Salomon atoll
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Mon 18 Jun 2007 15:52
|
Cocos Keeling to Salomon,
Chagos.
Arrival
5:20S 72:15E
Saloman atoll, first
impressions.
18th June 2007
Well all things come to an end and so did our
passage. Not without a struggle as for the last 48 hours we had a
current of between one and two knots against us. Not a lot until you
realise that for a lot of it we were motoring at under five knots to conserve
fuel.
Salomon is much the same as any atoll but we
already realise that it does have a mystique all of its own. No
people live here, at least not since the British Government condemned the
small population who existed harvesting copra here to live in
Mauritius. We have just heard that they have won the last of endless court
cases to have the right to come back. The whole situation is
very complicated and one hears various versions. They were turned out
of here, Peros Banhos and Diego Garcia atolls when we gave the latter
to the Americans as a base for Indian Ocean operations. Mauritius however
has designs on these atolls and so has not helped the dispossessed
inhabitants. Apparently some of the money given to them by the British
Government as a sweetener never got through the Mauritian government.
Another version says that the British government wants all yachties out of the
place. I know not the answer but yet again we find ourselves privileged to
be in a place that no one else accept yachtsmen or those with enough money to
charter a yacht to bring them can get to.
As I write there are about fourteen yachts in the
two anchorages here and of those eight are due to leave in the next few
days. At some times of the year there can be forty yachts here.
Several of those are almost full time residents. In a few days I hope to
know more about such people but in the meantime we will swim, snorkel, walk the
pristine beaches and watch the boobies and terns which are so tame they will let
you approach them and then they will circle within feet of your head out of
sheer curiosity.
We have just had a single hander on board who we
last saw in the Marquesas and with whom we were holed up in
Hampton Virginia while a hurricane kept us waiting in port before the
passage south to the Virgin islands. This was back in 2001. He is an
amazing man in his early seventies who sails very competently around the worlds
oceans on his own mostly and yet who only took up sailing in his
sixties.
Happy times to all our readers from both of
us.
 Ocean passages through the convergence zones
 Damage to our mainsail. Out with the needle!
 Not all of the passage was hard work.
|