Mauritius Tales
Reprinted from the Tasmanian Yachtsman Summer 2007 & Winter 2008
Hi gang.
I’m now one day out of the Seychelles and bound for Australia via Mauritius, banging to windward on a 43 foot catamaran. I received a call a few weeks ago from a Norwegian guy, Tor, who wanted a hand getting this thing to Oz, and as the Indian Ocean is the last big one on my list and as being warm here is preferable to freezing my butt off in another Hobart winter… well here I am.
Mahe
We flew in to Port Victoria, the capital of Mahe, the main island of the Seychelles via Singapore. It was typical of travelling in a kerosene canary, too much sedative in transit to remember much, and a dehydration hangover as a result, but how else to you cope with flying?
Arriving at the Inter- Island Ferry Terminal in the dark about 0500, we hung around waiting for the boat and Roddy, our Seychellois man on the ground, to turn up. The boat has been on Praslin, the second largest of the Seychelles Islands, and Roddy works on island time, i.e. ten of their minutes can be an hour and a half of our time, although it’s not an exact science.
Roddy finally cruised in with the sunrise accompanied by the early morning waft of the tuna fishing ships unloading their catch. This smell is not unlike any thing I’ve smelt before but quite indescribable. Not pleasant to say the least. However, Roddy, who usually works for Sunsail here knows every one, and as the ferry terminal is the only place we won’t get charged an exorbitant wharf rate (try $70 US per day) we didn’t complain too much.
The boat, ‘Baltersan’, has been in charter since 2001 and sadly was handed over to the ex owner’s agent about 12 months ago. Sadly, because a heap of maintenance stuff that the charter company is contractually obliged to do on handover has either not been done or has been undone in the interim period. The biggest single problem we faced was the main sail, which was supposed to be new on handover, looks more like Helsal 4’s delivery main (read the Bourke Journals, Tasmanian Yachtsman) and that’s not a pretty sight. The running rigging was as old as the boat although it too should have been new on changeover and we also had various other issues to deal with. A number of these were to turn around and bite us on the proverbial as usually happens at sea. Basically the boat appears to have been let go for the past year, which is not so bad, and redeemable given a little money and effort.
We spent Wednesday checking out Baltersan and Port Victoria and trying to unravel the mystery of what Sunsail and the elusive Magna (ex owner’s agent) had and hadn’t done and who was going to pay the bill as Tor had vessel condition documentation that didn’t match what we found. After various discussions we finally located Magna, now living in Norway, but sadly we didn’t find the new main. However, the yacht is only 6 years old and generally in pretty good condition compared to a lot of yachts I’ve sailed so I’ve left it to Tor to sort out the ‘who owes who for what’ arguments to focus on with getting ready for an ocean crossing.
The original plan was to head for Broome via the Cocos Islands with a stop over in the Chagos archipelago which lies at the bottom of a chain off the Indian coast, the main islands of the chain being the Maldives a few hundred miles to the north.
This posed a couple of issues, the first being that Chagos, an essential fuel stop, is out of bounds as it’s a Pommy naval base. I guess they are a little frightened that an errant Aussie in a 43 foot cat may compromise their security as can be seen from the tone of their email declining our request for fuel. The ‘don’t come within 12 miles of us!’ comments were quite clear and concise.
The second issue with this passage plan is that it would mean 3500 miles to windward. Basically, it’s the wrong side of the Indian Ocean high. When the option of heading south to go the right way round the high pressure system became pretty obvious and the potential for the big winds you can find down there correspondingly scary, I decided to enlist the services of that old Bureau of Meteorology weather stalwart and mate of mine from school days, Kenn Batt. Batty is about as adept at picking the weather as most people are their noses, and I’m feeling a lot happier knowing he’s looking over my shoulder.
We concurred that heading south of the trade winds was a ‘no brainer’ then sweeping across the bottom of the Indian Ocean, about in line with Perth. Kenn is planning to put us on a low pressure system from Mauritius and ‘sling shot’ us into the void. (I have requested that he doesn’t turbo-charge the slingshot!)
The low point with this plan is that we have to get the boat a 1000 miles south from the Seychelles to Mauritius. The heading is 172 degrees true and the breeze is all from the southeast. This means that we are doing the first leg the hard way, crashing to windward. I don’t mind coz it’ll test out the boat and the men, before we set off on the big leg to WA. No place for the faint hearted, or the untested either.
On Thursday we took the boat 15 miles over to Praslin and had a swaggy’s breakfast, (you know; a scratch and a good look around), collected some fuel, and stayed for the night. These islands are just what you would expect, 28 to 30 degrees, lots of sandy beaches, slow laid back friendly locals, who sadly have difficulty in understanding deadlines. The islands are a part of a volcanic something or other and so quite mountainous, not unlike Tahiti, yet more beautiful in my opinion.
The jetty at Praslin
The background is French and the languages are French, Creole and English with an African twang to everything. The locals’ colour ranges from a milk chocolate to dark chocolate and Creole, Reggae, Rastafarians and a few Europeans are all rolled into the mix in some delightful way that I couldn’t unravel in the few days I was there. But, they are a nice bunch of locals, and I’d be happy to swing by again sometime. It’s not sophisticated, though. Internet access sucks, the local currency is rupees and you buy them on the black market at nearly twice the official rate. The government is socialist/communist and there is apparently a President, although we didn’t meet. I did check out his presidential yacht, which was tied up to the local navy wharf, and it looked like it needed a coat of paint.
We brought the boat back to Mahe on Friday night, with Roddy’s brother Andrew navigating for us, intending to find the Sunsail base. I finally ascertained that Andrew hadn’t entered this particular marina after dark. The islands have significant reefs and the charts aren’t up to date, so after spending a few fruitless hours poking our noses in and out of little gunk holes, another smelly night spent enjoying the aroma of the tuna fleet.
Saturday and Tor’s son Andreus and his mate Morton flew in from Norway to join us. We decided to have the weekend off from prepping the boat and go for a sail around the island. A few bucks slipped to one of the local park rangers managed to get us out of paying the full fee for anchoring in a marine park area at Certe Island, opposite an island resort. One of my mates, Dolly, had been here twenty years ago and had made the acquaintance of a local girl, reputedly a princess, who lived on this particular island. Unfortunately our princess had wandered off to the UK and with the resort dinner costing 70 bucks a head, we decided to cut our losses and head off to the leeward (western) side of the island, arriving at Beau Vallon just on sunset.
This bay is reputedly the most popular tourist spot on the island and with an amateur Saturday night version of the taste of Tasmania going on when we arrived dinner worked out to be about five bucks and well worth the queuing. Nice atmosphere as well, but in due course chairs and a table to sit a cold beer on was in order and duly located.
Beau Vallon beach
The Magnificent Chinese Medicine Man
At this point, feeling slightly mellow and I guess a little garrulous we ended up in discussion with Jimmy the Chinese medicine man. Jimmy, a Chinese South African, who had been chased out of China to Taiwan fifty odd years ago in one of those Chinese disagreements they keep having, was in the Seychelles on holidays. He had a fascinating past and the ability to attract attention from all sorts of weird and wonderful people; in short, a natural born story teller, and a bit of a mystic to boot. We also enjoyed the company of a couple of local girls, Julianna and Michelle, all of them agreeing to our proposal to go for a sail the following morning.
Sunday and the mandatory hangover found me collecting the girls, Jimmy, and two new friends of his, Mei and Rachel, a couple of Singaporean/Emirates Airline Stewardess’s, from the beach resort. But before we hopped into the dinghy Jimmy offered to fix a few of my aches and pains using Chi Gong.
Jimmy, Mei, Rachel, Julianna, JB and Michelle at play
This is the transfer of positive energy via some sort of mind thing I couldn’t even try to explain. But, as Jimmy has reputedly Chi Gonged Nelson Mandela and a bunch of other high flying African locals as well as an Australian Ambassador, I thought ‘What the hell!’ Sitting three feet away from a guy at an outdoor table in a beach resort in the Seychelles with my eyes closed while he rubs a couple of crystals together looks pretty damn silly but if I don’t tell anyone back home, who’ll know anyway. So, there I sat, eyes blinkered, silly grin on my face and Rachel and Mei obviously wondering what they had landed themselves in.
The weirdest thing happened. I felt as if I was sitting next to a wall of heat which radiated through me, slowly sucking out the ache in my neck and, as a bi-product, preparing me for the first beer of the day. Jimmy had scored a convert!
