asked me to do I went to see him the day before, which is the 14th, to tell him that I’d need about 200 liters of diesel fuel the following morning on our way out of Bali. He said, sure no problem. The next morning we were ready to leave and I went to see the guy to make sure no boat block the fuel dock and the person responsible for the fuel was ready. When I told him that we were ready he started to look a bit embarrassed and told me that he may not have all the fuel we needed. He showed me his register to prove that many people just came and empty the tank. I took a look and sure enough he had sold a couple thousands liters of fuel recently. But the date on the register showed this happened the 12th which was three days ago already but I didn’t notice that immediately as I was now focusing on the more pressing issue of getting fuel since we didn’t have enough to get to Borneo. He then pointed on the other side of the bay and told me I should be able to get fuel there right at the dock in Benoa. I looked and could barely see the tour he was pointing at but I thought I’d well find out once we get closer. We quickly left and headed toward the place in question. As we got closer we indeed saw the typical rectangular shape of a gas station sign with a large concrete dock. Of course it would have been way too easy if we only had to tight to it and refuel. For one thing we were at low tide and the dock was way too high for us to attach to it but anyway this was not even an option as the dock was completely occupied by so many other boats that they had, at some place, to attach up to three boats to each other, the first one attached to the dock the second one attached to the first one and so on. There was a large steal fishing boat attached directly to the dock and using signs we managed to get permission to attach Chocobo to her. We threw the lines to the fishing crew, climbed in their boat and finally got on the dock. There sure was a gas station here in Benoa but it was a regular gas station for cars and motorcycles with regular short hoses very far from the 100 feet I needed to get to the boat! The place around was quite rundown and there were people everywhere, all talking only Bahasa Indonesia, including a guy with something like 100 jerry cans probably emptying the station of all its gasoline. But what I needed was diesel, the only word I knew in Bahasa was “solar” meaning diesel and clearly I was not going to get fuel here. Plan A and plan B had failed I needed to be a bit more imaginative. I was maybe at the other end of the world, in a country I don’t speak the language, in a town looking like a deportation camp; we’d cross half the planet on a sailboat so I should be able to find fuel here no matter what! I came to a guy passing by and asked him “solar?” pointing at the tanks. With patience and using all the hand signs he had in his vocabulary he managed to tell me there was no diesel left in the tank, which corroborated what the fishermen tried to tell us earlier but we didn’t quite understood. Equipped with a sophisticated arsenal of hand signs I wanted to start debating with him about the socio-economical effects of such a shortage of fossil fuel in this Indo-Asian part of the world but all I managed to say is “Where else can I get fuel around here?”, which was complicated enough trust me. My good fellow pointed me in the direction but it was too complicated to make me understand where it was exactly and elected to lead me directly there himself. He then took me to a place and I looked around. From my foreigner’s eye it looked like a shed filled up with all sort of junk but I think down here they refer to it as an energy broker as there were old propane tanks and jerry cans everywhere. The lady behind the counter didn’t speak a word of English but she told me to wait a second. As I was waiting I took the time to take a closer look at her store and once my eyes got accustomed to the exotic decorating scheme the place started to look not as rundown as I first thought. In fact it was quite tidy; all propane tanks and jerry cans were piled properly. They were maybe old and not esthetically to the North-American standards but were clearly sound and proper. The lady finally came back with her cell phone, dialed a number, talked on the phone for a minute then gave me the phone. A man was at the other end of the line and appeared to be the lady’s husband and talked decent English so we could have understood each other easily if the phone had cooperated a little bit. Between the many “Can you hear me now?”’ I told him I needed 200 liters of diesel for my boat. “Do you have the jerry cans?” he asked. “Yes but only two 20 liter jugs, it’s not enough.” He sounded a bit embarrassed and I could imagine him scratching his head to find a way to help me. “The problem is the jerry cans I have have no lids” he muttered. I was too close to my most wanted combustible to be deterred by a technical detail such as having a proper lid on a container to carry an inflammable liquid. “Couldn’t we just put a plastic on the top with an elastic band or something?” and as you can see I started to know the trades of this part of the world. He talked to his wife for a second then she told me to go back to my boat, which I did. Danielle was waiting for me, “Did you get fuel?” she asked. “Well I think so.” “How much did you get? I’m not quite sure but I asked for 200 liters. So when would it be here? I have no clues; I guess we’ll have to wait.” And so we did and sure enough after about 30 minutes the lady showed up at the dock pushing a two wheel cart with 6 large jerry cans in it with their opening properly sealed with …. plastic bags and elastic bands! Helped by the fishermen we carried the jugs on Chocobo then I asked one of them if he wanted to give me a hand with the siphoning. After about 20 minutes all six jugs were emptied and filtered into our tank. I gave the young man a little monetary thank you for his help and Danielle gave him a glass of juice to rinse his mouth of the diesel he swallowed while siphoning it! I then spent about half an hour cleaning the cockpit from the inevitable spills that happen when we use this method of filling up and finally sat down. I was quite proud of myself that against all odds and in the middle of a completely alien place to me I managed to get the tank full of “solar” and be ready to go. But by the time we were out of the harbor it was already close to noon and we were not in the shape of leaving for an overnight of sailing to Kangean Island, our next anchorage on the way to Borneo, and decided to just cross the Badung Strait and spend the night in Lembongan; we ended up staying 3 nights! This story is just to show you that sailing may look from the outside like a long vacation but in reality it is hard work; what we take for granted should take 20 minutes always end up taking 4 hours and sometimes two days!

