Day 95, Year 5: Bustling Kochi and the Anchoring Story
Date: Friday, January 29, 2010
Weather: Clear, Sunny Day
Latitude: 09 degrees 59.038 minutes N
Longitude: 076 degrees 16.214 minutes E
Location: Bolgatty Hotel Anchorage, Cochin, India

Our two mile trip from Willingdon Island to the Bolgatty anchorage went without a hitch. Sometimes the depths were as little as 2.4 meters and we need 2 meters, so we were just skimming by. Once we reached the anchorage, however, we had a nightmare of an anchoring experience. All is well, but I don’t want the three-hour anchoring saga to overwhelm the experience of our first trip ashore here. So that story gets told first.

It is very hard to capture the feeling of being here in a few words, so I think I will just let you follow us through the afternoon ashore. First, the old name for this city is Cochin and that is the name that is still on all charts and in the cruising guides. The new name is Kochi, so you might find references to this city under either name. We are anchored between long, thin Bolgatty Island and the mainland. We are anchored just about half way between the two and the distance in either direction to land is less than a quarter of mile. Mark and Ed went to Bolgatty Island and paid the Bolgatty Hotel a fee of 100 rupees that allows us to go ashore there and get as much water as we want for one week. We cannot use that water as our drinking source, but we can shower, wash dishes, wash the boat, and wash clothes with it for the total sum of $2.22 US for the week. Not bad. Around 1:30 pm, we headed to the mainland and the shopping area of Cochin known as Ernakulam. We arrived at the concrete dinghy dock and climbed up onto the walkway. A man was there working on a fishing net that I promptly got caught in two times-once with my foot and the other with my backpack. You have to be careful of the nets! We walked inland from the dock and found the main walkway. Almost immediately we were in an area of fruit, veggie, and fresh fish stalls. The green beans and okra were beautiful, the oranges looked delicious, and the bananas looked even better. There were pineapples and pomegranates, Indian kale, onions, potatoes, and other things we don’t know about yet. And there were just so many people. The line leading to the women’s restroom was very long and every women in the line had on the exact same sari. The sari is one lone piece of material wrapped and tucked about a women without the need of pins or buttons. It is worn with a choli which is a tight fitting, short sleeved blouse that does not reach the waistline where the skirt of the sari begins. So a bit of the mid-section is always exposed. But a part of the skirt comes back up and wraps over the shoulder covering most of the midriff. That part of the sari is called the palloo. We tried to find out why everyone was in the same dress, but we had no luck. So we continued our walk through the food stalls to the first main cross street names Shammugham Road. There were policemen to direct traffic, but the traffic was uncontrollable. We have never seen so much traffic before in our lives. And much of the traffic is big busses and the little auto rickshaws that put speed over safety, so crossing the street was a very scary experience. We made it safely, however, and then walked up Banerji Road. But at least we had a sidewalk, so we only had to watch the incessant traffic. We stopped at an internet café to quickly check our g-mail account. We walked on to first major cross street that is named Mahatma Gandhi Road and we turned right. We found a supermarket that was small but had lots of good supplies, an electronics shop that sells SIM cards for our 3G modem so that we can have internet on the boat, but you have to have a passport with you to buy any kind of SIM card and we didn’t have ours with us today. So maybe tomorrow we will go back to town to buy one. We then back tracked a bit to head down Jew Street. It is a one lane street with two-way traffic and no sidewalk, but it has fantastic shopping opportunities. There are wholesale grocers, hardware stores, stores that sell plastic containers, and lots of fabric shops all interspersed with fresh fruit and veggies shops. Most of the men were dressed in a white sarong-type skirt that is tied up between their legs like a loin cloth. I’m not sure what these are called, but most men in Cochin dress like this. We went by shops that had barrels of spices and the scents were delicious. By the time we got back to the harbor, we were exhausted from the walk and sensory overload, but there was more to come. There on the waterfront we saw hundreds and hundreds of people gathered for what is called an Art and Cultural Festival. Today was the first day and it will extend to February 9. So we will have to check this out tomorrow or the next day.

And now for the anchoring story. We tried to anchor the first time, but the anchor didn’t stick. When we brought the anchor up, it had plastic bags wrapped around it. Mark removed those and we tried again, and again it didn’t stick. This time when we brought the anchor up there was fishing net around it. And then I lost the ability to steer and then the engine died. I tried to start the engine again. It started but as soon as I put it in gear, the engine died again. It become obvious that we had something wrapped around the prop, so we just dropped the anchor right where we were, even though we were much too close to a boat called Maud. Maud’s captain, Jim, had spent the day with us yesterday, waiting and waiting, while he was trying to check out of India. We got out the snuba gear so Mark could dive down and check out the prop and what he found was a royal mess. We had installed a piece of steel cable from our keel back to our rudder to keep things like nets from getting up to our prop. But a fishing net had caught around that steel cable, broken it loose and then the whole mess of steel wire and fishing net wrapped around our prop shaft. It took Mark an hour and a half in this not-so-clean water to cut things loose. But he survived and it appears that all is well. We dropped anchor the first time at 9:15 am and the final time at 12:15 PM. It was a long morning!

100129 Day 95 India–First Trip Ashore in Ernakulam