The side show ended up attracting a bunch of curious onlookers including a European doctor who had been suffering pain in his foot for the past three months, all fixed with ten minutes of gonging!! After finally extracting Jimmy from the masses we made a dash for Baltersan, hauled anchor and half an hour later were swimming off the boat around a little brick I’ll call Three Tree Island.
Rachel basking in front of ‘Three Tree Island’
If you look at the photo you’ll see there are worse places to spend a few leisurely hours. I managed to play life guard to Rachel and Mei and thought I was probably looking a bit of a hero in their eyes until one of them expressed her appreciation with a big smile and “Thanks Dad.” A great day was had by all, Jimmy getting on the merry side of a bottle of Black Label, and imparting all sorts of fascinating stories as well as doing a little palm reading and gonging a few people on board.
Back at the anchorage the party meandered on until later than I can recall and the next morning saw me wishing for a bit more of the magnificent Chinese Medicine man’s magic.
Island time bites
But, it was back to work and an early morning dash for the slipway to replace a couple of worn rudder bearings found us in what looked like Steptoe and Son’s work shop run by Charlie, the local marine engineer. Now Charlie might not be the cleanest tradesman in the world, but he had that ‘can do’ aura about him that is so refreshing to find, delivering two new rudder bearings and having us back in the water before sunset for a very reasonable $500 including slipping. Thanks Charlie, you’ve got my recommendation mate.
So, Tuesday and a bunch of arguing with the local hoteliers about marina fees, some shopping finalised and the inevitable documentary warfare with Immigration and Customs saw us waiting patiently at the Naval base at 1500 hours for our passports to be returned so we could cast off for Mauritius. 1600 found us still waiting and finally at 1830, a few phone calls resulted in the sad tale that Immigration had gone home for the night! @#%*ing island time!
The two things you have to have when entering a new country are your passports and clearance papers from the last country you were in. So, another night spent in the Seychelles while we missed an opportunistic weather window, finally managing to escape the Seychelles the following day.
At this point a few details about the passage plan I should mention. As most of you will know, Robbie Fisher acted as long suffering shore manager/position sked operator for the delivery home on the Fishers’ yacht, Helsal 4, and he has kindly agreed to do the same for me on this passage. When you are a long way from anywhere knowing there is a professional at home watching out for you lowers the stress levels considerably. I also have an informal passage plan lodged with the Rescue Coordination Centre in Canberra and a set of procedures in place for hitting the ‘come and get me button’, in the unlikely event of anything going wrong out there (so you don’t need to worry mum).
Our main communications system is via Iridium satellite phone and as usual, I have five independent, inter-linkable navigation systems on board. The iridium comms system has worked well in the past, proving extremely reliable.
So, off we set into the ocean with a crew consisting of Tor, the owner, myself as skipper, Roddy the maintenance man, Simon, a 28 year old cousin of Tor, Andreus, Tor’s 15 year old son and his 17 year old mate Morton. A fair bit of Norwegian is being spoken on board.
The damage thus far
We sailed relatively uneventfully down to the east coast of Madagascar, a distance of some 500 odd miles and with Batty’s forecast telling us to expect the 20 to 25 knot south easterly to go into south on about day four, I was fairly comfortable with progress until the following series of three events occurred. By the way, the boat does flex a fair amount, which is not good for my nerves. The cat is essentially not designed for long term passages in nasty big waves if you are heading in the wrong direction I.E.windward and if we were faced with three thousand miles to windward I would have some significant concerns. But, as the route for the big leg to OZ should result in 15 to 20 knot following breezes, I’m not unduly concerned.
The space on a 43 foot cat is pretty amazing. The compromise of course is that going to windward is noisy (two hulls hitting the water on the down side of a wave instead of one makes for a hell of a crash!)
Three things, why do they always come in threes? First, we lost the top batten out of the main. You just can’t go to windward in a yacht without the battens. The flogging leach will result in the sail shredding itself in relatively no time and because it’s the top batten, we can’t just pull in a reef and sail on with a reefed main sail. So, it had to come off, either for a running repair or to be used if we have some reaching or running conditions before Mauritius (huh; fat chance!). Ten minutes later the port engine fresh water pump ‘poohed its pants’ putting the engine out of commission and half an hour after this the wind instruments failed.
So, there we are, out of the grand stand and into the s*&%thouse in one foul swoop, as they say in the classics. So, what to do? Given we still have 400 miles to go to windward to Mauritius, can we find a slant with the wind to get us there or should we turn tail and go licking our wounds to Madagascar for repairs and could we get them done there anyway? What are the potential dangers of our position if we carry on?
A few phone calls around the world seeking advice on Madagascar, a discussion with Kenn about weather patterns and a critical assessment of the condition of the main and we have opted for running repairs and Mauritius. After all this is why Hoods have supplied us with the sail repair kit isn’t it.
Taj (Hood Sails) probably wouldn’t do it this way.
It’s now 1700 two days later, the main is back up after being repaired with the assistance of a battery powered drill so we could stitch a makeshift batten in without fear of losing it and we are treating getting to Mauritius with the same amount of strategic navigational thinking as a Sydney Hobart race plan.
I’ve placed a precautionary sat phone call to the Mauritian coast guard and set up a twice daily sked with them. They sounded slightly disappointed that we were not in need of rescuing, (sorry boys) but they do know we are here.
We are now running one engine and keeping a very close monitor on its performance. The engines are a couple of little 27 horse power Yanmars and usually pretty reliable, but as our starboard engine is now our only electrical power source as well as assisting us in getting to windward and keeping the fridge cold, I really don’t want it to fail. The wind instruments dying means a quick lesson for the guys in sailing by the seat of your pants.
Tor is fast becoming quite the seaman, with his mathematical mind appreciating the sense of beauty that lies in how a yacht works on mathematical principles and how even managing a yacht does as well, in many ways. The idea of building safety parameters based on probabilities of various combinations of events occurring intrigues him. This is how I view life at sea. If the main blows out and one engine dies and the instruments fail what other potential events will effect our decision making as to whether to continue on or run for cover? Given the forecast, with no gales in the offing, the state of the headsail (being almost new), the starboard engine purring away pretty comfortably and plenty of food and water on board, the mathematical calculation makes Mauritius a safe haven to strive for. In reality there are dozens more factors involved but this explains as least the idea. Anyone that has studied Game Theory at uni will know what I mean.
It’s now Tuesday morning and the second reefing line blew last night, along with the breeze building to about 25 to 30 knots. The swell is 7 to 8 metres with a nasty sea on top of it. The leach line on the main also needed tightening which is difficult because to access it you have to sit on top of the bimini at the back of the cockpit. Not much fun when you consider its one slip into the Indian Ocean from there, but at least, touch wood, the stitching in the mainsail is holding together. We have 175 miles to go to Mauritius, dead to windward, Kenn has just told me the winds will not improve and we are making four knots VMG. This means that it will take two days to get there. It sucks! As an aside, the table I’m working on is in the saloon on the bridge deck and every so often a wave hits underneath, making the table wobble and my laptop jumps up and down in protest!
I’m in Mauritius now. It’s Saturday and yes, we made it this far! I’ll email you the last exciting instalment of the passage to M next week, so stay tuned.
Cheers for now,
JB
Jane:
So ends first editorialised instalment
3600 words. Feel free to chip away if you need to.
I’ll do the second half in the next few days if that’s okay?
JB
Hello from sunny down town Port Louis, Mauritius, Indian Ocean.
I’ve been here for nearly two weeks now and the last few days of our bash from the Seychelles to Mauritius seems like an eon ago. Funny how the bad memories fade as the salt dries off. But I have to say gang, that the last 175 miles into this delightful haven in the middle of the ocean was not much fun.
As you may remember last time, I spent an afternoon repairing the mainsail with the help of a battery drill and ended up hauling it back up as we ran into 25 knots with the mandatory 35-knot squirts every so often just to make sure we didn’t get complacent, and the main did manage to hold out until one of the bat-cars (cars that hold the sail to the mast) let go, soon followed by two of its mates. This has a tendency to happen in sets as not only are all the cars worn to a similar extent, but as soon as one goes the others get its load as well as their own.
The end result is a highway to hell if you’re dependent on the mainsail for drive, as of course we were. So, we were down to one motor and the headsail, in an extremely uncomfortable seaway and now a new phenomenon slipped into play. The geographical structure of Port Louis and the surrounding volcanic hills is such that the South Easterlies funnel down through the hills and straight at you if you are approaching from the Seychelles. It’s weird I know, but whichever way we went (tacking backwards and forwards through 130 degrees trying to make our way into harbour, the bloody wind just backed and veered following us every which way. I kid you not. It was as if there was a bloody great big wind machine mounted at the harbour entrance and the bloke in charge sure did a good job keeping it aimed fairly and squarely at us. To put it into perspective, we took 20 hours to travel the last fifty odd miles. This is definitely not my kind of sailing!
