Here is the start of leg 10
in front of one of the Gilis (small island) around Lumbok – not a great shot as
we were in the middle of the pack by the time I got the camera out – even
though Eilo was on the helm and crossed the starting line first:
Our 2 day mandatory leg 10 stopover
at Christmas Island was short and we knew that so we made the most of it. Christmas island is in 17,000 feet of water
on the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean so the water is very deep even ¼ mile
off shore. We were worried about
anchoring in deep water but lucky for us they had enough moorings for the whole
fleet even though some boats had to raft together sharing the mooring. We arrived and Eilo attached AURORA to the
mooring closest to the main and only dock which was also served as the ARC
dinghy depot for shore goers:
A lookout about 700 feet over
the bay also afforded wonderful bird watching.
Check out this Frigate bird from above (note that the coral around the
island, with one tree, is in about 20 to 50 feet of very clear water):
Captain Ken took a look over
the side of AURORA after picking up the mooring and thought the water looked to
be about 15 feet deep and thought that’s not such deep water – we could have anchored
here. Later the Captain, decked out for
a snork, went over the side to swim to the reef along shore and found the water
about 50 feet deep and crystal clear - it deceptively appeared to be
shallow. The water is extremely clear because
the only polluters with-in 700 miles are the 1500 inhabitants of the 8 mile
wide by 14 mile long island. Being part of Australia they take environmental
protection seriously so their waters are pristine:
The ARC organized an Auzzie
Beach BBQ that night but because we were there for only 2 nights we blew it
off, walked to the tourist office, rented a 4 wheel drive and found a tavern in
town for din din. As with any island where there are only 1500
natives, everyone knows everyone else.
They all know what is going on in and around their island all the
time. So when we showed up at the
restaurant or their bar or anywhere everyone knew who we were because we were
the only tourists on their island at that time (except for a couple from AU –
whom we met). So we were local ARC
celebs for 2 days. The next day we
explored the island in our 4 x 4 and invited the crew from Sandvita to explore
with us (from left to right Gary (UK), Eilo (Erin), Anne and Hans(Sweden x 2)):
The Tourist office did not
steer us wrong in advising us to get a 4 wheel drive as many of the places we
could only get to with the 4 x 4 such as the blow holes which are caves at the
ocean edge created by waves which reach up to vent holes at the surface. Ocean waves filling a blow hole cave cause a
big build up of pressure and blow water as mist out of the ground at the top of
the cliffs along this one segment of shore:
Many of the beaches have
moderately dangerous surf and if the waves don’t kill you the rips might carry
you away– but no crowds. We ran into no one anywhere except for other ARC heads/explorers
we met along the way:
The Tourist office also
recommended we visit this remote small spring fed waterfall. Here is Eilo checking that bit of advice out
– and she does not seem unhappy:
Christmas Island is famous
for various land dwelling crabs. Their Robber Crabs (as they like to steal shiny objects) and on the way to
the waterfall we ran across a few of these.
There is a $5,000 fine if you hit one of these babys with your car:
Unfortunately one can get not
get a sense of the scale of these guys from a picture but this guy is almost 2
feet across and probably weighs about 12 pounds – no Captain Ken did not pick
him up to judge that weight – as one of his claws probably weighed about 3
pounds and would more than likely take your hand off if you tried to pluck him
up for a weight test:
Another thing Christmas
Island is famous for is their red crabs
which are estimated to number
15,000,000. During the rainy season
(starting in about a month) they migrate from the jungle to the beaches to mate
and the ground turns red with them as they march. Roads are shut to vehicles during crossing
time to protect the crabs. They are
about the size of a blue shell Chesapeake crab… and there were also blue crabs
to round out the color spectrum:
We drove… then hiked… went to
one last lookout and the views of where we had been along the coast were nice
. A red footed booby kept coming in for
a landing – we must have been near her nest:
We evacuated that last
lookout and went on the hunt for a pint (or 5) which we found at the Tracks
Tavern named for the train tracks which
used to be near where the train unloaded phosphate – the mineral they mine on
island – used for fertilizer. We found
it strange that with all the fertilizer exported globally from Christmas island
there are no farms for growing fresh produce on island – everything is
imported. Hmm – another business
opportunity??? The owner of Tracks came
over and introduced himself to all us “Yachties” as he knew who we were before
we entered his fine establishment. There
was a fair variety of locals drinking including some crusty old Auzie miners
and a few Chinese (including their island boss man – and a good drinker). The Chinese were originally imported for manning
the mines but now run many of the businesses, shops and grocery stores on
island. We had a fair few pints and the
owner told we should stay another few hours until sunset as a pack of Robber
Crabs comes through the tavern each sunset looking for handouts. Apparently the Robbers are very fond of
crackers and if you try to ignore them you are liable to get an ankle nipped –
a gentle reminder that crabs gotta eat too!
