At the moment the dry season in Seychelles is anything but. As I contemplate what we have been up to since Annie has been back on board (which is tricky because we don’t seem to have done very much), I have the comfort of the patter of raindrops on the coachroof and Annie’s gentle snoring. I say “comfort” because at times like these Vega is my embracing womb within which I am secure, dry and protected. Well, almost dry because a dribble of water from our saloon hatch falls intermittently on to my shoulder to remind me that this is after all just a boat and here is yet another task, to find and rectify the leak. The weather has been unseasonably cloudy and windy. A local fishing boat overturned recently in the waves and the skipper was trapped in his cabin and sadly drowned. Charter boats (catamarans) have been going out so we are assuming there are sheltered anchorages.

Yesterday we put on the mainsail. There must be a nautical _expression_ for putting on a sail but for the life of me I cannot think of one. Do you “rig” a sail? Our mainsail is fully battened which means it has four full width fibreglass battens that slide into pockets sewn across the sail. Once inserted the battens provide stiffness and a curved shape to the sail, increasing its effectiveness or “power”. The front edge (“luff”) of the sail is attached to blocks with small wheels on either side. These blocks are inserted into the mast through a rectangular opening just above the boom. They are then free to slide up and down the mast with the sail attachment protruding through the open groove that runs up the back of the mast. On the rear edge (“leach”) of the sail are three reinforced holes (“cringles”) through which are run the reefing lines. These lines are tied around the boom, run up to and through their respective cringle, down to and around a pulley wheel at the back of the boom, along the inside of the boom to another pulley wheel where the line comes out of the front of the boom and then back to the cockpit. Reefing the sail involves lowering it to allow whichever reefing line is selected to be tightened, pulling its cringle down to the boom. Our second or middle reefing line (which you may recall is the one we most frequently use) is also attached to the luff of the sail so that, when we reef, the smaller sail is held down at both the luff and leach (“tack” and “clew” respectively are the bottom corners of a sail). The luff for the first and third (smallest sail size) reef has to be attached manually onto the “horn”at the front of the boom which means one of us leaving the cockpit and going forward to make the attachment.

Now, the point of all this is that the battens, slider blocks, reefing lines, tack and clew (of the full sail) have to be attached/inserted when putting the mainsail back on. The easiest way to do this is as the sail is slowly raised on a still day with the boat facing into what little wind there is. Here we are berthed with the strong gusty wind coming from the stern. This meant doing most of the above without raising the sail or, alternatively, turning the boat around to face the wind. With the gusts coming through strongly and from the side I went for the non raising option. All I can say is that for lots of reasons it is hard work! We had three complications. Firstly each batten has a plastic end cap for the end pushed along the pocket and into the leach of the sail. I soon discovered that the end cap on the second longest batten had come off and remained lodged within the leech of the sail, preventing the batten from fully inserting. At moments like these I call for Annie. She worked out that a long stiff wire would fit between the sail stitching and into the batten pocket, enabling the plastic cap to be dislodged and pushed sufficiently along the pocket to allow the (now taped) batten end to pass it and reach the leech. After this I needed to slide the sail cover towards the rear of the boom (it runs in a channel along the boom - the sail is only attached at either end, being “loose footed”). When leaning across to pull the cover I leant on the edge of the cockpit bimini cover and broke the retaining zip at the front. Annie to the rescue again with a temporary but secure sewn repair. Finally our new lazyjack arrangement (the lines from the sail cover along the boom that go up to the mast at height and prevent the lowered mainsail from falling off the boom) needs adjusting as it doesn’t secure the back of the sail. As I am writing this the solution has occurred to me which is obvious and straightforward.