Cremation in Bali.

2010-11-08T04:24:00.000-08:00

During our tours in Bali we witnessed something pretty unusual, at least for us; the public cremation of a member of the royal family. While coming back from the volcano visit we ended up detoured by the local police blocking the streets for the funeral procession. Our guides parked the van nearby and we walked to the cremation area to wait for the remains to arrive. First, arrived the bull, which is a vessel for the dead to travel to the afterlife. The bull was carried by about 40 men and brought to the cremation site under the scorching sun strangely with a happy mood. Then another group of carriers arrived with the remains of the deceased who was then put inside the bull through a trap door on its back. Family members and friends added a few items inside the vessel and finally a gas torch was set under the bull and lit to begin the incineration. The temperature of the flame must have been relatively high because after approximately ten minutes there were not much left of the burnt remains. By then the belly of the bull had collapsed and the corpse, or what was left of it, felt hence giving us the gruesome sight of the carbonized body leaning with its legs still hanging in the bull! I save you to choose this picture for this post! In all fairness I don’t quite know how to describe how we felt about the whole ceremony and personally I still prefer to just send the remains of our loved ones to the cremation center and getting the urn back with the ashes instead of witnessing the whole burning process. But again, other peoples other customs.

The magical island of Bali.

2010-11-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

After Komodo our logical next stop was the legendary island of Bali. This island, located in the southern part of Indonesia, is well known; tourism being the main economic sector. Prior to our arrival we thought Bali would be just another island in Indonesia. But quickly we realized that it is a place of its own and one of its main attractions is Balinese dancing. During a dinner show we attended one of the many dance shows presented across the island but unfortunately no picture would ever make justice to the sophistication of the moves in this dance. One after the other the four dancers demonstrated their skills in the mastering of the complex movements of the fingers, the eyes, the head and every other muscle they possess and seem to be able to move independently. Of course, I didn't miss the opportunity, at the end of the show, to get a picture in the company of the four pretty Indonesian dancers!

In addition to tourism Bali is also in the rice growing business but doesn't miss the opportunity to take advantage of the fusion of the two. For instance this terrace; although used to grow real rice it is so pretty that all the best view points are crowded with tourist stands and the whole nine yards. On the second picture we stopped along a regular rice field where we could have a closer look at the "sticky" rice, which is very tall, and the normal rice at about half the height. Obviously, for Asians seeing a rice plant is as common as seeing a corn cob back home. But for us, rice like bananas grow on the shelves of the supermarket! Putu, our guide, found it a bit amusing that we asked him to stop to look at the plant, probably the most grown in the world.

We can't separate Bali and religion. While the rest of Indonesia is mainly Muslim, with 240 million inhabitants this makes it the one of the largest Muslim country in the world, people of Bali are of the Hindu faith and we can apparently find over 1000 temples on the island to worship Brama (the creator), Wisnu (the protector) and Siwa (the destructor/reconstructor) although the other spirits are not left apart. Everywhere we can see the daily offerings, called canangs, people leave on their doorsteps in the morning to attract the favors of the good Gods or to keep away the evil spirits while trying to keep a balance between the two groups. The offerings in questions are almost always small square baskets about 15 cm (6 inches) on the side in which they put flowers and/or fruits and offer to divinities. Of course, if you are too busy to make your own canang it is possible to buy them already made at the local market! Apparently Gods are not very bothered on the effort. The only thing though is they put the offerings in the middle of the door hence we have to be very careful where we put our feet not to walk on the offering and, we can always suppose, attract on our host the wrath of the Gods! It is also interesting to notice that in the polytheist religions (with several gods) like this one or the ones of the Incas we saw in Peru, have a relationship with their divinities based on exchange and reciprocity while the monotheist religions (with a unique god) such as the Judeo-Christian religions have a relationship based on submission before a punishing god.