However, all good things and bad things eventually give you a break and we finally limped into port, to the accompaniment of the Mauritian coast guard radio man Vikesh, who was soon to become a great friend and supporter during our stay. You make good friends at sea and Vikesh was no exception. Due to the difficulties we had in the last few hundred miles I was running a radio sked with the coast guard every twelve hours and while we were in no danger, it was nice to know they were there. Thanks boys. I dips me lid.
Enough of the histrionics. We sailed in under our own steam and berthed at the customs jetty, after shifting a lone yank sailor in his little bucket out of the way. He was proudly taking up as many berths as he possibly could and looking as pleased as punch with himself for doing so. We had heard this same bloke being roundly abused by the coast guard for not requesting permission to enter harbour half an hour before we entered. Surprise, surprise. And the funny thing is that they seem to do it in cruising grounds the world over, ethnocentric and egocentric to a fault.
So, we flicked the yank and went through the formalities very politely with Customs, meeting with and thanking Vikesh. Formalities complete, we motored over to the marina about 500 meters across the harbour and guess who was sitting bang in the middle of the two best berths there? Yep… and you know, the guy had the decency to look bewildered when I shook my head and moved away when he waved.
There was a mad fluffing of air tickets and suddenly Tor’s son Andreus and his mate Morton had a day to spare before their rescheduled flight home took off. The boat repair machine hit high speed fairly quickly with Tor using local contacts through the global company he works for to great advantage in two particularly clever and beneficial ways. First he managed to short circuit much of the learning curve you go through when you first arrive in a new port getting to understand how the place works. And second, he found us a bunch of particularly nice people many of whom have become great friends.
The trip to Mauritius had shown up a number of quite significant problems with the boat, although none of a fundamental nature. But, still serious problems if there is nowhere to stop or hide, as will be the case when we cast off from Mauritius for Australia. We have given both motors a complete accessory overhaul, salt and fresh water pumps, batteries, hoses, fuel tanks and filters and a high level of preventative maintenance as well. If the pump on one engine is playing up don’t even ask about the other one, just do it!
One little detail I had forgotten to mention. I lost part of a filling on the way in, probably subconsciously grinding my teeth at the speed we were making coming in to port. While it wasn’t particularly painful, it was digging a hole in my tongue, the sort of thing that can put a dampener on your day and mine was already wet enough thanks. Tor’s associate, Kahlil, arranged for a dentist friend of his to see me a couple of hours after we docked. At this point I was vaguely shell shocked as I’d stayed up the night before trying to educate the autopilot how you steer a catamaran with one engine and a partly furled headsail to windward in 30 knots, but regardless of this the dentist was a welcome relief…. of sorts.
Now I’ve sailed a few oceans and I’ve been in the odd tight corner without losing my cool overly much, but when it comes to someone climbing into my mouth with a drill, some significant sedative is the only thing that stops me from poohing my pants. Well this delightful young lady wasn’t wearing the sedative deal at all, her solution to my tongue spasmodically trying to stop her drill from imparting excruciating pain on my mauled molar was particularly evil. She had a dental nurse assistant who took huge amounts of pleasure in ramming a suction hose into my tongue and pinning to the opposite wall of my mouth to where the drilling operation was taking place.
The dentist on one side telling me it didn’t hurt at all and the nurse from hell on the other making sure it did was not a good intro to Mauritius but life only got better from there.
Friday night found us at a four-star hotel located a free ferry ride across the marina for Friday night happy hour. I should at this point give you at least a brief run down on Mauritius. The population is 1.2 million with three or four hundred thousand out of the country at any one time. The language is French-based (Creole) but every one speaks enough English to get by, similar to the Seychelles. Life is a fair bit more global here. Third world meets Paris, sort of. There is a strong financial services business, a good education system and a serious attempt at tourism. Sugar is the major industry here although there is a strong textile industry as well and generally they seem to be having a serious go at getting it right. Nice people who are trying to make their way in a world we all find more and more confusing I guess.
So, Friday night turned up a couple of likely lads by the name of Kamlesh and Navin. Kamlesh is into property and has some great mates pretty high up in the government and Navin is an up and coming young barrister, in fact at 26 he is the youngest Barrister here. Nice blokes who are now in the process of helping to arrange for Mauritius to supply Helsal Yachting with a new ‘up market’ brand of casual sailing wear. So, stay tuned and you’ll see it soon in a shop near you. Oh, by the way, the helsalyachting.com website should be up by now (if you’ve done your work Dolly) Or just send me an email… You’ll love it. But, enough with the advertising.
The mainsail has now been bullet-proofed by the local sail maker, the engines are purring away, there is enough diesel on board to damn near motor the whole way to Oz and the water tanks are chockers. Sadly I’m not going to have time before we leave to give you a blow by blow of the two weeks here, but I should have a little time to spare in transit from Mauritius to Oz so I’ll try to fill in the gaps on the way to Freo. My mate Jimmy has just joined the boat and we are three for the trip at this stage. All experienced guys on a well prepared and (now) well tried boat. Kenny Batt is forecasting a weather window for us to get south on, coming through on Thursday/Friday so with a little luck we’ll be underway by the time you get around to reading this.
Oh by the way, I’m doing a couple of radio interviews with Tim Cox on the ABC with one on Monday and they are apparently going to put my scribblings and the interviews up on their website if any one has and inclination to look.
So guys, I’ll see you all soon and will email the rest of this tale of another ocean when we hit Freo.
Bye for now,
Bourkey
Hi every one,
Well this is a sad Mauritian lament and not an email from the void. When we cast off from Mauritius on Thursday the breeze was out of the east, blowing around twenty knots and a comfortable ESE swell all making for a fairly quick and comfortable sail south. Shortly thereafter disaster struck. But, before I get to that I’ll shell out a story about trying to get out of Mauritius, a certain global fuel supplier and why I enjoy being at sea so much.
We have two 6 kilo gas cylinders on board which supply us with cooking gas and should comfortably last the trip to Oz. One was nearly full and the other nearly empty so on the morning of our planned departure, after telling the guys I’d be back in twenty minutes, your’s truly jumped in a car with one of my Mauritian mates and trundled up to the gas filling station for a top up. After spending half and hour searching for the gas depot, then queuing for twenty minutes in a cashier’s office only to be directed to a different area of the complex, I waited with growing impatience for yet another 20 minutes watching the appropriate clerk crawl around cyberspace on his computer trying to identify if they could indeed accept that Seychellese gas cylinders were allowed to be filled in Mauritius.
Finally acknowledging that the Seychelles gas cylinders (made in France) were in fact built to the same French standards (and most likely in the same factory) as the French gas cylinders used in Mauritius, the clerk authorised the gas filling man to wonder off into a secure area of the complex (which I was forbidden to enter) to top up my cylinders, returning fifteen minutes later. The clerk then spent another fifteen minutes generating a bill for 240 rupees, about ten bucks, which I was required to return to the cashier’s office and pay before being allowed to exit the complex.
The gate man, who had in the first instance refused to let our car in to the depot and had made me walk in carrying these two cylinders, then tried to tell me that I couldn’t walk out to the car (parked right outside the gate) on the way to the cashier, with the cylinders, in case I might do a runner and disappear. (It’s an island for Christ sake, where would I hide?) I tossed the offending items in the back of the ute regardless and headed over to pay the bill, leaving the gate man suspiciously eying off the ute, my mate behind the wheel (who was at this stage happily chatting on his mobile, oblivious of these goings on) and me, now fuming, storming off towards the cash man.
After another wait and another bloody queue and I finally I hand over ten bucks and had to wait for the receipt which I was required to deliver back to the grumpy gate man. And wait…and wait….and wait….and wait. After another twenty minutes of the cash man alternating between telling me how slow his printer was and watching him stare demonically at the offending machine which refused to cough up a single pixel I finally lost the last of my composer and told him a couple of things, including the fact that I was leaving for Australia on a boat NOW and that he had to go and tell the gate man I had paid and could leave, a task which he refused to comply with.
