by Judy Handley | Mar 18, 2010 | Passage to Addu Atoll, Maldives, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 143, Year 5: Passage to Gan, Addu Atoll, Maldives
Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Weather: Sunny; Winds NE 3-5 Knots; Still Hot
Latitude: 05 degrees 08.135 minutes N
Longitude: 073 degrees 47.389 minutes E
Miles to Go: 358
No change. We are still motoring slowly south. In fact, we are headed directly south to Addu Atoll. When we started out we had to head SE to get around a couple of atolls, but by noon today we were able to turn due south. That puts what little wind there is on the hind quarter, and 5 knots from behind is not enough to move this boat forward without a motor assist. We are motoring very slowly trying to conserve fuel, so our speed varies between 4 and 5 knots. Yesterday and during the night we had a current against us and were going even slower. But slowly, surely, we will get there.
by Judy Handley | Mar 17, 2010 | Passage to Addu Atoll, Maldives, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 142, Year 5: Passage to Gan, Addu Atoll, Maldives
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Weather: Sunny with No Wind; Hot, Hot, Hot
Latitude: 06 degrees 48.720 minutes N
Longitude: 073 degrees 17.820 minutes E
Miles to Go: 472
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It is 4:45 in the afternoon and we are out here still waiting for St. Pat to send some wind our way. But so far, no luck. We just turned off the engine and tried to sail and we were going a whopping 1.2 knots which would get us to Addu Atoll after the 1st of April. So the motor is back on. Mark just checked the latest GRIB files and they indicate that we will get nothing more than 5 knots over the next six days and then the wind goes to ZERO. So we are settling in with the thought that we will motor slowly all the way. This is to be expected when you are nearing the equator, but you can always wish for wind.
In addition to having very little wind, it is just plain hot out here. It is somewhere around 90 degrees F with clear skies, so that sun is relentless. I have misplaced my water thermometer and we don’t have an outside thermometer, so we are only estimating the outside temp using the inside temp of 92 degrees as a guide.
Constance had a scare this afternoon. They heard a noise and then the motor started overheating. Ed dove over the side and immediately saw that pieces of fishing net had wrapped around the prop. He was able to quickly cut it away and get going again. He doesn’t think he hit a net but just rather picked up a stray piece floating in the water.
Tonight there is a new moon which means no moonlight at all on this passage, but we have seen nothing all day-no ships, no fishing boats, no nothing-so hopefully it will continue like that through the night. We are traveling down the eastern side of the Maldives well offshore of the closest atolls, so we shouldn’t have local traffic either. So watchs shouldn’t be as intense as they were off the coast of India.
Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day and have a green beer for Windbird!
by Judy Handley | Mar 16, 2010 | Maldives - Uligan, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 141, Year 5: Underwater in Uligan
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Weather: Sunny and Hot
Location: Uligan Island, Haa Alif Atoll, Maldives
We started our day with another snorkel. We realize that we are headed to Chagos and that there will be fantastic snorkeling there, but every place is different and we wanted to see as much as we could while here in Uligan. It was foggy in the early morning when we arrived on Sunday and again yesterday, but today it was bright and sunny, so we were in the water before 8:30 am. Both of our previous snorkels were in the afternoon and we know from experience that the fish are just never as prolific as they are in the morning. That held true today. Instead of one or two fish of the different varieties, there were many. The Powder-blue Surgeonfish were out in numbers as were the Collared Butterflyfish. These guys are about as big as my hand and have pearly gray scales trimmed in gold. The gray scales make them darker than most butterflyfish, but they have a bright red tail and a very distinctive vertical white band just behind the eye. This is the collar, thus the name ‘collared’. Mark spent time chasing a Big Long-nosed Butterflyfish to try and get a picture and he was successful. And then he came upon a mass of the Collared Butterflyfish hanging out with one lone Oriental Sweetlips. Sweetlips have horizontal black and white bold stripes with a yellow and black polka-dotted tail and dorsal fin. Mark was able to hover over the mass of Collared Butterflyfish and get photos of the Oriental Sweetlips. We saw Bluelined Snapper and Bluelined Surgeonfish, Black Triggerfish and Mustached or Titan Triggerfish, but the Clown Triggerfish did not show itself today. It is so distinctive with its big white polka dots on the bottom half, black on the top half, orange lips, and a yellow tail outlined in black. We’ll probably never see one of these again, but it was such a joy to see the ones yesterday. And we did not see those strange sea cucumbers today. Since our sighting of them yesterday was so unusual, I looked in our books to identify what we did see. Here’s what I found out:
