Each morning it became harder and harder to participate on the Southern Cross Net, the loose association of a dozen boats heading for Rodrigues and Mauritius that tuned in at 8:30 am to give their positions, wind and sea info, and any other chatty information that may be of interest. These networks are a great source of additional input so we can choose to head further north or south to find steadier wind, smaller seas, or avoid squalls. In fact Voyager was doing a relay for us for a few days but eventually we couldn’t get clear copy from her either.
The last radio net we’d found was way back in Panama, and they are becoming harder to find as more boats opt for satellite phones instead of ssb radios.
On the last day we had contact with Voyager we also heard a new boat, Andros, checking in and they were only a day away from Cocos, inbound.
As Andros made her way into the anchorage late the next afternoon they called us on the VHF, they’d heard we were anchored there from the network, and offered us some fresh fish. They’d had a good catch and their freezer was already full!
With prices that make your eyes water in Cocos, free fish for the bbq was a great bonus and we dinghied across.
Rosario (Italian) and Elizabeth (English) instantly became the latest of the list of friends we’ve made while cruising and over the next few days we were like long time next door neighbours. Offers to get anything from Home Island if either of us was going across, sundowners on each others’ boats, and a great bbq on Wind Wanderer after a successful spearfishing trip with Rosario. He saw sharks getting very excited when we shot fish... they pick up the injured fish vibrations. I never saw them, although we had been seeing a lot of shark activity around the boat in recent days.
We grilled the fish whole and at about 10pm I threw the heads, tails, bones etc over the side. In seconds we had a feeding frenzy right next to the boat as 4 sharks whipped up the surface. No moonlight swims in Direction Island anchorage!
We were still waiting for the control for the generator but decided we’d have to leave whether it solved the problem or not. We both planned to head for Home Island in time to clear out and get the ferry across to West Island which we hadn’t seen yet.
Home Island has a population of about 500 Malays left over from the copra industry days. It also has a ‘supermarket’, ‘hardware store’, post office and police station, but little else.
West Island has the airport and is the tourist centre. The population is under 200! There is one club open from 5pm for a few hours, a very run down motel, a few beach front holiday rentals and a cafe that closes at 2pm. I suspect it opens some evenings. It also has a ‘supermarket’ with less than Home Island and a post office.
When we took the ferry across we planned to cram in a day of sightseeing and stock up from the supermarket before getting the 3pm ferry back.
Well, our sightseeing was over in half an hour. We saw a post office, a run down motel, a closed club, and airfield with one plane arrival, probably with our spare part on it but no way to get it before the last ferry back.
We walked to the cafe for a sandwich and milk shake ($44 for Sandy and I) and killed time reading old magazines waiting for the bus back to the ferry. What was particularly frustrating was that I had new, urgent work to do back on the boat so really didn’t need to spend the time reading 10 year old National Geographics.
I’d done a repair to the yankee furler that had required the sail to be loosened and dropped 100 mm down it’s track. I decided that morning to tighten it back up again, only to have the halyard part at the top of the mast and the sail come a third of the way down before the top swivel drum jammed. Couldn’t get the sail back up and couldn’t get it down. A real predicament and your worst nightmare if it happened at sea.
I called Rosario and we soon discovered this was going to take a trip to the top of the mast, not only to loosen the swivel and find out what was catching it, but to refeed the halyard through the inside of the mast. The line, installed by the rigger in Bundaberg at considerable cost had chafed through. It can’t have been done correctly. There was no time to tackle it right then so we hand furled the sail as best we could and tied it down.
That evening Rosario came over and having totally built and rigged his own boat there isn’t too much he hasn’t done before. He is also lighter, younger and more agile than I am so got the bos’ns chair job while I wound winches.
In spite of our best efforts we could not get the messenger line Rosario was feeding down from the top of the mast through the fitting holding the pulley wheels for the halyards, so decided we’d have to take the fitting out etc. As usual, the whole job turned out to be bigger than Ben Hur, tying us up for most of the next day too. But eventually we had everything working again.
Late that afternoon we said our farewells to Andros as they headed out for Rodrigues and that night we were the only boat left. It was rather nice having the place to ourselves and over sundowners we once again pondered over how lucky we’d been to have bad fortune save us from catastrophe. If that halyard had chafed through before we got here, or a day or two after leaving, we’d have been in a fine pickle.
The next day we spent running the water maker so we could start off with a good stock of water for the long voyage ahead. Conditions at sea are sometimes too rough and we get airlocks that stop water production.
Late in the afternoon we saw a yacht coming into the anchorage, well they were circling around trying to find a gap in the coral. We’d heard them on the VHF reporting their arrival earlier, so gave then a call and talked them in. They’d have ended up grounded for sure the way they were heading.
The boat is called Sikkim and has 3 Spanish guys on board, from Barcelona. I fell in love with Barcelona in my 20s so we had a good chat by radio... they were still under a quarantine flag. They had fought big seas and strong wind coming in, so we decided to get one more good night’s sleep and leave before the wind gets up.
We upped anchor at 0630 and left with sleepy farewell waves from Sikkim.
Until next time...