Obviously paper work is God in some companies. So, as the saying goes, if the cashier won’t come to the gate man, the gate man was going to come to the cashier. Off I went to get the gate man, still standing guard on the ute, who in turn refused to leave his post making sure we didn’t do a runner while he went to find out if I’d actually paid their ten dollars.
A lot of French style arm waving then ensued between what had now turned into two security guards, the cashier and my Mauritian mate who had finally entered the fray having disengaged his ear from the phone and guess what. Seconds before they called to cops to help deal with a demented Aussie who was seriously considering inserting a gas cylinder in the gate guard, the offending printer had finally decided to kick into gear. With my illegible signature scrawled across the bottom of the page and the gate man happy now that he had managed to give me my receipt we headed off back down the road to the boat. As I sit here now ruminating over the stupidity of system for system’s sake, I know why I enjoy being at sea so much. It’s one place in the world that bureaucrats don’t rule.
But, having vented my spleen I would like to try to describe something which is beyond words. So, if I struggle a little, please bear with me. Existence in Mauritius is something akin to another reality entirely from what you find in Australia. If anything, there are some vague island style similarities between here and Tassie, I guess. But, before I go on I’ll paint the background for this literal canvas. The temperature sits between about 18 degrees at night and 28 degrees in the heat of the day, unless you go wandering around the mountains (well, hills perhaps) where it drops a few degrees and tends to cloud over somewhat.
The fresh south easterly breeze, which I know so well, makes the temperature more bearable, unless you are in the middle of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, where the wind doesn’t penetrate and the intensity of life in a small but densely populated village of 200,000 people that is struggling to cope with the global impact of the 21st century.
Port Louis has a five star waterfront with designer hotels, bars, restaurants and boutiques, IT and sophisticated offshore banking services industry. Yet across the main drag, just a two minute wander from the water’s edge, lies the hustle and bustle of the local population eking out a living amidst a jumble of narrow streets with broken higglty pigglty foot paths that are liable at any step to send you sprawling into the oncoming traffic that crawls around on roads designed for another era and incapable of coping with the 300,000 cars that keep the local population in gridlock for most of the day.
Duck down any side street, actually most of the streets are side streets, and you’ll be accosted by hawkers of nearly every colour and race in the world trying to convince you that their Chinese manufactured junk is cheaper and better quality than the next guy’s.
But, if you stop for long enough, amidst the cacophony of sounds and smells, hard sell and supposed desperation to survive, of a little bit of the flavour of Asia in Africa emerges and you get the feeling that life is okay. Perhaps hawking for a living is after all not one of the worst jobs in history.
Last Saturday, after soaking up a couple of hours of this throbbing noisy street life, Jimmy Mc Cormack and I started looking in earnest for a place to stop and have a beer. An entrance not much wider than a door led us into a bar with formica tables, tubular steel stools, lino floor and a Chinese bloke with a perpetually harried look on his face and a form guide sticking out of his back pocket.
Buying a couple of beers from the girl behind the counter we were directed to a table beside the kitchen door at the back of the bar, the last available and least desirable seats in the house. After raising only a couple of local eye brows as these two foreigners wandered down to the back of an authentically local bar, the crowd hooked back into the serious business of horse racing. Saturday afternoon at the races it seems is a universal occupation here and some of the local market stall holders had even closed up shop to come in and watch the races on the ancient TV that required serious antenna manipulation to get the snow off the screen just prior to each race.
One guy who tried to change channels was given a noisy dressing down by all and sundry and of course it didn’t take long for the local SP booky to sidle up alongside us to see if we wanted to get a bet on. Five hundred rupees, a few slow horses, a couple beers and plate of not too bad crispy chicken bits later and we were an accepted part of the local scenery. The meal and half a dozen beers cost us less than one shout in a hotel on the other side of the tracks and the SP bookie, who also had a stall in the market, made his day’s wage out of a couple of mug Aussies.
The Chinese maitre D had been giving us the good oil as to which horses to back and he looked pretty pleased with himself, so we suspect there might have been a little bit of corruption on the side. (Apparently corruption in horse racing in Mauritius is on a par with Tasmania so we had no expectation of winning.)
Although it didn’t all go the bookie’s way. I decided we should capture the atmosphere on camera, but when I flashed the lens the bookie bolted for the door faster than Phar Lap and the Chinaman was coming such a close second that you’d have sworn he was the jockey. They finally skulked back in ten minutes after the camera had disappeared and Jimmy and I had managed to stop laughing.
The afternoon was one of those delightful little gems you know lurks around every corner when you are travelling. While working out which corner is usually the problem this particular gem does reflect a taste of Mauritius.
Yesterday we wandered around the south west of the island with a couple of locals, ending up at a magnificent surf beach called Le Morne. All the beautiful people were there, flaunting designer suntans to match their hi tech kitesurfers and windsurfers, muscles rippling and bikinis indiscreetly disappearing into places one might only dream about.
A couple of hundred years back, in the final days of slavery, some of the local slaves escaped to this part of the island and lived in the cliff faced hills adjacent to the beach. At the time it was decided to abolish slavery and when a message was sent, presumably via the local constabulary, to let the runaways know that they no longer had to hide, these poor souls hurled themselves off the cliff face rather than return to a life of bondage, thus the name, Le Morne.
We’ve now just arrived home from dinner at my friend Kamlesh’s home. His Mum, a not quite five foot tall Mauritian of Indian descent, raced around all night speaking in Hindi, cooking and serving dinner and getting very excited at the prospect of one day perhaps coming to visit us in Australia.
However, the award for how best to describe Mauritius has to go to Kamlesh’s mate, the youngest barrister on the island, who they simply call ‘The Guru’. He told a story about an English priest that went something like this.
‘An English priest decided to take a grand tour of the local churches of world. First arriving in New York he went to visit the local church in downtown Brooklyn, only to discover a pay phone in the vestibule. Fronting up to the parish priest, he questioned what possible reason they could have for locating a pay phone within the inner sanctum of the church. The local priest responded. “Why, it’s a direct line to God, only a thousand dollars a minute.” As the visiting priest, although intrigued at the concept of being able to talk direct to the big Boss, still had a long tour in front of him and was travelling on a limited budget, he declined the offer to spend the thousand dollars and continued on his tour.
Eventually arriving in Hobart on his grand church tour of the world, he continued his circuit of the local houses of worship and on entering St Mary’s Cathedral he came across yet another payphone in the vestibule. On enquiring of the local priest why there was a pay phone in the church, the travelling priest received a similar response to that given by the New York diocese. “Why, it’s a direct line to God. Only a thousand dollars a minute.”
By this time the wandering Holy man was getting a little agitated at not having the funds to be able to put in a direct call in to the ‘Boss’, but consoling himself with the knowledge that all good things come to those who wait, he continued on his travels.
Finally arriving in Mauritius and visiting the local church in Port Louis he came across yet another pay phone in the vestibule. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess” He said to the local priest. “A pay phone with a direct line to God. And I suppose it costs a thousand dollars a minute.” He muttered indignantly.
“Well, yes.” Responded the priest. “It is a direct line to God. But it only costs ten rupees or about 20 cents a minute.”
“Why so cheap?” asked the other priest. “Every where else I’ve been it’s cost a thousand dollars a minute.”
“Yes man, but this is Paradise. It’s only a local call.”
And that, my friends, just about sums up Mauritius. I hope these few anecdotes give you some sense of the flavour, at least in part, of what Mauritius is. It really depends on how you look at what you see.
So, back to sea and why we have finally decided to pull the pin on the delivery and put ‘Baltersan’ on a ship to Australia. About 60 miles south of Mauritius what had been a drip of water through the port saloon window became more of a trickle. On closer inspection we found a small de-lamination in the window frame and the window coming adrift from the frame. While it was nothing serious at the time, and a very simple repair job back in port, had we continued on another three thousand miles
we ran the risk of the window departing the boat completely, which would have put both yacht and crew in peril.
Sadly, and not wanting to do a ‘Bullimore’ I finally made the decision that we would be returning to Mauritius and in light of the potential for this problem to re-occur if we had a rough crossing of the Indian Ocean I have recommended to the owner that we ship the yacht to Australia.
So, Jimmy and I are madly bashing on shipping line doors trying to find a suitable ship to put ‘Baltersan’ on and I hope to be back in my own little Paradise within the next week or so. See you then.
JB
Indian Ocean Blues
O Mauritius, cher Mauritius,
With your welcome most auspicious,
We came, departed, then we came again
To your sunshine of delights,
To your entertaining nights,
To your welcome in the soft and gentle rain.