Sea cucumbers are echinoderms. Echinodermata means ‘spiny skin’ and refers to the tough, sometimes rough and spiny outside. All types of sea stars, including feather stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers are classified as echioderms. The sea cucumbers every where else we have been on our voyage around the world simply lie on the bottom looking lifeless. You can pick them up and use them like squirt guns, and then gently put them back. But the sea cucumbers we are seeing here are active creatures. The first day we snorkeled we found one lying on the bottom looking lifeless as usual. Mark picked this one up and brought it to me to hold. But three of the ones we saw yesterday were very active. I thought I should try to identify this creature to make sure it is a sea cucumber and harmless. It is a sea cucumber and it is harmless. Glad to know that. Its scientific name is Bohadschia graeffei. From what I can find in the books we have, the movement indicates it was possibly getting ready to release sperm into the water. The sea cucumbers we saw were firmly attached to a bommie by one end with the other end reaching up and out and swaying in the water. When we swam over to investigate we could see that the end swaying in the water had tentacles that looked like a frilly black scalloped crocheted doily.
Mark and Ed spent most of this afternoon on the island checking out. It was a much longer procedure than checking in, but Mark reported that they did get a chance to talk to the locals and they got a closer look at how people live. They returned around 4:30 pm and we spent the next hour getting ready to leave here and head south. Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day and we will celebrate by beginning the 500 mile passage to the southern-most atoll in the Maldives, Addu Atoll. There is absolutely no wind being forecast, so our 500 miles will probably be a slow trip. It could take us a week to get there. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
by Judy Handley | Mar 15, 2010 | Maldives - Uligan, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 140, Year 5: Visiting Uligan Village
Date: Monday, March 15, 2010
Weather: Sunny and Hot
Location: Uligan Island, Haa Alif Atoll, Maldives
Uligan Island is now divided in half and there is a chain link fence dividing the halves. On the southern half of the island a three-star resort is being built. The people here tell us that they wanted a three-star so some ‘normal’ people could come and stay. What the Lonely Planet lists as budget resorts go for $150 to $400 a night, meals included. Mid-range resorts are more like $500 to $700. The top end resorts go for $800 to $3,000 a night, meals not included. Who in the world spends this much money for a vacation? Well, Tom Cruise for one. Evidently he often vacations in the Maldives. But I’m supposing the three-star resort is in the mid-range. So that is what Uligan will have. On the northern half of the island there is only one village on the western side where we are anchored. This little village is laid out like a cross, with a short street going east to west and a longer street going north to south. I say ‘street’ but there are no cars. We saw one motor bike and one bicycle with no place to go. And we did see the island’s only official vehicle which is an ambulance. But back to the village walk. The streets are sand as is everything on the island. The east-west street was not very long, but the north-south street might have been a quarter of a mile long. No food is grown here because the sand does not support it. There are breadfruit trees, a few papaya trees, and a couple of other fruit trees, some of which were covered with netting to keep away the fruit bats. Fish is the basis of most food here with rice and other staples being imported. But with fish as the main source of food, it was a funny thing that we saw no fishing boats. Evidently the village has one fishing boat that is out now, and some individuals have boats, but there are none of the small boats that we saw so many of in Thailand and India.
