Departing Reunion

Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Fri 17 Jun 2011 13:24
Friday 17th June 1623 Local time 1223 UTC
 
21:18.64S 054:39.58E
 
Since Craig came out to visit us and to sail with me to South Africa we have demolished the jobs list including some real biggies. The only thing left on my current list is to get the heating system up and running. Though we have been aboard for more than one and a half years now we have had no occasion to try out the heating, but with night temperatures on land at Durban now down to 12degrees centigrade we can expect some low temperatures at sea. Throw in the forecast wind and rain and we will appreciate a bit of warmth through the night.
 
Perhaps having got more of a fright than I did when I broke my back Craig has arrived on board determined to do everything possible to make the passage easier for me and to take a bit of the load off me and my spine. As this could possibly be the toughest passage to date I am very proud of him for taking on that committment. 
 
Our overnight sail, the 135 miles from Mauritius to Reunion, though squally, was uneventful. It however served as a good refreshedr for Craig and broke in his sealegs again before this tougher passage.
 
Reunion is a dramatic island with its many peaks rising to almost 9,000 feet. It is lush in the interior but the shoreline is rocky with very few beaches. The population is around 750,000 surprisingly and it is very French. It is in fact a Department overseas of France and therefor is technically part of the European Union. At least when it comes to dishing out the grant money! The road infrastructure is incredible with what is effectively a motorway circling the island. The towns are all congested with traffic with the tens of thousands of cars despite the fact that almost 40% of the population don't work! Typically the French (unlike the "British") after milking these overseas colonies for the first hundred or two years like all other European colonial powers, have maintained their committment (unlike all other European colonial powers) and I am certain the resource now flows substantially in the opposite direction. Responsible government or hanging onto colonies for too long?
 
The morning we arrived from our night sail from Mauritius we decided we would get a few jobs off the list and then rest a bit. However once we got going and made good progress witha few of them we just kept going and going and that left a couple of days free to tour around. We toured the whole island with a hire car stopping off here and there for very expensive meals and snacks. We also tried two days running to take a highly recommended helicopter tour of the mountainous interior with its volcanoes and dramatic scenery being up at the base at 0700 each of the last two days. However on both occasions the tours were cancelled due to heavy cloud and rain over the island interior.
 
During out stay we worked our way down to a small beach and rocky shore with big breakers rolling in. There were quite a few surfers there. By the next day there was one less. Apparently with the torrential rain and the run off from the island the sea gets very murky and that combined with the sun being low in the sky at the end of the day caused three sharks to to mistake one of the poor fellows for dinner. His body was found and it seems he died of blood loss from the lascerations and bites. The culprits? Apparently white tip reef sharks - yes, the ones we spent so much time swimming with over the past year.
 
Getting into cooler waters now we are entering the terrain of the Great White, Tiger and Bull Sharks, all with a bad reputation so I think we can be satisfied that our current risk quota is all allocated to the actual sailing and we shall try to avoid swimming with sharks.  
 
If you care to have a look at the forecast we are challenged with have a look at passageweather.com for the area from Mauritius to South Africa for the next seven days and I bet you will be happier being where you are than where I am planning to go! Don't just look at the wind - look at the picture for the waves. Good grief! We really are truly out on our own now and more than ever our own safety is solely our own responsibility. There is just no one to call on out here. One of the problems that we face is that the Mozambique Current and a prevailing current on the east side of Madagascar collide with each other and the prevailing southwesterlies blowing across a deep southern ocean which then shelves extremely steeply from thousands of metres to under fifty metres at the south end of Madagascar. I have been advised by a South African sailor I met to give the south of Madagascar a 200 mile berth. This however puts us right in the face of a severe low pressure and its intense front. Remember lows in the Southern Hemisphere revolve clockwise, and in the winter which it currently is down here one low chases another unhindered round the southern ocean. That puts us right in the path of their northern sector.....  I have to find a way to dodge between the face of a low and the terrible seas to the south of Madagascar.  
 
Right now however we are rolling, slatting and slamming along with fifteen knots of wind directly behind us making only between 6 and 7 knots. Pah! 
 
No. We should enjoy this while we can as in a few days time it will probably seem like a good option!