We had to move on to do a little bit of final provisioning and get
cleaned up for our next diner date. It
was Godfried’s official birthday so we invited him and his crew and the
Tulamore crew to the Lucky Ho for dinner.
That was some feed and after about 8 bottles of wine and endless amounts
of Ho food we got back to AURORA around mid-night and started to get her ready
for our next day departure. We had to be
off the mooring by 11;15 in order to cross the stopper over leg starting line
so as not to get penalized. At 11:05 we
had the Dinghy up on the davits and Ken knocked the outboard motor tiller
extension handle into the drink so he had to dig out the snorkeling gear and
went over the side lucky to find the handle sticking straight up out of a big
head of stag horn coral so he only had to dive to about 35 feet – I’m not sure Ken
would have made it down to 45 feet if the handle was resting on the
bottom. We lost about 1/2 hour screwing
around there and thus were late over the starting line and were penalized by 32
minutes. Had we got over the leg
re-start line on time we were told that we would have beat the Russians by a
few minutes but AURORA came in second place on Leg 10 – not bad. We crossed the official finish line at Cocos
Keeling at 2:30 in the morning on a very dark night and did not want to risk
getting hung up on any coral (which was everywhere according to our charts) so
we tacked off the atoll in the dark for 4 hours until sunrise and then sailed
in just ahead of the next 4 boats to finish the leg. We successfully got to the anchorage without
modifying our keel on any coral (another boat – a 56 foot Swan) was not so
lucky) just off of Direction Island. Another
deserted tropical island (note the dark colored coral heads lurking below the
waterline):
And once again a welcome
committee of four - 4 to 5 foot long - black tip reef sharks were swimming
around the boat within seconds after dropping anchor looking for swimmers –
Eilo lost her enthusiasm for a quick dip:
There were about 15 islands
around the 6 mile diameter atoll. 2 of
those islands were inhabited. One being
a 2 mile dinghy ride away, called Home Island, was populated by Malaysian
Muslims. The word on the street was up
until about a year ago they were not the best Muslims as some drank alcohol and
did other un-Muslim like things so Mullahs started arriving from Saudi and
sorted them out. The fleet could clearly
hear their call to prayer 5 times each day across 2 miles of water. We decided to go check Home out and found a
restaurant but it was closed and shops but many were not open. It was as though they were not interested in
commerce or making money. Eilo suggested
-possibly because there was nothing to do with the money if they had it. We later found out most of the 600 inhabitants
on Home Island were either employed by the Australian government or were on welfare
thus there is little incentive to work.
We did find a café open and asked if we could BYOB (knowing there would
be no liquor store we brought our own) but were told politely we could not
drink – anywhere on Home. We asked
ourselves - Some Home!?! The food was
tasty and the staff were wonderful and, of course, we did not drink! There was a cute little Museum of local
history which we checked out:
Their claim to fame came in 2
parts. The first set of global
transoceanic cables (for telegraph) landed there in 1906 as a branch between
south Africa, southeast Asia and Australia.
The second was the early Auzzie Navy had an excellent early victory, catching
by surprise (the telegraph station radioed for help when they spotted the
German warship approaching, tipping the AU navy) and sinking a very troublesome
German Cruiser during World War I. There was little else to hold the ARCs
attention on Home. West island, the only
other inhabited island in the Atoll, was a 6 mile ferry ride away – but the
ferry was a huge hassle to get to so we only went over to West once. That was to go on a outrigger canoe safari
visiting 3 small deserted islands, doing some snorkeling and then partake of a
classic Auzzie beach BBQ. On West Island
we stopped at a gallery and clam farm.
Eilo befriended this rescued baby Red Footed Booby:
The clam farm growing various
types of clams:
…exports them all over the
world to salt water aquariums as the clams are excellent water purifiers.
We had 14 ARC folks go on
canoe excursion. There were 9 outrigger
canoes each equipped with an outboard.
Each
held 2 people, one for the two tour guides.
The AURORA crew teamed up in one and motored to the first island about 3
miles away – through very shallow and clear reef strewn water.
The outboards were modified and had coral
catchers protecting the props (same principal as the kangaroo catchers they
have on the big cross country Auzzie trucks).
Even though we bottomed out the prop a few times we did not destroy it. The first island saw a pileup of outrigger
canoes at the narrow shallow entrance to the lagoon – it was as thought the ARC
troops had started drinking early – but NOOOOO! We donned our snorkin’ stuff and fast
drifted around the island for about ½ mile – all the while thinking there is
going to be long walk back to the canoes.
