Day 93, Year 5: Passage to Cochin, Day Twelve
Date: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Weather: Clear, Sunny Day; Winds Varied
Latitude: 09 degrees 45.576 minutes N
Longitude: 076 degrees 11.620 minutes E
Miles Traveled to Date: 1,470
We are motor sailing as fast as we can go with the current wind conditions trying to make it into Cochin by dark. We had planned to go slow and arrive in the morning, but around 5 am we got a couple of hours of 25 knot winds that carried us further north than planned. So we changed plans to try and make it in. The current ETA is 7:10 pm, which is just about sunset. So if all goes well, we will be at anchor off the Taj Malabar Hotel at the end of Willingdon Island awaiting morning check-in. Then we will proceed to the real anchorage off the Bogatty Hotel at the tip of Bogatty Island. Cochin is a city divided into sectors by various waterways and there are different sections of the city. We will start learning the ins and outs of Cochin starting tomorrow with check-in on Willingdon Island.
But first we have to run the fishing boat gauntlet to get there. I felt like I was playing a computer game this morning on my 4:30 to 7:30 am watch. There were boats long-lining, trawlers pair-trawling with a line between them, and small boats with flashing green lights that provided the real challenge. I would change direction to avoid one, and then it would head directly toward me. In the dark this just looks like a little flashing green fairy skimming across the water. This little game went on until the sun came up and then all the boats vanished just like magic. We read that the entrance to Cochin is filled with fishing boats and some will have surface nets for prawns. Mark is just now beginning to see a low shoreline. So, land-ho.
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| 100127 Day 93 India–Passage from Thailand to India |