Just a single night at sea
Before we missed the repartee
Of the many of our new-found ‘bon amis’
So we turned the boat back North
And with motor sallied forth
To the now twice-entered arms of Port Louis.
O Mauritius, grand Mauritius,
Our return is not suspicious;
Its just that “le bateau est pas tres bon”
We love your people, never fear
(not to mention rum and beer)
And a generosité that won’t say ‘non’.
(with apologies to the French-speaking but it rhymes don’t it?)
I’m now one day out of the Seychelles and bound for Australia via Mauritius, banging to windward on a 43 foot catamaran. I received a call a few weeks ago from a Norwegian guy, Tor, who wanted a hand getting this thing to Oz, and as the Indian Ocean is the last big one on my list and as being warm here is preferable to freezing my butt off in another Hobart winter… well here I am.
Mahe
We flew in to Port Victoria, the capital of Mahe, the main island of the Seychelles via Singapore. It was typical of travelling in a kerosene canary, too much sedative in transit to remember much, and a dehydration hangover as a result, but how else to you cope with flying?
Arriving at the Inter- Island Ferry Terminal in the dark about 0500, we hung around waiting for the boat and Roddy, our Seychellois man on the ground, to turn up. The boat has been on Praslin, the second largest of the Seychelles Islands, and Roddy works on island time, i.e. ten of their minutes can be an hour and a half of our time, although it’s not an exact science.
Roddy finally cruised in with the sunrise accompanied by the early morning waft of the tuna fishing ships unloading their catch. This smell is not unlike any thing I’ve smelt before but quite indescribable. Not pleasant to say the least. However, Roddy, who usually works for Sunsail here knows every one, and as the ferry terminal is the only place we won’t get charged an exorbitant wharf rate (try $70 US per day) we didn’t complain too much.
The boat, ‘Baltersan’, has been in charter since 2001 and sadly was handed over to the ex owner’s agent about 12 months ago. Sadly, because a heap of maintenance stuff that the charter company is contractually obliged to do on handover has either not been done or has been undone in the interim period. The biggest single problem we faced was the main sail, which was supposed to be new on handover, looks more like Helsal 4’s delivery main (read the Bourke Journals, Tasmanian Yachtsman) and that’s not a pretty sight. The running rigging was as old as the boat although it too should have been new on changeover and we also had various other issues to deal with. A number of these were to turn around and bite us on the proverbial as usually happens at sea. Basically the boat appears to have been let go for the past year, which is not so bad, and redeemable given a little money and effort.
We spent Wednesday checking out Baltersan and Port Victoria and trying to unravel the mystery of what Sunsail and the elusive Magna (ex owner’s agent) had and hadn’t done and who was going to pay the bill as Tor had vessel condition documentation that didn’t match what we found. After various discussions we finally located Magna, now living in Norway, but sadly we didn’t find the new main. However, the yacht is only 6 years old and generally in pretty good condition compared to a lot of yachts I’ve sailed so I’ve left it to Tor to sort out the ‘who owes who for what’ arguments to focus on with getting ready for an ocean crossing.
The original plan was to head for Broome via the Cocos Islands with a stop over in the Chagos archipelago which lies at the bottom of a chain off the Indian coast, the main islands of the chain being the Maldives a few hundred miles to the north.
This posed a couple of issues, the first being that Chagos, an essential fuel stop, is out of bounds as it’s a Pommy naval base. I guess they are a little frightened that an errant Aussie in a 43 foot cat may compromise their security as can be seen from the tone of their email declining our request for fuel. The ‘don’t come within 12 miles of us!’ comments were quite clear and concise.
The second issue with this passage plan is that it would mean 3500 miles to windward. Basically, it’s the wrong side of the Indian Ocean high. When the option of heading south to go the right way round the high pressure system became pretty obvious and the potential for the big winds you can find down there correspondingly scary, I decided to enlist the services of that old Bureau of Meteorology weather stalwart and mate of mine from school days, Kenn Batt. Batty is about as adept at picking the weather as most people are their noses, and I’m feeling a lot happier knowing he’s looking over my shoulder.
We concurred that heading south of the trade winds was a ‘no brainer’ then sweeping across the bottom of the Indian Ocean, about in line with Perth. Kenn is planning to put us on a low pressure system from Mauritius and ‘sling shot’ us into the void. (I have requested that he doesn’t turbo-charge the slingshot!)
The low point with this plan is that we have to get the boat a 1000 miles south from the Seychelles to Mauritius. The heading is 172 degrees true and the breeze is all from the southeast. This means that we are doing the first leg the hard way, crashing to windward. I don’t mind coz it’ll test out the boat and the men, before we set off on the big leg to WA. No place for the faint hearted, or the untested either.
On Thursday we took the boat 15 miles over to Praslin and had a swaggy’s breakfast, (you know; a scratch and a good look around), collected some fuel, and stayed for the night. These islands are just what you would expect, 28 to 30 degrees, lots of sandy beaches, slow laid back friendly locals, who sadly have difficulty in understanding deadlines. The islands are a part of a volcanic something or other and so quite mountainous, not unlike Tahiti, yet more beautiful in my opinion.
The jetty at Praslin
The background is French and the languages are French, Creole and English with an African twang to everything. The locals’ colour ranges from a milk chocolate to dark chocolate and Creole, Reggae, Rastafarians and a few Europeans are all rolled into the mix in some delightful way that I couldn’t unravel in the few days I was there. But, they are a nice bunch of locals, and I’d be happy to swing by again sometime. It’s not sophisticated, though. Internet access sucks, the local currency is rupees and you buy them on the black market at nearly twice the official rate. The government is socialist/communist and there is apparently a President, although we didn’t meet. I did check out his presidential yacht, which was tied up to the local navy wharf, and it looked like it needed a coat of paint.
We brought the boat back to Mahe on Friday night, with Roddy’s brother Andrew navigating for us, intending to find the Sunsail base. I finally ascertained that Andrew hadn’t entered this particular marina after dark. The islands have significant reefs and the charts aren’t up to date, so after spending a few fruitless hours poking our noses in and out of little gunk holes, another smelly night spent enjoying the aroma of the tuna fleet.
Saturday and Tor’s son Andreus and his mate Morton flew in from Norway to join us. We decided to have the weekend off from prepping the boat and go for a sail around the island. A few bucks slipped to one of the local park rangers managed to get us out of paying the full fee for anchoring in a marine park area at Certe Island, opposite an island resort. One of my mates, Dolly, had been here twenty years ago and had made the acquaintance of a local girl, reputedly a princess, who lived on this particular island. Unfortunately our princess had wandered off to the UK and with the resort dinner costing 70 bucks a head, we decided to cut our losses and head off to the leeward (western) side of the island, arriving at Beau Vallon just on sunset.
This bay is reputedly the most popular tourist spot on the island and with an amateur Saturday night version of the taste of Tasmania going on when we arrived dinner worked out to be about five bucks and well worth the queuing. Nice atmosphere as well, but in due course chairs and a table to sit a cold beer on was in order and duly located.
Beau Vallon beach
The Magnificent Chinese Medicine Man
At this point, feeling slightly mellow and I guess a little garrulous we ended up in discussion with Jimmy the Chinese medicine man. Jimmy, a Chinese South African, who had been chased out of China to Taiwan fifty odd years ago in one of those Chinese disagreements they keep having, was in the Seychelles on holidays. He had a fascinating past and the ability to attract attention from all sorts of weird and wonderful people; in short, a natural born story teller, and a bit of a mystic to boot. We also enjoyed the company of a couple of local girls, Julianna and Michelle, all of them agreeing to our proposal to go for a sail the following morning.
Sunday and the mandatory hangover found me collecting the girls, Jimmy, and two new friends of his, Mei and Rachel, a couple of Singaporean/Emirates Airline Stewardess’s, from the beach resort. But before we hopped into the dinghy Jimmy offered to fix a few of my aches and pains using Chi Gong.
Jimmy, Mei, Rachel, Julianna, JB and Michelle at play
This is the transfer of positive energy via some sort of mind thing I couldn’t even try to explain. But, as Jimmy has reputedly Chi Gonged Nelson Mandela and a bunch of other high flying African locals as well as an Australian Ambassador, I thought ‘What the hell!’ Sitting three feet away from a guy at an outdoor table in a beach resort in the Seychelles with my eyes closed while he rubs a couple of crystals together looks pretty damn silly but if I don’t tell anyone back home, who’ll know anyway. So, there I sat, eyes blinkered, silly grin on my face and Rachel and Mei obviously wondering what they had landed themselves in.