We get out of the drink with our guide and the island there is only
about 100 yards wide which made for a nice short 2 minute walk back to the
canoes. Off the fleet of brightly
colored plastic outriggers went to another deserted island – but this one with
a few island style lean-tos fitted out tables and chairs. Our guides and hosts broke out massive
quantities of ice cold beer, white wine and bubbly. The ARC heads were quite happy sitting around getting mildly sloshed as lunch
was being prepared. It was a great lunch
and in true Auzzie style there was no a chance in hell we would run out of
alcohol – and it turned into another party. While no-one in particular was watching all of
a sudden we realized we were surrounded by a few thousand fairly large hermit
crabs who knew the game being played and came to feast on the left-overs. But there are no free lunches (as we all
know) so everyone had to pick a hermit crab and we held the island hermit crab
Gran Prix. The smallest of the crabs won
to everyone’s amazement (it was probably his high performance shell that gave
him the edge) – Ken’s was still in the starting box by the time the finish line
was crossed.
Then off again to a final
deserted island for some more snorkeling or a walk through the jungle or some serious lounging around in the water – all done with beer or wine in hand:
We
finally had to give up and head back to catch the last and only ferry over to
the other side of the Atoll – what a wonderful day. It made up for all the bars and restaurants
rumored to exist on Cocos – that’s still a rumor. Of the week we stayed at Cocos we spent most
time on deserted Direction Island and that translated to parties back to back
to back... We were invited for a quiet
diner on TULLA MHOR one night and tried to sneak by a party in full swing on
the OWL. They obviously spotted us
trying to steal by in our dinghy under the not so perfect cover of darkness and
about an hour later TULLA MHOR was boarded.
13 screaming drunk ARC heads on board at that point and everyone become
further un-glued as the night tore on – finally after signing and dancing the
night away until we gave up or just ran out of gas and had to abandon
ship. On other days there were 2 BBQ’s
organized on the beach. One for the 6
guys and one girl who just had recent birthdays:
Ken liked this cake Eilo made
for Gary who turned 60:
Everyone brought pot luck and
alcohol and that turned into a great session. Here’s Ken and his German
friend Gottfried starting to enjoy themselves:
The ARC sponsored another beach BBQ and found a few entrepreneurs who
brought excellent food over for another Auzzie beach party – the ARC heads
brought the drink:
Here are our Russian friends and a German friend (in middle with the blue shirt - he is the guy who invented the heat resistant re-entry tiles for NASA used on the space shuttles underside - another rocket scientist) thinking about some light drinking:
That session was
also the prize giving for leg 10 (remember we scored 2nd – so Eilo
collected more booty). AURORA hosted a
dinner party for 13 and that was a great feed and a lot of fun but did not get
too out of control as the participants seemed to be feeling the effects of
alcohol poisoning which always means we had better get to sea again and
recover.
We had heard rumors about sailing
the Indian Ocean, none of them good. We
are here to report that they are all true.
Even though it is one of the smaller oceans on the planet it does not
know that and acts like it is the biggest barest ocean in the universe. We started out on leg 11 – heading for
Mauritius – wind blowin’ out of the SE at 14 knots – very typical:
The Australian Navy was standing by to make sure we left:
Aurora had a lousy start. We had not even started to fly our Genoa when
we realized the race had started. We realized the race had started because
boats were blowing by us (with their genoas out) all headin’ in the same
direction. We proceeded to screw around
for about 2 minutes getting the genoa set while going way off course. What threw us off at the start was the ARC
starting boats never showed up to mark the starting line so there was no real
starting line and the starter could not see the starting line as he was around
the corner and announced it all on a VHF radio.
So the start was a real free for all.
There was one boat way out in front.