One of the most visited places in Bali is the Tanah Lot temple built on a large rock located in the sea close to the shore and accessible only at low tide. The temple itself is, of course, pretty but what is even more interesting is what tourism has done with it. Tourists gather here by hundreds every day and they inevitably attracted with them a myriad of vendors like this little girl who was selling a kind of doll on a stick. The girl in question seemed to be at the beginning of her vendor's career and, although we didn't ask, was probably of legal age to work in Indonesia! But the street vendors, or this one who offered to show us a "holy" snake in exchange of a few rupiahs, were nothing compare to the tourist boutiques at the site entrance. Normally, near a tourist interest point we would find a strip of boutiques selling the usual crap such as all kind of sculptures, masks, sarongs, t-shirts, postal cards and so on. But here it is an entire village of boutiques that we find with streets and all! In fact, the boutique site is larger than the temple one! We nevertheless felt for a vendor who offered us to take a picture of us with his large python. I volunteered to wear the little crawling beast at the neck while Danielle said "No Way!" and was happy to just take pictures of me.

Ubud village has a macaque sanctuary and we did a quick stop to visit our distant cousins. Ok well, at looking at some people on the street or in politic we may come to think that the inhabitant of the Ubud reserve are not cousins that distant but our goal here was to see monkeys and not to conduct an anthropological research on the origins of political men!

Art and workmanship are intrinsically part of Bali. Our guide took us to see wooden sculptures, jewelry making and basket or motorcycle . weaving. Wooden sculptures are characteristic of Asia, i.e. extremely beautiful and with an incredible level of details. Jewels were on the same line and while we couldn't afford to buy these beautiful nautiluses set with silver we still acquired two necklaces and two silver wire sculpture frames. However, the interesting part here is yet again the people. At the jewelry store prices were bits high but not excessive. But the saleswoman was giving us 20% off right away and clearly let us knows she was open to dealing. After a few minutes of back and forth with the price we would eventually converge on a price about 50% of the tag price making the purchasing quite attractive. Of course the negotiation was a bit difficult but was made in good faith and always with a smile. As for the wicker motorcycle we didn't buy it but Danielle always wanted one of these triangular hay hats Asians wear in the rice fields and we found a nice authentic one in a village market.

(photo7) We found these signs in every Hindu temple. It seems that menstruations have something impure for Hindus. (If the picture is not yet posted the sign says "Your attention please. During menstruation ladies are strickly not allowed to enter the temple. Thank you")

Komodo Island, Indonesia

2010-10-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

A definitive must see in Indonesia is the Komodo National Park, which is the one place in the world where legendary Komodo dragons can be found. The 2 meter lizards lay here and there on the five islands forming the park and, accompanied with a guide, we were able to have a look at these large predators whom, although not as dreaded as the crocodiles in Australia, call for a certain respect. We were lucky enough to see four of them during our visit as well as deer, birds and red ants.

Seeing the dragons was surely a treat but other than being big fat lizards lying very passively on the ground they were not much of an interest. However, the local people of Komodo were by much more interesting to see and to deal with. Upon arrival at the Komodo village we were immediately surrounded by local fishermen who, when the small fishes found in the area gets less abundant, go after the larger fishes sailing around the world on a catamaran to sell them some Komodo souvenirs! We usually don't buy tourist stuff like that but when we saw Komodo it was hard not to encourage them a little bit. Other than lizards and giant fruit bats there is basically nothing on this island for the locals to make a living of any kind. We used a free mooring ball for the night and they were all over us to help us with anything we needed and spending a few dollars was just the least we could do really. So after less than half an hour we were the new proud owners of three sculpted wooden statues of Komodo dragons and three tiny fishes that were already half dried after staying too long in the guy's boat under the scorching Indonesian sun but the poor guy had followed us for over half an hour to take us to the mooring ball so I had to buy something from him. I gave him $1 for his three decomposing beasts. There was no way we would even venture thinking about eating them and I just left them on the deck and finally forgot them when we left for our visit at the Komodo Park.