The weirdest thing happened. I felt as if I was sitting next to a wall of heat which radiated through me, slowly sucking out the ache in my neck and, as a bi-product, preparing me for the first beer of the day. Jimmy had scored a convert!
The side show ended up attracting a bunch of curious onlookers including a European doctor who had been suffering pain in his foot for the past three months, all fixed with ten minutes of gonging!! After finally extracting Jimmy from the masses we made a dash for Baltersan, hauled anchor and half an hour later were swimming off the boat around a little brick I’ll call Three Tree Island.
Rachel basking in front of ‘Three Tree Island’
If you look at the photo you’ll see there are worse places to spend a few leisurely hours. I managed to play life guard to Rachel and Mei and thought I was probably looking a bit of a hero in their eyes until one of them expressed her appreciation with a big smile and “Thanks Dad.” A great day was had by all, Jimmy getting on the merry side of a bottle of Black Label, and imparting all sorts of fascinating stories as well as doing a little palm reading and gonging a few people on board.
Back at the anchorage the party meandered on until later than I can recall and the next morning saw me wishing for a bit more of the magnificent Chinese Medicine man’s magic.
Island time bites
But, it was back to work and an early morning dash for the slipway to replace a couple of worn rudder bearings found us in what looked like Steptoe and Son’s work shop run by Charlie, the local marine engineer. Now Charlie might not be the cleanest tradesman in the world, but he had that ‘can do’ aura about him that is so refreshing to find, delivering two new rudder bearings and having us back in the water before sunset for a very reasonable $500 including slipping. Thanks Charlie, you’ve got my recommendation mate.
So, Tuesday and a bunch of arguing with the local hoteliers about marina fees, some shopping finalised and the inevitable documentary warfare with Immigration and Customs saw us waiting patiently at the Naval base at 1500 hours for our passports to be returned so we could cast off for Mauritius. 1600 found us still waiting and finally at 1830, a few phone calls resulted in the sad tale that Immigration had gone home for the night! @#%*ing island time!
The two things you have to have when entering a new country are your passports and clearance papers from the last country you were in. So, another night spent in the Seychelles while we missed an opportunistic weather window, finally managing to escape the Seychelles the following day.
At this point a few details about the passage plan I should mention. As most of you will know, Robbie Fisher acted as long suffering shore manager/position sked operator for the delivery home on the Fishers’ yacht, Helsal 4, and he has kindly agreed to do the same for me on this passage. When you are a long way from anywhere knowing there is a professional at home watching out for you lowers the stress levels considerably. I also have an informal passage plan lodged with the Rescue Coordination Centre in Canberra and a set of procedures in place for hitting the ‘come and get me button’, in the unlikely event of anything going wrong out there (so you don’t need to worry mum).
Our main communications system is via Iridium satellite phone and as usual, I have five independent, inter-linkable navigation systems on board. The iridium comms system has worked well in the past, proving extremely reliable.
So, off we set into the ocean with a crew consisting of Tor, the owner, myself as skipper, Roddy the maintenance man, Simon, a 28 year old cousin of Tor, Andreus, Tor’s 15 year old son and his 17 year old mate Morton. A fair bit of Norwegian is being spoken on board.
The damage thus far
We sailed relatively uneventfully down to the east coast of Madagascar, a distance of some 500 odd miles and with Batty’s forecast telling us to expect the 20 to 25 knot south easterly to go into south on about day four, I was fairly comfortable with progress until the following series of three events occurred. By the way, the boat does flex a fair amount, which is not good for my nerves. The cat is essentially not designed for long term passages in nasty big waves if you are heading in the wrong direction I.E.windward and if we were faced with three thousand miles to windward I would have some significant concerns. But, as the route for the big leg to OZ should result in 15 to 20 knot following breezes, I’m not unduly concerned.
The space on a 43 foot cat is pretty amazing. The compromise of course is that going to windward is noisy (two hulls hitting the water on the down side of a wave instead of one makes for a hell of a crash!)
Three things, why do they always come in threes? First, we lost the top batten out of the main. You just can’t go to windward in a yacht without the battens. The flogging leach will result in the sail shredding itself in relatively no time and because it’s the top batten, we can’t just pull in a reef and sail on with a reefed main sail. So, it had to come off, either for a running repair or to be used if we have some reaching or running conditions before Mauritius (huh; fat chance!). Ten minutes later the port engine fresh water pump ‘poohed its pants’ putting the engine out of commission and half an hour after this the wind instruments failed.
So, there we are, out of the grand stand and into the s*&%thouse in one foul swoop, as they say in the classics. So, what to do? Given we still have 400 miles to go to windward to Mauritius, can we find a slant with the wind to get us there or should we turn tail and go licking our wounds to Madagascar for repairs and could we get them done there anyway? What are the potential dangers of our position if we carry on?
A few phone calls around the world seeking advice on Madagascar, a discussion with Kenn about weather patterns and a critical assessment of the condition of the main and we have opted for running repairs and Mauritius. After all this is why Hoods have supplied us with the sail repair kit isn’t it.
Taj (Hood Sails) probably wouldn’t do it this way.
It’s now 1700 two days later, the main is back up after being repaired with the assistance of a battery powered drill so we could stitch a makeshift batten in without fear of losing it and we are treating getting to Mauritius with the same amount of strategic navigational thinking as a Sydney Hobart race plan.
I’ve placed a precautionary sat phone call to the Mauritian coast guard and set up a twice daily sked with them. They sounded slightly disappointed that we were not in need of rescuing, (sorry boys) but they do know we are here.
We are now running one engine and keeping a very close monitor on its performance. The engines are a couple of little 27 horse power Yanmars and usually pretty reliable, but as our starboard engine is now our only electrical power source as well as assisting us in getting to windward and keeping the fridge cold, I really don’t want it to fail. The wind instruments dying means a quick lesson for the guys in sailing by the seat of your pants.
Tor is fast becoming quite the seaman, with his mathematical mind appreciating the sense of beauty that lies in how a yacht works on mathematical principles and how even managing a yacht does as well, in many ways. The idea of building safety parameters based on probabilities of various combinations of events occurring intrigues him. This is how I view life at sea. If the main blows out and one engine dies and the instruments fail what other potential events will effect our decision making as to whether to continue on or run for cover? Given the forecast, with no gales in the offing, the state of the headsail (being almost new), the starboard engine purring away pretty comfortably and plenty of food and water on board, the mathematical calculation makes Mauritius a safe haven to strive for. In reality there are dozens more factors involved but this explains as least the idea. Anyone that has studied Game Theory at uni will know what I mean.
It’s now Tuesday morning and the second reefing line blew last night, along with the breeze building to about 25 to 30 knots. The swell is 7 to 8 metres with a nasty sea on top of it. The leach line on the main also needed tightening which is difficult because to access it you have to sit on top of the bimini at the back of the cockpit. Not much fun when you consider its one slip into the Indian Ocean from there, but at least, touch wood, the stitching in the mainsail is holding together. We have 175 miles to go to Mauritius, dead to windward, Kenn has just told me the winds will not improve and we are making four knots VMG. This means that it will take two days to get there. It sucks! As an aside, the table I’m working on is in the saloon on the bridge deck and every so often a wave hits underneath, making the table wobble and my laptop jumps up and down in protest!
I’m in Mauritius now. It’s Saturday and yes, we made it this far! I’ll email you the last exciting instalment of the passage to M next week, so stay tuned.
Cheers for now,
JB
Jane:
So ends first editorialised instalment
3600 words. Feel free to chip away if you need to.
I’ll do the second half in the next few days if that’s okay?
JB
Hello from sunny down town Port Louis, Mauritius, Indian Ocean.
I’ve been here for nearly two weeks now and the last few days of our bash from the Seychelles to Mauritius seems like an eon ago. Funny how the bad memories fade as the salt dries off. But I have to say gang, that the last 175 miles into this delightful haven in the middle of the ocean was not much fun.
As you may remember last time, I spent an afternoon repairing the mainsail with the help of a battery drill and ended up hauling it back up as we ran into 25 knots with the mandatory 35-knot squirts every so often just to make sure we didn’t get complacent, and the main did manage to hold out until one of the bat-cars (cars that hold the sail to the mast) let go, soon followed by two of its mates. This has a tendency to happen in sets as not only are all the cars worn to a similar extent, but as soon as one goes the others get its load as well as their own.
