in Reunion
S/V Galatea update
Neil Scott
Sat 13 Jun 2015 17:25
Chris and Neil left Mauritius, and Mike, at 6pm on Monday the 8th after not being able to secure a suitable berth for Galatea. The Caudan “marina”, is hardly a marina, but rather a small harbor with nothing but wharf-side ties, not the place one would want to leave their boat unattended for any period of time. We checked out the Black River marina and the Taylor Smith hardstand operation - nothing suitable available at those place as well.
So after 30 hours in Mauritius, we departed for Reunion, 130 miles away. After light winds for the first 5 hours, on leaving the Mauritius wind shadow, we were treated to a steady 15 knot breeze all the way to Reunion - the best sailing we had the whole trip from Padang, Indonesia.
We arrived into the Port des Galets marina at 5.30pm on Tuesday where we were met by Pascal from Starnett marine who had agreed to provide us with a hardstand spot for Galatea. Luckily we had met Christina on Shakespeare in Chagos who had kindly introduced me to Jerome, the port des Galets harbor master who then put me onto Pascal. Otherwise we probably would not have been able to secure the hardstand spot as space at the marina and hardstand is very limited. By 10am on Wednesday we were safely on the hard after probably the easiest, smoothest haulout I have ever experienced. Pascal helped from the boat and the haul out team were excellent. Chris and I got to work quickly to prepare Galatea for an extended stay, taking down sails, running out the outboard fuel, pickling the water maker etc.
We made a trip across to St Gilles for a pleasant beachfront dinner on Wednesday evening, and then up to the volcano crater on Thursday morning. We found Reunion to be a very pleasant place - some think it to be too civilized, but after the chaos and general messiness of Indonesia, it was really nice to be in a well run, organized country with good food and really friendly, helpful citizens. The best example of this was the quick, effortless customs/immigration check in procedure, a real pleasure after the protracted, rip-off process we encountered in Padang prior to leaving Indonesia.
So ended the first leg of Galatea’s 2015 Indian Ocean crossing. We had covered about 4000 miles in the 2.5 months after leaving Phuket, through wonderfully deserted islands down the west coast of sumatra, the “exclusivity” of Chagos (albeit that there were more boats (9) there than we had seen since departing Phuket), and the pleasure of the relatively organized locations of Mauritius and Reunion.
A big thanks to Teague, Mike and Chris for their assistance, camaraderie and friendship on leg 1. I would not have been able to keep Galatea going on the slow trip west without their assistance. Thanks again guys.
Next update - September before the start of leg 2.
neil