Day 176, Year 5: Snorkeling, Fishing, Ho-Hum
Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Weather: Partly Sunny Day; Winds 10-12 ESE
Location: Ile Fouquet, Peros Banhos Atoll, Chagos
I’m starting to sound like a broken record. We snorkeled . . . again. And Mark fished . . . again. But we never tire of it. It might sound the same, but each day is different and exciting. We snorkeled in the aquarium at low tide this morning. This time we were trying to get some video footage and we were a little more successful this time. We saw a big nurse shark sleeping among the coral, so we left him/her alone and went snorkeling elsewhere. They are supposedly harmless, but we avoid them if at all possible. In the afternoon, Mark and Ed went to shore to burn garbage and then trolled along the reef for fish. They caught one Bonito (a type of tuna that is not so desirable) but they had to keep him as they didn’t think he would live if thrown back. Guess we’ll figure out how to best fix Bonito. Mark lost another lure. It snagged on the reef and they couldn’t recover it, but Mark is going to go out at lower tide tomorrow and see if he can find it. It will be like looking for a needle in the haystack, but he might get lucky. While he was out fishing, I moved all of the things we have been storing in the v-berth back to the aft cabin where we normally sleep. We are going to try sleeping in the v-berth for a change and see if it is any cooler. I could not believe how much we have been storing in the v-berth. There is one huge suitcase of extra clothes that we will need when we reach the cooler weather in South Africa. Another carry-on size suitcase houses travel information and notebooks of important papers. Yet another carry-on size suitcase is filling up with gifts we have bought. Then there is the huge Monitor windvane, a hand-me-down cockpit teak table given to us by SeaBunny, charts that no longer fit in our chart tubes, extra pillows and blankets, all of our docklines that I so carefully washing and dried and then hid away from India pollution, and other odds and ends. The v-berth bed is obviously bigger than the aft cabin bed as all of the stuff barely fits. We’ll try the new arrangement for a night or two and decide if we want to keep it that way until we leave Chagos. Even if we love the new sleeping quarters, we will have to move the storage area back to the v-berth before heading for Madagascar. The aft cabin is way too open and things would fly everywhere in heavy seas whereas in the v-berth things can bounce from side to side but can’t fall out as there are walls on both sides. We have always reserved the v-berth for company, so now we will find out just how comfortable a situation we have been offering visitors.
Early in the day we went over to say hello to Bob and Peppy on Far Niente. They sailed out of Tacoma, Washington in 2002 and are headed in our direction. We invited them over for sundowners on Windbird and also invited Constance. Since we will be traveling the same “highway” for the next few months, it seemed like a good idea to get to know each other a little better. We had a nice evening together reminiscing about good times in the South Pacific and talking a bit about the upcoming adventure in Madagascar. All three boats plan to head to Salomon Atoll in a few days but it is so comfortable here that it is hard to break away.