The end result is a highway to hell if you’re dependent on the mainsail for drive, as of course we were. So, we were down to one motor and the headsail, in an extremely uncomfortable seaway and now a new phenomenon slipped into play. The geographical structure of Port Louis and the surrounding volcanic hills is such that the South Easterlies funnel down through the hills and straight at you if you are approaching from the Seychelles. It’s weird I know, but whichever way we went (tacking backwards and forwards through 130 degrees trying to make our way into harbour, the bloody wind just backed and veered following us every which way. I kid you not. It was as if there was a bloody great big wind machine mounted at the harbour entrance and the bloke in charge sure did a good job keeping it aimed fairly and squarely at us. To put it into perspective, we took 20 hours to travel the last fifty odd miles. This is definitely not my kind of sailing!
However, all good things and bad things eventually give you a break and we finally limped into port, to the accompaniment of the Mauritian coast guard radio man Vikesh, who was soon to become a great friend and supporter during our stay. You make good friends at sea and Vikesh was no exception. Due to the difficulties we had in the last few hundred miles I was running a radio sked with the coast guard every twelve hours and while we were in no danger, it was nice to know they were there. Thanks boys. I dips me lid.
Enough of the histrionics. We sailed in under our own steam and berthed at the customs jetty, after shifting a lone yank sailor in his little bucket out of the way. He was proudly taking up as many berths as he possibly could and looking as pleased as punch with himself for doing so. We had heard this same bloke being roundly abused by the coast guard for not requesting permission to enter harbour half an hour before we entered. Surprise, surprise. And the funny thing is that they seem to do it in cruising grounds the world over, ethnocentric and egocentric to a fault.
So, we flicked the yank and went through the formalities very politely with Customs, meeting with and thanking Vikesh. Formalities complete, we motored over to the marina about 500 meters across the harbour and guess who was sitting bang in the middle of the two best berths there? Yep… and you know, the guy had the decency to look bewildered when I shook my head and moved away when he waved.
There was a mad fluffing of air tickets and suddenly Tor’s son Andreus and his mate Morton had a day to spare before their rescheduled flight home took off. The boat repair machine hit high speed fairly quickly with Tor using local contacts through the global company he works for to great advantage in two particularly clever and beneficial ways. First he managed to short circuit much of the learning curve you go through when you first arrive in a new port getting to understand how the place works. And second, he found us a bunch of particularly nice people many of whom have become great friends.
The trip to Mauritius had shown up a number of quite significant problems with the boat, although none of a fundamental nature. But, still serious problems if there is nowhere to stop or hide, as will be the case when we cast off from Mauritius for Australia. We have given both motors a complete accessory overhaul, salt and fresh water pumps, batteries, hoses, fuel tanks and filters and a high level of preventative maintenance as well. If the pump on one engine is playing up don’t even ask about the other one, just do it!
One little detail I had forgotten to mention. I lost part of a filling on the way in, probably subconsciously grinding my teeth at the speed we were making coming in to port. While it wasn’t particularly painful, it was digging a hole in my tongue, the sort of thing that can put a dampener on your day and mine was already wet enough thanks. Tor’s associate, Kahlil, arranged for a dentist friend of his to see me a couple of hours after we docked. At this point I was vaguely shell shocked as I’d stayed up the night before trying to educate the autopilot how you steer a catamaran with one engine and a partly furled headsail to windward in 30 knots, but regardless of this the dentist was a welcome relief…. of sorts.
Now I’ve sailed a few oceans and I’ve been in the odd tight corner without losing my cool overly much, but when it comes to someone climbing into my mouth with a drill, some significant sedative is the only thing that stops me from poohing my pants. Well this delightful young lady wasn’t wearing the sedative deal at all, her solution to my tongue spasmodically trying to stop her drill from imparting excruciating pain on my mauled molar was particularly evil. She had a dental nurse assistant who took huge amounts of pleasure in ramming a suction hose into my tongue and pinning to the opposite wall of my mouth to where the drilling operation was taking place.
The dentist on one side telling me it didn’t hurt at all and the nurse from hell on the other making sure it did was not a good intro to Mauritius but life only got better from there.
Friday night found us at a four-star hotel located a free ferry ride across the marina for Friday night happy hour. I should at this point give you at least a brief run down on Mauritius. The population is 1.2 million with three or four hundred thousand out of the country at any one time. The language is French-based (Creole) but every one speaks enough English to get by, similar to the Seychelles. Life is a fair bit more global here. Third world meets Paris, sort of. There is a strong financial services business, a good education system and a serious attempt at tourism. Sugar is the major industry here although there is a strong textile industry as well and generally they seem to be having a serious go at getting it right. Nice people who are trying to make their way in a world we all find more and more confusing I guess.
So, Friday night turned up a couple of likely lads by the name of Kamlesh and Navin. Kamlesh is into property and has some great mates pretty high up in the government and Navin is an up and coming young barrister, in fact at 26 he is the youngest Barrister here. Nice blokes who are now in the process of helping to arrange for Mauritius to supply Helsal Yachting with a new ‘up market’ brand of casual sailing wear. So, stay tuned and you’ll see it soon in a shop near you. Oh, by the way, the helsalyachting.com website should be up by now (if you’ve done your work Dolly) Or just send me an email… You’ll love it. But, enough with the advertising.
The mainsail has now been bullet-proofed by the local sail maker, the engines are purring away, there is enough diesel on board to damn near motor the whole way to Oz and the water tanks are chockers. Sadly I’m not going to have time before we leave to give you a blow by blow of the two weeks here, but I should have a little time to spare in transit from Mauritius to Oz so I’ll try to fill in the gaps on the way to Freo. My mate Jimmy has just joined the boat and we are three for the trip at this stage. All experienced guys on a well prepared and (now) well tried boat. Kenny Batt is forecasting a weather window for us to get south on, coming through on Thursday/Friday so with a little luck we’ll be underway by the time you get around to reading this.
Oh by the way, I’m doing a couple of radio interviews with Tim Cox on the ABC with one on Monday and they are apparently going to put my scribblings and the interviews up on their website if any one has and inclination to look.
So guys, I’ll see you all soon and will email the rest of this tale of another ocean when we hit Freo.
Bye for now,
Bourkey
Hi every one,
Well this is a sad Mauritian lament and not an email from the void. When we cast off from Mauritius on Thursday the breeze was out of the east, blowing around twenty knots and a comfortable ESE swell all making for a fairly quick and comfortable sail south. Shortly thereafter disaster struck. But, before I get to that I’ll shell out a story about trying to get out of Mauritius, a certain global fuel supplier and why I enjoy being at sea so much.
We have two 6 kilo gas cylinders on board which supply us with cooking gas and should comfortably last the trip to Oz. One was nearly full and the other nearly empty so on the morning of our planned departure, after telling the guys I’d be back in twenty minutes, your’s truly jumped in a car with one of my Mauritian mates and trundled up to the gas filling station for a top up. After spending half and hour searching for the gas depot, then queuing for twenty minutes in a cashier’s office only to be directed to a different area of the complex, I waited with growing impatience for yet another 20 minutes watching the appropriate clerk crawl around cyberspace on his computer trying to identify if they could indeed accept that Seychellese gas cylinders were allowed to be filled in Mauritius.
Finally acknowledging that the Seychelles gas cylinders (made in France) were in fact built to the same French standards (and most likely in the same factory) as the French gas cylinders used in Mauritius, the clerk authorised the gas filling man to wonder off into a secure area of the complex (which I was forbidden to enter) to top up my cylinders, returning fifteen minutes later. The clerk then spent another fifteen minutes generating a bill for 240 rupees, about ten bucks, which I was required to return to the cashier’s office and pay before being allowed to exit the complex.
The gate man, who had in the first instance refused to let our car in to the depot and had made me walk in carrying these two cylinders, then tried to tell me that I couldn’t walk out to the car (parked right outside the gate) on the way to the cashier, with the cylinders, in case I might do a runner and disappear. (It’s an island for Christ sake, where would I hide?) I tossed the offending items in the back of the ute regardless and headed over to pay the bill, leaving the gate man suspiciously eying off the ute, my mate behind the wheel (who was at this stage happily chatting on his mobile, oblivious of these goings on) and me, now fuming, storming off towards the cash man.
After another wait and another bloody queue and I finally I hand over ten bucks and had to wait for the receipt which I was required to deliver back to the grumpy gate man. And wait…and wait….and wait….and wait. After another twenty minutes of the cash man alternating between telling me how slow his printer was and watching him stare demonically at the offending machine which refused to cough up a single pixel I finally lost the last of my composer and told him a couple of things, including the fact that I was leaving for Australia on a boat NOW and that he had to go and tell the gate man I had paid and could leave, a task which he refused to comply with.