One triumph of the week has been fitting and programming the new AIS. It worked first time and we were picked up by our friends at anchor with full boat information coming through loud and clear (well, clear). Sonny, the Raymarine expert here, brought our plotter back, plugged it in and hey presto, full AIS functionality! Things then got even better as, with the help of Jon from Hecla, we fitted the new Duogen regulator. Peter at Eclectic Energy confirmed that the Duogen regulator could be detecting the charge from the solar panels and assume the batteries are full, hence dumping the Duogen charge prematurely. Our new bypass switch, now fitted, will allow us to route the Duogen charge directly to the batteries if this happens with the new regulator. I had intended to wire the solar panels through the Duogen regulator (which would also overcome the problem) but on reflection I will still use the separate solar panel regulator as this seems to be working well. If we need a third solar panel for our portable freezer I will wire this through the Duogen. That won’t provide additional charging at night and this is where deep cycle marine batteries would be better than the car batteries we now have.

Two jobs that are on the nice to do but non essential list are the new engine control panel for the cockpit and the flat belt replacement for the current alternator v belt. The former I would like to do before we leave the Seychelles, the latter can wait. Simply putting an extra retaining bolt on the alternator tensioning arm now prevents the original bolt from slipping and the belt slackening.

So, apart from a trip to the supermarket and immigration office to extend my visa, Annie hasn’t left the marina and is getting restless. At least her blogs are nearly up to date. For some reason I was refused more than one month for my visa when arriving back at the airport whereas Annie was given three months without a quibble! I therefore had to extend mine to allow an extension of our import permit for Vega until October. While visiting the wrong immigration office in the port we noticed two of the enormous tuna fishing boats unloading their cargo. These boats (ships actually) are licensed to fish Seychelles waters and do so by towing a purse sein net strung between two of the vessels. From the size of each ship you might imagine the size of net they are using. These nets will not discriminate between tuna and the sharks, whales and dolphins feeding on them. This is why you see “dolphin friendly” or “line caught” splashed prominently across your tuna tin label to make you think tuna is being “responsibly” sourced. Of the six vessels operating here, two are Spanish and four are French. You may recall the three 10,000 tonne cargo vessels we photographed in Spain unloading tuna from around the Canary Islands. Given that French and Spanish boats are likely to be operating legally and that, amongst others, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Russian and East European boats are all out in the oceans hoovering up anything that swims on an industrial scale, legally, illegally and largely unregulated, it is possible to envisage the scale on which our oceans are being decimated. It is no wonder that conservation organisations are demanding protection for our oceans and why we should pessimistic about the current international governmental conference, on precisely this, achieving anything significant. We can’t even take action address climate change, never mind protect the worlds oceans. As ever, greed, vested interests and public indifference will win out. We took some photographs of the fishing vessels to illustrate the point. We thought we were receiving friendly waves from the port operatives but when leaving the port were stopped and instructed to delete our photos. Which we did - almost.

Talking of airports, we are once again directly under the flight path into an international airport. This is the most spectacular because we are only a short distance (in aeronautical terms) from the runway and where the aircraft are making their steep turn onto the final approach. The airport is built on reclaimed land jutting out into the sea at the base of and parallel to the steep mountainous spine of the island. We are about halfway down the island and the airport is at the bottom end. The consequence of a misjudged turn is obvious. You can set your clock by the daily arrival times - and the island does, much like the cruise liners arriving at a Caribbean island. Emirates flies in twice a day - 0830 and 1330. Turkish Airlines and Quatar each have a morning flight. One (unidentified in the dark) comes in at 0515 every day. Yesterday it needed a second attempt to land. I had been wondering where flights are diverted to if landing is not possible and apparently it’s Madagascar or Mauritius. Could be worse. One lady was telling me that the last time she flew back to the Seychelles it took five attempts to land the aircraft. It seems the only aircraft too large to land here is the double decker A380 and only then because the airport doesn’t have the ability to unload the top deck. Some huge cargo transports have landed - slightly sinister looking with high wings, four engines and t-tail. Probably military but no visible markings to tell from where.

As the rain eases but the wind picks up and the sky remains battleship grey we have scaled back our shakedown sailing plan to an afternoon motor with anchoring for an hour to try and rig the reefing lines, which proved a task too far yesterday. Tomorrow we will try and hire a car and look around the island while also securing a cruising permit to visit the other islands, starting on Sunday.

SY Vega