One of the fishermen took us to the park located about 2 km from where we were mooring. The ride in the boat was a treat. This is actually the one with the blue tarpaulin on the picture. You can also see a new cost effective design of a dinghy they use here to commute from one boat to another! Why bother with inflatable boats and outboard motors when a good reliable block of Styrofoam just does the job? The mono-cylinder engine, on the fishing boat, had to be started by hand with a sort of handle while to fuel came from an old plastic jug formally used for water and sitting just on the deck with its hose plunged through the opening. Of course don't even think about glow plugs or anything fancy such as a muffler or a decent exhaust pipe for instance. The exhaust was coming straight out of the engine into the section under the tarpaulin. Thank God, while the boat was moving, the breeze was pushing the black smoke toward the stern just where the driver sat! I don't think I need to mention the kind of noise that was coming out of this machine probably devised before man invented fire. But that's exactly why this was such a treat. For $10.00 they took us to the park, waited during our entire visit and took us back to the boat; all this while being nice, polite and very attentive. For that price in Canada we couldn't pay someone to give us a kick in the ass! As we climbed back on Chocobo we noticed that local birds didn't find the three fishes, I left on the deck, that disgusting and had feasted while we were away leaving of course half of the inner organs scattered all over!

With the help of the locals we were able to do all our visits the first day we arrived allowing us to leave the next day to an anchorage north of Komodo. The place was simply beautiful with clear water; we could see the bottom while the depth sounder indicated 80 feet (25m), and colorful coral everywhere. The only thing though with Indonesia so far is the fact there is no wind enough to make any decent sailing and we are forced to motor all the time. But on the plus side, no wind also means no waves and the rides are extremely smooth so we don't really complain especially since diesel here is relatively cheap.

Beginning Indonesia with Kupang.

2010-10-10T19:32:00.000-07:00

Since we had to motor all the way from Darwin to Kupang our main diesel tank started to be seriously low and the first thing we had to do after the entry procedures was to fill up. This was especially true since the weather forecasts for Indonesia show this is a windless country. On the left you can see Napa our agent who took care of the entry procedures and provided the fuel. Of course, no fuel dock here with a nice pump at hand so 10 Jerry cans were necessary to carry the 240 liters we required and since we don't know the state of the fuel we had to filter everything to remove the dirt and water that could be contaminating it but to our astonishment it was fairly clean.
A quick note about entry procedures in Indonesia; basically they are very complex and Danielle has been working on this for three months. The language barrier and the administrative cumbersomeness forced us to use an agent who took care of all the local procedures. We still had to search for info, find an agent, contact him and get the visas. For the visas we got them at the Indonesian Embassy in Darwin. In all, the fees for the visas, the cruising permit, the bond waivers, the agents services and the lost in currency changes sum up to about $860.00, which makes Indonesia the most expensive country in our trip to get in.

There is nothing better to commute than buses. Indonesia not being a car country there is a bus every other minute to take us for a $0.20 fee. Quite a contrast with Australia where the fees were $2.00 and we had to wait sometimes up to 1½ hour for to bus to show up! As expected people here are very nice and patients with us. However, there is something different with the other countries we went. Normally people are used to see white tourists walking the streets and for them we are like the trees; of no interests unless they want money from us. But here people looked at us with a certain curiosity. Some, usually older, would smile at us and say hello but most of them seemed not to know how to behave went crossing us on the street. In those cases all we had to do is to give them a nice smile and say ''Hello!'' to startle them and so they realized we are simply normal human beings. Every time their face would burst into a huge genuine smile indicating their relief. In one case though a group of men behind their street counters gave us the strong feeling they were making fun of us but since we didn't understand anything they said it was hard to get upset. An interesting fact is that even if most of them gave us the impression we came from Mars they all seemed to know how to say "Hello mister!" even the youngest one who had barely learned to talk. We will probably solve that mystery during the month and a half we plan to stay in Indonesia.

As a routine for us now our walks in town usually are aimed at replenishing fruits and vegetables. Kupang being a city of 300,000 it's not the hardest thing in the world to find someone to sell us some. Prices are relatively low but we got tourist priced at some point and, the language barrier not helping, we seriously have to refine our dealing skills.
By the way, for those who are a bit more awake, you may have notice that we are now in Timor, which is a large island in Eastern Indonesia. Timor made the front page of the newspapers at the end of the last century due to the quasi genocide unrolling here. This was in fact East Timor the other part of the island while we are in West Timor who seems to live in peace as part of Indonesia. As for East Timor, if I understood the story correctly, it seemed to have had lived some very sad days when a regime came in place and fought the Indonesian regime with the consequence that 200,000 out of the 750,000 inhabitants of the area got slaughtered by the conflict but mostly by the local regime. East Timor is one of the two places in the world, after the Gulf of Aden, where insurance companies don't even want to talk about boat coverage!

