Reunion
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Sun 4 Nov 2012 20:07
20:56.4S 055:16.9E
It is a short hop (less than 24
hours) from Mauritius to Reunion, but the waves were quite nasty and
this led to seasickness and sail damage on many boats. We had
our share of seasickness on Anastasia and the wave motion caused the clew
ring to be ripped off the mainsail, meaning we had to sail reefed for half the
trip. Also the autohelm started randomly disconnecting with a message
about rudder position loss and one of the winches jammed up with all
the salt they have absorbed on our travels. We had a few repairs to
sort out on arrival in Reunion.
Reunion is technically just another region of
France which means there are good connections to Europe and a lot of facilities
for tourists on the island (although, surprisingly, the worst
internet support I have experienced in our travels). The good
news was that, with no import/export rigmaroles to contend with, I could
get the new autohelm part shipped from Belgium in just five days. The
downside to Reunion being France was that Anastasia is
French registered so we could not get duty free fuel, whereas the
non-French boats could.
We hired a car to be able to visit more places,
although in the end we did not have time to do any long trips and the car was
mostly used for visits to the supermarket and restaurants.
Reunion has an active volcano which we saw both
from the ground, on a bus tour arranged by the ARC, and from the air in a
helicopter tour of the island. The helicopter tour really brought home the
roughness of the terrain of this young island. There are villages
scattered about the three caldera that are only accessible on foot or by
helicopter.
October 31 brought Halloween and, with
several American boats on World ARC, this obviously had to be
celebrated with a fancy dress party. There were some impressive
costumes on show, with some people actually planning far enough ahead to have
new crew members bring outfits from home. The Anastasia crew contributed
Batman, Tooth Fairy, Hit Girl, Strawberry Man and Zombie.
There were strong winds in the port for the last
two days which prevented us from installing the repaired mainsail. Instead
we spent a whole day servicing all the winches. Finally, on the afternoon
of the last day, the wind abated and we spent the evening installing the
mainsail (which takes a couple of hours on Anastasia). The autohelm
part also arrived that afternoon which meant that fitting
it was a job for the morning of our
departure. We got it done but we were the last boat to cast off, just
ten minutes before the start of the leg.
Daniel provided some comic relief for the locals as he was a bit slow getting on
the boat after releasing the last line and had to do a long jump from the
quay.
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