We arrived on the island just before 11 am and a young man named Hammadh was waiting for us at the concrete sea wall. We don’t know how he knew we were coming, but this is a small village of about 480 people and news probably travels very quickly. Not that many yachties stop by here and since we are one of their only sources of income, being there to greet us is important. And besides, you are not allowed to walk around the village without a guide, so seventeen year-old Hammadh was our guide for the day Our first stop was at the office of Antrac Maldives. This is a tiny little one room building where the Uligan agent for Antrac works. His name is Imaad Abdulla, but he is away right now. Hammadh is actually one of Imaad’s six brothers. We sat outside under a breadfruit tree for shade and read the letters of thanks that cruisers have written to Imaad over the years. It was fun to see entries by friends who were here earlier this year. Next we walked down the north-south sand street lined with walls built of coral and mortar. These walls are about 5 feet high, just high enough to give privacy in the yards behind them. As we approached the school, Imaad called us on Hammadh’s cell phone to apologize for being away and to welcome us to the Maldives. We explained that we will not be staying long. We are allowed to stay for 72 hours without paying for an agent, and that is what we have decided to do. We will leave on Wednesday morning. We watched the students in grades 8, 9, and 10 leaving the school. All of the young women were covered from head to toe in a flowing white Muslim uniform and most were carrying umbrellas to shield them from the relentless sun. The young men were dressed in dark slacks and white shirts. They were less than anxious to have us take photos of them, but I did get a few. We then walked on to see the Energy Resources Pilot Project which consists of more than 20 wind generators and a few solar panels sitting in a field of weeds. The grand opening of this project was in January of 2009, but it has already been abandoned. The wind generators were supposed to supply power for the village for four to five hours each night, but Hammadh said it just didn’t work. What a shame. But somehow the villagers are getting enough power to keep their televisions running. Almost every home has a television. Some can only receive the local stations, but others have a huge array of choices. While we were in the little store on the island, we watched the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel. We stopped by the Antrac office on the way back to the sea wall and checked our email. They are receiving internet by using a 3G telephone modem like the one we used in Cochin. Hammadh told us that the way young men find wives from other islands is through chat rooms on the internet. Many of the young people own laptops. I have no idea where the money comes from as there is no industry on this island and the resort that will bring in income has not been built yet.
We headed back to Windbird and waited for Hammadh and gang to deliver fuel to us. We had wanted to buy 250 liters but at $1.20 US a liter we decided to get only 80 liters and hope for wind. The 80 liters we did buy cost us $96 US dollars. We paid $4.54 per gallon for this diesel. Ouch! And by the way, in last night’s log I erroneously stated that diesel in Cochin was $1 US per gallon. I meant $1 US per liter. The currency of choice here is US dollars and since there are no banks and no businesses other than the one little store, we would have no way of getting local currency. So we broke into our reserve of US dollars. After the diesel was delivered, we went for a late afternoon snorkel. This time Mark took along his underwater camera. I just had to have some pictures of the Powder-blue Surgeonfish and Mark got those for me. He also got great video and photos of the strangest looking underwater creature we have seen. It looks like a sea cucumber but is much more active than most. It attaches one end to a bommie and twists and turns its long body in the water. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. And I finally got to see a Clown Triggerfish. This was in deeper water so Mark was not able to get a good photo, but I had great fun swimming with this guy for a while.
It is hard to believe, but tomorrow we go ashore to check out. But I’m sure I can talk Mark into one more snorkel before we head south.
by Judy Handley | Mar 14, 2010 | Maldives - Uligan, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 139, Year 5: Arrival in Maldives
Date: Sunday, March 14, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny, ENE 4-5
Latitude: 07 degrees 04.685 minutes N
Longitude: 072 degrees 55.223 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 281
Location: Uligan Island, Haa Alif Atoll, Maldives
The wind never returned so we ended up slowly motoring through the night and early morning to reach here about 9:30 am. We were a bit surprised to see an Australian boat anchored off the southern tip of Uligan, and to find another boat in the main anchorage. This one ended up being a French boat we knew from the Bolgatty anchorage that is traveling to Chagos. So we have company here.