Arrived in the Republic of Indonesia.

2010-10-05T01:11:00.000-07:00

We arrived in at the city of Kupang, West Timor in the Republic of Indonesia, from Darwin in Australia, on September 27th, 2010 after a passage of 476 nautical miles (885 km) that took us 4 days, 3 hours and 30 minutes for an overall average speed of 4.8 knots. Just a few miles from Kupang we crossed the furthest point from home in this trip and were at 15,880 km as the crow flies. Therefore, we are technically, from now on, going back home. The ride across the Timor Sea was very smooth with virtually no wind for the entire trip forcing us to motor all the way. Motoring might be noisy but it also means infinite electricity and water supply, which we can live with. Down here it is hot and humid so Danielle would take up to three showers per day :-) Ah! We love the desalinator!

Crocodiles, termites and national parks.

2010-09-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

Before leaving Australia in destination of Indonesia we had to go visit Australia at least a bit. But before I tell you of our visits it would be good to put you in context. Australia is big, very big; in fact it is simply humongous. Darwin is the capital city of this province called the Northern Territories and, as its name states it, it’s in the North and cover about one sixth of the Australian territory. It is large but there’s almost no population about 250,000 people including the aboriginals who were already here when the Europeans arrived. Their story is very similar to the one of our Native American i.e. they lived on their lands with Stone Age means, the Europeans arrive, and the Europeans want the land and mostly what’s under it but not the people above. They kill the poor folks who try to defend themselves with arrows and spears against muskets, sharp swords and a range of viruses they never heard of and I am sure they couldn’t even pronounce the names without painfully twisting their tongues. After a few centuries of colonization half the first nations are decimated and the survivors claim the right to a certain level of self-determination with the goal of saving their ancestral culture. Of course, we could debate at length the validity of wanting to keep a way of life dating from the Stone Age. It’s as if I was claiming my right to cut my flint to make my spears. Well these people can do what they want, right? All right I know that I am sarcastic and keeping his culture is a much more complex and important thing than that so you don’t have to tell me.

The good news for them is they got the right to manage the territory and their businesses and things seem to go well. An interesting aspect of this story is that one of their obligations in order to keep the management of the territory is for them to burn the land every other year! The rationale is simple; during the dry season the bushes and grass growing between and under the trees become so dry that a lightning falling on them would cause devastating forest fires. So they burn the bushes on half the land every year in order to prevent the propagation of forest fires. But we are talking about a huge territory here! Of course nobody here talks about greenhouse gas production while back home we are tagged environmental assassins because we leave our car running for five minutes to warm it up before leaving to work in the winter by -25°C! But this is another story and the important point to know about the area is that half of the territory within 500km from Darwin is made of wetlands hence contains an incredible biological diversity. The water streams surrounded by swamps, called here billabongs, are protected by the creation of large national parks among which are the Kakadu Park classified world heritage by the UNESCO and the Litchfield Park both of which are really beautiful. With untied again the strings of our purse and went to visit them.

We started with Kakadu Park and the first site we visited was aboriginal paintings on the mountain walls. Looking at the aboriginal work we could think we are in front of ancient frescos dating from the time men fought for the control of fire but it is not the case. The painting you see on this picture was made sometime in the ‘60s by a man called Barramundi Charlie the last descendant of his nation, that I cannot remember the name, and his soul went back to the earth around 1976 taking with him all that remained of his culture and the memories of his people. But many years before dying Barramundi Charlie showed the painting of his people to a crew of the BBC, filming a documentary in the region, and told them that each of them represented a story but he refused to tell them what the stories were but for this one on the picture, which is an educational picture targeting the youth of his nation. In a nutshell the story goes like this. For the aboriginal people incest is strictly prohibited for the obvious reason to save people to suffer the same faith than some Kings of England at a certain time in history! The guy at the top of the painting is Namarrgon who felt in love with his sister Barrginj who appears in white below his right leg. The tribe members obviously found out about it and the elders, using their magic, punish them by changing the brother into a crocodile and the sister into a serpent, two solitary animals, so they were forbidden any personal relations in the future. As for the women with their breast uncovered at the bottom of the painting we are not sure how they related to the story. The story is really instructive and all but looking at the painting some questions come to mind. First, if the painting targeted the youth of his people and Barramundi Charlie was the last survivor of his them then why did he paint it in the first place? Secondly, I understand that the object of the painting is the sexual relationship within the same family but are the widely spread legs and oversized genitals really necessary? In fact when we add the breast naked women and the fact that Barramundi Charlie didn’t have a wife for quite some times we are inclined to think that this drawing is simply a kind of aboriginal Playboy! Of course by respect to the man and especially to his gone nation we will take his word for it and believe him.