They obviously knew it was a free for all and just took off in front of
everyone knowing they could not be penalized for crossing the starting line
early as there was no starting line and no official there to observe the
start. That was our perfect start to a “perfect”
passage. So we got to the first turn
about 3 miles out which was a 100 degree turn to port , around the northern
most island of the Cocos Keeling atoll,
the next turn on our rhumb line passage being a mere 2730 miles (statute
not nautical) away. We executed that
first turn perfectly with our big genoa poled out to starboard and at the turn
gibed the main to starboard in 17 knots of wind. We went from 6.5 knots to over 8.5 knots
with-in seconds as the poled out downwind reach is one of the fastest points of
sail for AURORA. We quickly dialed in
the sails and got AURORA going steadily over 9 knots. Now we were passing boats regularly. There were 16 boats on this leg sailing in a
single class now (same as leg 10 as there are not enough boats to justify
multiple classes). At about 10 miles
distant we were out of the atoll’s wind shadow and the wind picked up to
between 21 and 25 knots. Now we are
flying doing well over 9 knots and bouncing off 10 frequently. With-in about 4 hours we were second behind
ARABELLA – our Russian friends who are fierce sailors on a big, heavy, fast 56
foot Beneteau. It would be a 12 day
passage for us. The wind at times blew
steady 31 to 36 knots and we were often holding well over 10 knots of
speed. We surfed one wave and got the
old girl clocked 18.2 knots and Captain Ken was thinking she is going to round
up at the bottom – but no – she stayed straight as an arrow – a fast arrow -
scary. We hit a top wind speed of 40
knots and had 2 reefs in the main with about 75% of the genoa furled in and we
were doing over 11 knots with spray coming off both sides of the bow. It was as though we were in a sport fishing
boat with two 1000 HP engines. The seas
had built to about 20 feet so it was a very exciting ride. The first few days were particularly exhausting,
as we had not gotten into the rhythm of watches and sleep deprivation. Gottfried’s HANAH a fast,
light, aluminum one off, highly automated, catamaran got off to 3 hour late
start as his crew was delayed by a volcano (but that’s another story) and they
blew by us on day 2 (but then turned south and eventually lost the wind):
On day three Eilo was taking out the computer
to email and when the boat was hit by a wave she decided to save the computer
but she got thrown across the boat…ouch! Cooking dinner she closed the fridge
door on her arms and then when serving dinner – Laksa Malaysian Soup, big
effort- she turned one bowl upside down.
Watched it pour on three of the companionway steps and the rest on the
cabin sole (floor)! Ken jumped to the
rescue and shoveled it back in to the bowl….and we ate it! Life on a boat!!! The high winds and waves went
on for 7 days. What an adventure! At that point the next closest boat behind us
was 41 miles to stern and the 4th boat was over 120 miles behind. The Russians were 25 miles in front of
us. We went fast but they went
faster. Eilo pointed out that the Indian
Ocean had ripped our Genoa in 2 places but lucky for us we had run out of wind
and thus could still fly her with-out (much) fear of additional rippage. Not much to do now except look for squalls
and see if we could get in their way to get a little lift. Captain Ken was watching one nice big squall
which we could get a lift on and noticed a nice funnel shaped cloud coming out
of the bottom of it and thought that’s strange – it kind of looks like a
tornado. So out come the binoculars and
on further inspection you could see the funnel extended all the down to the
water where it was kicking up all kind of turbulence (if you look close at the
water surface you can see that mayhem) about 5 or 6 miles away:
Captain Ken decided not to try
to ride that one. After day7 the fun was
over, the wind dropped to 9 knots for 4 days which is too slow for AURORA to
wing on wing without tearing up the rig or sails further so we had to sail a
long course going over the rhumb by 30 miles south, jibe, go over the rhumb
line by 30 miles north, jibe go 30 miles south – repeating that until either
the wind picked up, changed direction or we make Mauritius. Of course all the other boats were catching
up. Day 11 the wind picked up to 14 to
24 knots out of the east so we went back to wing on wing at mid-night and were
once again flying along at between 6.5 and 8.5 knots. The closest boat (in 3rd place)
now only 10 miles behind us… the Russians smoked us as they must have had a big
spinnaker up in the 4 days of light wind and were about 60 miles in the lead
now. Captain Ken was on watch one night
around 3:00 in the morning, minding his own business, and all of a sudden he
takes one square in the chest just below his mouth. A 6 inch long flying fish rocketed through
the cockpit and missed. Caught Ken by
surprise. Now what would have happened if he had been yawning and the fish had
flown 5 inches higher? High velocity
sushi would have been the result. When
wing on wing often AURORA would roll savagely 15 degrees to port then 15
degrees to starboard and back – every 2 seconds or so. We had to prop seat cushions between our
mattress and the cabin closet to keep the mattress and us from sliding off the
bed. Captain Ken was somehow sleeping
face down through one of those nasty rolling conditions one night and suddenly
he woke up and felt like his nose had been used to plow a field of furrows
through our mattress – luckily there was still some skin left on that nose –
just another boat bite. We made land in
3rd place but that does not include any handicaps. Stay tuned for our next blog to find out if
we scored a prize!!!
It is worth noting that our
friends on Sandvita lost their autopilot on day one and so hand steered the
boat the entire way! Now that is
something to boast of! Then towards the
end of the trip they turned on the engine only to find out (loud cracking sound
and engine not turning) that they had caught one of their lines in their
prop. They shut down the engine immediately
and Captain Lars had to dive….in the ocean….he waited for a pause in huge
swells and…tied to the boat….dove. He
cut the line and when he was safely on board he reversed the prop and the
problem was solved. Within minutes the swells were back. We all had adventures but we think they get
the prize for most challenging crossing.
Luckily they have four on board to share the helming!
