NORDLYS - Year end 2007

Year end 2007

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Sun 16 Dec 2007 15:15

2007 in Retrospect

34:11S 18:26E

Simon's Town SA

16th December 2007

Thinking back over 2007 sends my mind into a complete melange of thoughts and emotions. The contrasts have been many and varied. Starting in Fremantle Western Australia we enjoyed life to the full in this thriving town. Having been given a few introductions we found ourselves showered with much kindness and were accepted into a very interesting and stimulating collection of people. Much culture was achieved as we visited such as the local university open air cinema on a weekly basis with a crowd of people who could only be described as stimulating company. This was of course helped by the tasty picnic suppers which we all pitched in to provide along with some excellent wines. Tango demonstrations, a Korean 'midsummer night's dream, live Irish music all come to mind as memorable evenings. This soft life had to end and after putting several more thousand km on our trusty Landcruiser around Western Australia we sold it and set to sea at the beginning of May. 1500nm later and after what was to be the easiest passage of the year we were in Christmas Island.

A raised lump with almost no beaches, a huge variety of crabs, a phosphate mine and the site of one of the worlds biggest and most isolated refugee prisons, sorry a slip I should have said holding camps, all this is held together by three distinct groups of people. Chinese, Malay and Australians. There is little aggression but also little interaction between these groups. All that can be said is that with a change of government and the closing of the mine this island is likely to revert much more to nature in the future.

On to Cocos and we got our first taste of sailing in the ITCZ, not a pleasant experience as endless squalls and rain made life hard work. Cocos with its two distinct islands of people, about 150 Australians and just over 600 Muslim Malays is costing the Australian Tax payer an amount he or she would not believe if they knew of. What its future is I know not.

So to Chagos, or The British Indian Ocean Territory, where we visited Salomon atoll. One of the two that yachts are allowed to go to. Here we arrived just as most of the yachts were leaving. This combined with the fact that we had yet to discover any like minded company put somewhat of a damper on our spirits. We were beginning to understand an old friend who had once said to us, before we had ever visited an atoll, that 'if he never saw another **** palm tree again he would be a happy man'. Atolls, especially uninhabited ones, look fantastic in photos and are a marvellous experience to visit but for a us enough is enough. Give me a Pacific island with a population with which one can interact any day.

Several hundred hard miles later and we arrived in the Seychelles. These islands we were to find one of the highlights of the year. There may be corruption in high places but there is no sign of poverty, the schools are free and look good. The bus service works and is regular. The scenery is stunning and the people with almost no exceptions very friendly. Here it was that through sheer stupidity on my part we had a rather unpleasant and very expensive upset in the surf as we tried to get ourselves and the dinghy ashore. Apart from this mishap life was very good amongst these islands and their people.

The passage on to Madagascar is a known hard one and we were expecting far worse than we got. The wind never got above 25 knots, never went into the SE but stayed ESE and the current never ran west at more than a knot. The result was 590nm done exactly to where we wanted to go in three days and four hours. We had been expecting to end up many miles downwind at Mayotte in the Comoros. Sailors amongst our readers will understand when I say that a this point we had averaged over seven knots whilst at sea since Fremantle. This is nearly half a knot more than any other combination of passages. Bearing in mind that we had also had periods of calms, had used the engine infrequently and that Nordlys's waterline length is only thirty seven feet and you will understand why we say this ocean is hard work for both crew and boat.

Madagascar was fantastic. Lots of easy gentle cruising from one mostly safe anchorage to another. Charming if difficult to communicate with villagers and always the stirring sight of working dhows and pirogues under canvas all the time. At least I say canvas. Many of the sails were just old sacks but all were handled with much expertise. I am only sorry that I never managed to take a working dhow crew on Nordlys and to do a trip on one of their craft. Language was the problem as wherever one went smiles and waves were the order of the day. Then we enjoyed a trip to the centre of this amazing place. 1300km by road and we saw a lot of the place plus many types of the resident lemurs. This being achieved in the delightful company of Michael and Diana Hobson who have now visited us in many very out of the way places.

A frustrating passage to South Africa via a couple of Mozambique anchorages and we were ready to enjoy the delights of the game parks and the Drakensburg Mountains. This interlude was followed by fast, hard and often worrying sails down an inhospitable coast and nearly always in the powerful Agulhas current. The latter is fine when the wind is with it but when the SW wind comes in the seas do not bear thinking about. We were lucky to avoid any of this. I have never studied so many weather internet sites nor got so many forecasts in my life. This did not help us to avoid one of the worst thunderstorms to hit Durban in recent years. The story of this is earlier on the blog so I will not repeat it.

Arriving in False Bay after rounding the southernmost tip of this great continent was spectacular. The surrounding mountains give a magnificent backdrop. A blue blue sky and clear air combined with sparkling turquoise, blue and white water was one part of the story. The forty knot wind behind us was another. However having seen us coming the Commodore rang the bar and while quite unable to hear or be heard or even to talk to each other there was plenty of willing hands to fend off the rather out of control landing I made alongside the jetty. 8356nm miles logged since leaving Fremantle six months before. Now some days later we are happily enjoying this place. Cape Province does not entirely avoid the atmosphere we have encountered in earlier parts of South Africa but the razor wire is much less obvious and friendliness between races is more noticeable than in the more Afrikaner parts of the country we have visited.

I leave our readers with some visual highlights of the past year and wish you all a very Happy Christmas and fair winds throughout 2008.

David and Annette