After M. Charlie’s frescos we went on a tour boat on the Yellow Water Billabong to watch the unique wildlife of these wetlands. Of course the highlight of the visit was the dreaded crocodiles! There are two kinds of crocs in Australia; the fresh water crocs, which are smaller and not very dangerous, and the salt water crocs called the salties which are much bigger and with whom having a swim to pet their nose is really not a good idea! We had the chance to close sight three or four of them during our ride and we were very happy the boat we were in was all made of solid aluminum. The little beasties are very cute on pictures but having one only a few meters away makes you show a bit more respect.

Yellow Water Billabong was much more than just crocodiles. It was an abundant fauna, mostly birds, and a unique flora. Our captain was an experimented guide and she knew exactly how to steer the pontoon to take us less than 5 meters (15 feet) of the birds without scaring them away so we could watch them closely and take good pictures. Ducks, geese, egrets and other great waders were at the rendezvous to our great pleasure.

Two days later we took another tour that first took us on a boat along the Adelaide River to see the jumping crocodiles. Let’s mention this is not a special kind of crocodile but rather our guides who make them jump by showing them a juicy piece of meat attached to a kind of fishing rod. The one you see on the picture was a real monster the kind coming directly from a movie such as “The African Queen” or “King Kong”. It’s the dominant male of this section of the river, which is 150 km (95 miles) long with a crocodile population of 6000 to 7000. According to our guide this one would be about 60 years old, measures close to 6 meters (18 feet) and would weight about 1000 kg (2200 lbs)! It was even bigger than Goliath we saw in Cairns in his cage but here we were in the wild not in a zoo!

For more than an hour, our guides made the crocs jump by offering them large pieces of pork, which I consider a blatant discrimination against the Muslim crocs! Danielle even let herself jump in front of the site entrance but I didn’t venture to throw her a steak. If you think the large teethed lizards are mean you never upset Danielle before! By the way crocs are no big eaters and feed only a few times a week. Crocodiles in captivity not doing a lot of exercise are fine with one meal per week. They mainly derive their energy from the sun through their skin and are basically large teethed solar panels.

Our visit continued in Litchfield Park and as we say; a guided tour, wherever you are in the world, is not a good tour if you don’t see a waterfall! Here we saw three and at the last one we slipped in our swimming suits and dove in the fresh water. It was very refreshing but to come back to the bus we had to climb up a 135 steps stair! No need to say we were as sweaty up there as we were when we arrived.

In North Australia it is not only the 6 meters crocs that are impressive the termites are also quite something and they appear to be pretty good architects. We find many types of termites in Litchfield Park but our visit focused on two specifically. The first one build cathedral mounds which are tall tour shaped structures where they shelter when the area floods during the wet season. The second type of mounds is called magnetic since all mounds are facing the magnetic north. Nope, this is not tomb stones you see on the picture but termites mounds. It is interesting to note that termites are found everywhere in the area which makes a total population of many billions. Danielle reminded me that quarantine people, when a boat comes into Australia, search thoroughly every pieces of wood on the boat in order to find out whether we carry with us …. any termites! In the world of xenophobia it is hard to beat!

Obviously we couldn’t go through Australia and not taste their famous Fish & Chips which the taste only equal its fat level! We went to a small restaurant located in the Fishermen’s Warf area where locally caught fish is sold. The fried barramundi was really good and I am talking about the fish here not the aboriginal I talked about previously! Fries were not bad either and it is interesting to notice that Australians don’t call them “French fries” but instead use the name “chips” hence the name of Fish & Chips. Similarly, shrimps are called “prawns” and don’t get it wrong because a few times we ordered shrimps and the person serving us seemed to have no idea what we were talking about. A quick note here. We already mentioned how expensive things are in Australia, well the fish, the fries, two beverages each and four breaded shrimps cost us close to $50! And at this price we eat on a piece of paper with plastic forks.
Now that we had a good visit of Australia we will leave within a week to Indonesia, which is North-West of Australia. According to our cruising guides internet is not really strong in Indonesia so it is possible that we won’t be able to post anything for a while. But as soon as we get a decent connection we’ll show you the marvel of this great South-East Asian country.