Uligan is a low island like all islands in the Maldives and is covered with green vegetation and ringed with beautiful white sand beaches and aquamarine water. Unfortunately, we have to anchor out in deeper water so that we don’t damage the coral and it doesn’t get a chance to damage us. Shortly after arriving, the Customs, Immigration, Public Health, and Coast Guard representatives (seven in all) boarded our boat and took their places in the cockpit. Check-in was quick and efficient and all of the young men were most pleasant.
We haven’t been ashore yet, but we have been snorkeling. The 1998 El Nino year sun bleached all of the coral here, but it is coming back and we saw a wonderful array of different fish. We saw loads of Powder Blue Surgeonfish. This is a fish we have not seen before and it is beautiful. But most other varieties of fish were not as numerous. We saw one of this and one of that, but that was fine with us. It was just such a wonderful treat to be able to jump in the clear, beautiful water.
Low tide is early in the morning, so if the sun is shining I might snorkel the reef again to try and get some photos. Then around 10 am we will go ashore and arrange to get fuel delivered and see the town of 480 people. There is a small store here that sells a few essentials, but there is no bank or ATM. The currency here is the Rf or rufiyaa. Somehow this is attached to the US dollar so that the exchange rate between the two always stays the same. So we will have to spend some of our precious US dollars to buy fuel and to pay for anything else we decide to do. The price of diesel here is very high, $1.20 per liter or $4.80 per gallon. We thought $1 per gallon in Cochin was expensive, but Uligan prices are higher. After we get some fuel, we will spend a couple of days here and then head south to the southern-most atoll in the Maldives, Addu. Both Constance and Windbird need help with repairs, and we are hoping that reports we have from other cruisers are correct. They indicate that the level of workmanship there is very good. Constance really needs someone to take a look at their malfunctioning generator and we would love for someone to take a look at our freezer compressor. The trick here is to get permission to anchor in a second Maldivian port without paying the $500 US cruising permit. We just can’t afford to do that.
by Judy Handley | Mar 13, 2010 | Passage to Uligan, Maldives, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 138, Year 5: Passage to Maldives, Day Three
Date: Saturday, March 13, 2010
Weather: Bright and Sunny; Winds 15 Knots, Backing from S to E
Latitude: 07 degrees 39.546 minutes N
Longitude: 073 degrees 35.499 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 227
We wished for wind and we got it, but since early this morning we have done everything possible to slow ourselves down so we won’t get to Uligan in the middle of the night. Coral atolls are not places you want to try and anchor without good light, so we are sailing with a double-reefed main and headsail. Yesterday the winds were clocking, moving in the direction of clock hands, but today they have been backing (moving counter-clockwise). In the beginning of the day we were on a beam reach with 20 knots of wind, but for most of the day the winds have been moving further and further behind us and have settled in at about 15 knots. We had a bit of a rowdy morning with a period of 24 knots of wind and seas that were rolling us back and forth. But as the winds settled and we slowed down, the ride has been a bit smoother.
I mentioned in yesterday’s log that the Maldives sit on the Laccodive-Chagos Ridge. In the ocean, a ridge is formed when two tectonic plates overlap. Imagine holding a sheet of paper in each hand and then overlapping them slightly. If those two pieces of paper were plates on the bottom of the ocean, where they overlap is where balsalt magma pours out of the earth’s crust making rock. In this case, the magma built the Deccan Plateau and then huge volcanic mountains rose up from the plateau. The mountain tops were literally blown away by volcanic eruptions and cup-shaped craters were formed. When these mountains descended back into the sea as the ocean floor settled, corals built on the crater rims. This went on for a very long time until little coral islands rose above sea level. Each atoll looks like a string of pearls, the pearls being the islands, but under the water between the little islands are more coral formations or reefs. So traveling in and out of an atoll must be done in a pass that is clear of coral and it should be done with the sun at your back so you can see any coral bommies just under the water ahead of you. This is a bit of simplistic explanation and maybe not totally scientifically correct, but I hope it helps to understand a little of how atolls are formed and why we must enter an atoll during the daylight hours. The English word ‘atoll’ is actually derived form the Maldivian word ‘atolu’, so I’ll call the Maldives the mother of atolls.
