12:05.00S 096:52.00E

 

Cocos is another atoll, with the main population being on West island and Home island. Where we anchored, Direction island, there is nothing except a coconut strewn beach with a couple of lean-to and a rather surreal public telephone. The sea is a beautiful turquoise blue and there are dolphins that continually swim around the bay. All in all very idyllic and similar to Suwarrow in the Cook islands.

 

The wind continued to howl for the next four days, the only respite being at about 1700 hours when we went ashore for sun-downers and lit a fire on the beach. We spent some lovely evenings doing this, slowly going through the job list for our next leg down to Mauritius. We have Ghost back up to scratch and having done a rig check, spliced halyards and checked everything for chafe, we were good to go.

 

Home island has a population of Malaysians, all Muslim, who are the descendants of slaves brought over to process the copra, while West island is mostly Australians. There are artists, school teachers and mechanics, but the island seems to have a military feel to it and as far as we can tell it is just an outpost in the middle of the Indian ocean. One thing that is very evident is the amount of plastic and general garbage that is coming down from Indonesia. The windward beaches are absolutely full of everything from flip-flops to toothbrushes. It is horrific! There are several artists ashore who are at least trying to recycle some of the detritus into art, some of which is very impressive.

 

We caught the ferry to West island for the day and having provisioned, we returned to Direction. The heavens opened and with everything stored in cardboard boxes we were fighting with papier mache by the time we got back to the boat.

 

We upped anchor the next morning and set off for Mauritius, some 2300 miles towards South Africa.