Sailing the Coral Coast.

2010-09-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Our next step was now to sail from Cairns, on the East coast of Australia, to Darwin on the North side. This meant sailing the northern part of the Australian East coast up to Cape York and the Torres Strait by sailing inside the famous Great Barrier Reef, which was made even more famous in the movie “Finding Nemo”. So while wrapping up in Cairns we were very excited and looking forward to go sailing in these paradise waters we heard so much about and anchoring on the lee of a sand island in waters so clear you have the impression the boat is floating in mid air and finally at the pinnacle of our fantasy we would snorkel among colorful corals where we would find Nemo hidden in his anemone. But we hadn’t come out of the six mile long channel leading out of Cairns that we had a very clear reality check; the wind was blowing! During the week or so we took to reach Cape York we had to sustain winds with an average speed of 25 knots going 35 knots at night. The night anchorages were by all standards the crappiest ones we’ve ever seen and consisting, in the best cases, of a sand pit sticking out of the water offering no wind shelter and barely any wave protection. We sure were sailing fast with such wind strength and that’s what we needed since the whole area is formed of scattered reefs we were forced into specific channels, which were very busy with the continuous stream of cargo ships sailing along the Australian coast. The reefs here are not coral reefs but rock reefs and while anchored in the middle of a rolly anchorage and sustaining near gale force winds the last thing that came to our mind was to put our fins and try to find Nemo in those crocodile infested waters and anyway even if he was there he would be probably suffocating in those sandy waters offering less than 10 feet of visibility. So, to say the least we were very disappointed by this part of Australia but on the plus side I should mention that reefs offer an excellent protection against the ocean swell and combined with the constant wind and currents we were making very fast progresses all the way.

I might sound a bit negative here in my description of the area but one thing we cannot take away from this part of the Australian coast is the magnificent beauty of the landscape. The high humidity level gives beautiful sunsets and the rocky shores present red, yellow and white cliffs standing straight like guardians of the sea. We took the time to take a walk on Flinders Island where I was hoping to sight some crocodiles but to Danielle’s relief we saw none :-(

After the Coral Sea we then reached the Torres Strait, which is the channel between Australia and Papua New Guinea, allowing us to transit from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. The trick about Torres Strait is that there are islands and reefs everywhere and the water between them is very shallow. The most straight forward way to transit is to pass through the “Prince of Wales” channel keeping on port Wednesday, Thursday and Friday islands. Now here’s a little quiz for you erudite folks; on what days of the week were those islands discovered by the first explorers? The crossing of the strait went very smooth as we timed our passage with the tidal stream, which can reach up to three knots, and all we encountered along the way was actually not a cargo ship but a submarine! With 35 feet of water in the channel they obviously had to surface for the crossing.

With the Torres Strait behind us we then entered the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Arafura Sea on the North side of Australia. This is a huge shallow gulf which required about two days to cross. At this point we had given up on the idea of stopping anywhere in these deserted aboriginal lands and were sailing directly to Darwin. After the Gulf of Carpentaria we sailed, for one day, the coast of the Northern Territories then entered another gulf called the Van Diemen Gulf with tidal streams flowing up to 4 knots at its entrance and exit. This part was straight forward beside the weird gusty winds we had in the first half of the night and the daily calls from the customs plane checking our identity and whereabouts as the Australian Authorities exercise a tight control of this border used a bit too often by illegal immigrants trying to find a better life in Australia from the poor South-East Asian countries. All along the way we had to plot a detailed route to follow and plan the daily anchorages. Here you can see Danielle working on the navigation software to analyze the charts and ensuring we make the most of each day as our time window in Australia is quite limited due to the cyclone season starting in October in the area.

By lack of seeing any Kangaroos so far we took the opportunity to eat some at least! Where in the world could you find Kangaroo steaks on the shelf at the grocery store??? The meat of the marsupial was actually pretty good and we fixed it roasted in the oven with carrots and potatoes. It was yummy and tender and no, it doesn’t jump in the stomach afterward!

A little bit of Cairns, Australia.

2010-09-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

After countless working days dedicated to the boat we took the time to see a bit of Australia. We went to the Cairns Wildlife Dome, which is a small biodome built over a casino where we can find a colorful sample of the Australian’s fauna and flora. Being used to the human presence animals were easy to approach for the pictures. To try to take a picture of a parrot in the wild is practically impossible even if we find them in large number. We can hear them but they are hard to see and when we finally see one it takes a zoom the length of a trumpet to get a decent frame.

