Sri Lanka Arrival
Wildfox
Anthony Swanston
Tue 7 Feb 2017 04:54
We dropped
anchor at 2145 local time on 6th February under Watering Point
beside Galle. Interestingly, in seven
and a half years of cruising and 40,000 odd nautical miles, this is the first
time I have ever come into an anchorage in the dark. No wind on the last day so
we motored through the traffic separation zone on the south end of the
island. As we turned north the fleet of
ships turned slightly less north heading to the Red Sea and Suez. While there was a lot of light weather on
passage there was no bad weather and so we had some really nice sailing over
the 10 ½ days. We were only approached by two fishing boats. They are basically looking for
‘presents’. They did not get any. But it is scary because they come very close to my lovely paintwork in very battered boats.
So on
Tuesday morning we started the process of clearing in through Navy, Port
Authority, Health, Customs, Immigration and then, for some reason, the Navy a
second time. All of the officials wore
black shoes with black rubber soles. The
worst thing to wear on a boat. Anyway the compulsory clearance agent (actually
two of them) is / are good and they took me and the 17 officials through all of
the paperwork in just five quick hours.
The inner
harbour in Galle is a bit smelly and dusty so we took of straight away for
Mirissa, a major fishing and whale watching port 14 miles to the south. We did see several whales on the way along the
coast but none close up. Next time
maybe. But the crew members of the little charter fleet whose small marina we
are using are all great people and very helpful.
Sadly on
passage I had three major failures. Gigi, radar and water generator. Gigi is not suited to either boats or work of
any type. The radar and water generator failures
are a mystery and I have yet to see if either can be repaired here in Sri
Lanka. Without them I cannot go on. I am
uninsured without the radar and the wind generator cannot produce enough power
on its own to keep the systems up and running on passage. So watch this space…
