Day 12 Land Ahoy

Pearl of Persia
Andrew Lock
Sun 3 Nov 2013 03:00
Lat 19:44.1S Long 63:25.8E
The steady winds continued all night and we were blown along in a fairly
comfortable manner. Around 3am Sussanne spotted the dim glow of land below
the horizon and when Andrew came on watch at 5am we could just make out the
island in the distance, about 30 miles out. By 0830 we were making our way
through the reef, following the red and green buoys and finally tied up to
the quay. Not many boats come here so we were a bit of a novelty, so smiles
from the various officials, immigration, customs, health, quarantine, port
authority, each with their questions and forms to fill out, most of them the
same. We had to declare there were no stowaways, no one had died aboard, no
cholera, no rats or vermin, no explosives, the same forms that had been
used for a hundred years. But the chart of the island is an etching, black
and white, dated 1874, 'soundings in fathoms'......what's a fathom?