But the key animals here were koalas and “Goliath” the crocodile. Koalas seem to sleep all day so pictures were easy to take. As for Goliath, this 4m (12 feet) long crocodile, he sleeps all day long as well but the picture were taken with a fence in between thank you very much! The worst is that the Australian Coast we now need to sail to get to the Torres Strait is infested of those big large teethed lizards. I am so looking forward to swim in the Great Barrier Reef with a knife between the teeth in case we meet the rest of Goliath’s family!

Like any good developed country Australia has its fast-food chains. At first we may think we have here one of the local chain with a familiar look. But look closer to the “Hungry Jack’s” logo on the left of the counter. It really starts looking like “Burger King” isn’t it? Well that’s exactly what it is with the Woppers and all. The reason is simply because the name “Burger King” was already used before the American chain came here to fatten Australians. It is quite amusing to see many well known brands in North America named differently. For instance Kellogg’s “Rice Crispies” become here “Rice Bubbles” and obviously we bought some with two bags of marshmallows. You have no idea how we look forward to make Rice Bubbles squares!

Here Danielle saunters along the dock at Marlin Marina in Cairns. There’s nothing particular about this picture other than Danielle’s nice smile although surmounted by her large sunglasses she bought in Panama (in Latin America they like huge sunglasses!). Latin America is maybe far behind but the sunglasses are very good so too bad for the local fashion.

Shopping and boat repairs.

2010-08-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

After over a year of sailing in places with no decent boat part supplies we arrived in Cairns like two kids shopping for Christmas. Australia and Canada seem to be copies of each other so we really feel at home and they have a store for everything you may want to buy. There is one major exception though in the fact that Australians drive on the wrong side of the road. This is not the first country we encounter like this but they were small islands with barely paved roads and our brains had no problems dealing with it. However, Australia looks so much like home with modern paved roads, traffic lights and access ramps that all our life conditioning kicks in and systematically every time we cross the street we get caught finding a car arriving on us from the left! Very disturbing and very dangerous. We originally planned to rent a car but this frivolous idea was quickly discarded! Chocobo badly needed some taking care of and we were able to get repair parts at the same rate our bank account was sinking! We spent the entire last week, from 8am until 6-10pm every day, walking from one store to another and replacing the broken parts. We also had to shop for food as Australia has the strictest quarantine rules in the world and basically all meat, vegetable, dairy, egg or any kind of seeds or beans were taken away by the quarantine officer. They even took away our spice necklace we bought in Grenada even though each seed was pierced and run through a lace! Here you can see a slice of bacon we bought at the grocery. When they mean bacon they seem to be very serious about it!

Other than changing the autopilot wheel, reinforcing of the gooseneck and changing the anchor chain and the house batteries we finally changed all the moving parts of our boomvang which we called the boomBang as every part sets itself as goal to commit suicide during our Pacific crossings. We now have a new 6mm stainless steel cable, two rugged blocks, whole new screws and bolts and a new tightening line each of which can now sustain over 6000 lbs (2700Kg)!!! If this breaks we shoot ourselves! We also had to change the two shrouds, which are the two stainless steel cables holding the mast on each side, even though we bought them a bit more than a year ago while we were in Puerto Rico and they were supposed to last 15 years. The tricky part about this is to change them Danielle had to hoist me at the top of the mast and then I had to remove the cables and put the new ones. We are talking about removing the cables holding the mast here! I hope nobody from my life insurance company is reading this blog. Of course we had safely secured the mast with our running back stays, other cables running from the top of the mast, before I went up. I am sometime stupid but not that much!

How do you like our new Canadian flag? Danielle just finished making this new one as the old one was getting embarrassing. We moored Chocobo at Marlin Marina in Cairns and there is a boardwalk running along the dock where people, mostly tourists, take a walk all day. It seems that many Canadians are in vacation in Cairns and they all seemed to stop by and say hello to their fellow Canadians not forgetting systematically to remind us how run down our faded and frayed flag was. But our patriotic status was restored every time once we told them that the flag in question was only 5 months old!

If you think cruising is like a long vacation; think again. We had to buy all the cruising guides required to cover the other half of the world as these books become impossible to find elsewhere. Danielle always spends countless hours going through all that literature to plan our daily itinerary and to find the points of interest everywhere we go. I personally almost gave up reading these travel books, which are sometimes as interesting as reading the dictionary, and conveniently find something broken to fix on the boat every time it is time to look at them…