Obviously paper work is God in some companies. So, as the saying goes, if the cashier won’t come to the gate man, the gate man was going to come to the cashier. Off I went to get the gate man, still standing guard on the ute, who in turn refused to leave his post making sure we didn’t do a runner while he went to find out if I’d actually paid their ten dollars.
A lot of French style arm waving then ensued between what had now turned into two security guards, the cashier and my Mauritian mate who had finally entered the fray having disengaged his ear from the phone and guess what. Seconds before they called to cops to help deal with a demented Aussie who was seriously considering inserting a gas cylinder in the gate guard, the offending printer had finally decided to kick into gear. With my illegible signature scrawled across the bottom of the page and the gate man happy now that he had managed to give me my receipt we headed off back down the road to the boat. As I sit here now ruminating over the stupidity of system for system’s sake, I know why I enjoy being at sea so much. It’s one place in the world that bureaucrats don’t rule.
But, having vented my spleen I would like to try to describe something which is beyond words. So, if I struggle a little, please bear with me. Existence in Mauritius is something akin to another reality entirely from what you find in Australia. If anything, there are some vague island style similarities between here and Tassie, I guess. But, before I go on I’ll paint the background for this literal canvas. The temperature sits between about 18 degrees at night and 28 degrees in the heat of the day, unless you go wandering around the mountains (well, hills perhaps) where it drops a few degrees and tends to cloud over somewhat.
The fresh south easterly breeze, which I know so well, makes the temperature more bearable, unless you are in the middle of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, where the wind doesn’t penetrate and the intensity of life in a small but densely populated village of 200,000 people that is struggling to cope with the global impact of the 21st century.
Port Louis has a five star waterfront with designer hotels, bars, restaurants and boutiques, IT and sophisticated offshore banking services industry. Yet across the main drag, just a two minute wander from the water’s edge, lies the hustle and bustle of the local population eking out a living amidst a jumble of narrow streets with broken higglty pigglty foot paths that are liable at any step to send you sprawling into the oncoming traffic that crawls around on roads designed for another era and incapable of coping with the 300,000 cars that keep the local population in gridlock for most of the day.
Duck down any side street, actually most of the streets are side streets, and you’ll be accosted by hawkers of nearly every colour and race in the world trying to convince you that their Chinese manufactured junk is cheaper and better quality than the next guy’s.
But, if you stop for long enough, amidst the cacophony of sounds and smells, hard sell and supposed desperation to survive, of a little bit of the flavour of Asia in Africa emerges and you get the feeling that life is okay. Perhaps hawking for a living is after all not one of the worst jobs in history.
Last Saturday, after soaking up a couple of hours of this throbbing noisy street life, Jimmy Mc Cormack and I started looking in earnest for a place to stop and have a beer. An entrance not much wider than a door led us into a bar with formica tables, tubular steel stools, lino floor and a Chinese bloke with a perpetually harried look on his face and a form guide sticking out of his back pocket.
Buying a couple of beers from the girl behind the counter we were directed to a table beside the kitchen door at the back of the bar, the last available and least desirable seats in the house. After raising only a couple of local eye brows as these two foreigners wandered down to the back of an authentically local bar, the crowd hooked back into the serious business of horse racing. Saturday afternoon at the races it seems is a universal occupation here and some of the local market stall holders had even closed up shop to come in and watch the races on the ancient TV that required serious antenna manipulation to get the snow off the screen just prior to each race.
One guy who tried to change channels was given a noisy dressing down by all and sundry and of course it didn’t take long for the local SP booky to sidle up alongside us to see if we wanted to get a bet on. Five hundred rupees, a few slow horses, a couple beers and plate of not too bad crispy chicken bits later and we were an accepted part of the local scenery. The meal and half a dozen beers cost us less than one shout in a hotel on the other side of the tracks and the SP bookie, who also had a stall in the market, made his day’s wage out of a couple of mug Aussies.
The Chinese maitre D had been giving us the good oil as to which horses to back and he looked pretty pleased with himself, so we suspect there might have been a little bit of corruption on the side. (Apparently corruption in horse racing in Mauritius is on a par with Tasmania so we had no expectation of winning.)
Although it didn’t all go the bookie’s way. I decided we should capture the atmosphere on camera, but when I flashed the lens the bookie bolted for the door faster than Phar Lap and the Chinaman was coming such a close second that you’d have sworn he was the jockey. They finally skulked back in ten minutes after the camera had disappeared and Jimmy and I had managed to stop laughing.
The afternoon was one of those delightful little gems you know lurks around every corner when you are travelling. While working out which corner is usually the problem this particular gem does reflect a taste of Mauritius.
Yesterday we wandered around the south west of the island with a couple of locals, ending up at a magnificent surf beach called Le Morne. All the beautiful people were there, flaunting designer suntans to match their hi tech kitesurfers and windsurfers, muscles rippling and bikinis indiscreetly disappearing into places one might only dream about.
A couple of hundred years back, in the final days of slavery, some of the local slaves escaped to this part of the island and lived in the cliff faced hills adjacent to the beach. At the time it was decided to abolish slavery and when a message was sent, presumably via the local constabulary, to let the runaways know that they no longer had to hide, these poor souls hurled themselves off the cliff face rather than return to a life of bondage, thus the name, Le Morne.
We’ve now just arrived home from dinner at my friend Kamlesh’s home. His Mum, a not quite five foot tall Mauritian of Indian descent, raced around all night speaking in Hindi, cooking and serving dinner and getting very excited at the prospect of one day perhaps coming to visit us in Australia.
However, the award for how best to describe Mauritius has to go to Kamlesh’s mate, the youngest barrister on the island, who they simply call ‘The Guru’. He told a story about an English priest that went something like this.
‘An English priest decided to take a grand tour of the local churches of world. First arriving in New York he went to visit the local church in downtown Brooklyn, only to discover a pay phone in the vestibule. Fronting up to the parish priest, he questioned what possible reason they could have for locating a pay phone within the inner sanctum of the church. The local priest responded. “Why, it’s a direct line to God, only a thousand dollars a minute.” As the visiting priest, although intrigued at the concept of being able to talk direct to the big Boss, still had a long tour in front of him and was travelling on a limited budget, he declined the offer to spend the thousand dollars and continued on his tour.
Eventually arriving in Hobart on his grand church tour of the world, he continued his circuit of the local houses of worship and on entering St Mary’s Cathedral he came across yet another payphone in the vestibule. On enquiring of the local priest why there was a pay phone in the church, the travelling priest received a similar response to that given by the New York diocese. “Why, it’s a direct line to God. Only a thousand dollars a minute.”
By this time the wandering Holy man was getting a little agitated at not having the funds to be able to put in a direct call in to the ‘Boss’, but consoling himself with the knowledge that all good things come to those who wait, he continued on his travels.
Finally arriving in Mauritius and visiting the local church in Port Louis he came across yet another pay phone in the vestibule. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess” He said to the local priest. “A pay phone with a direct line to God. And I suppose it costs a thousand dollars a minute.” He muttered indignantly.
“Well, yes.” Responded the priest. “It is a direct line to God. But it only costs ten rupees or about 20 cents a minute.”
“Why so cheap?” asked the other priest. “Every where else I’ve been it’s cost a thousand dollars a minute.”
“Yes man, but this is Paradise. It’s only a local call.”
And that, my friends, just about sums up Mauritius. I hope these few anecdotes give you some sense of the flavour, at least in part, of what Mauritius is. It really depends on how you look at what you see.
So, back to sea and why we have finally decided to pull the pin on the delivery and put ‘Baltersan’ on a ship to Australia. About 60 miles south of Mauritius what had been a drip of water through the port saloon window became more of a trickle. On closer inspection we found a small de-lamination in the window frame and the window coming adrift from the frame. While it was nothing serious at the time, and a very simple repair job back in port, had we continued on another three thousand miles
we ran the risk of the window departing the boat completely, which would have put both yacht and crew in peril.
Sadly, and not wanting to do a ‘Bullimore’ I finally made the decision that we would be returning to Mauritius and in light of the potential for this problem to re-occur if we had a rough crossing of the Indian Ocean I have recommended to the owner that we ship the yacht to Australia.
So, Jimmy and I are madly bashing on shipping line doors trying to find a suitable ship to put ‘Baltersan’ on and I hope to be back in my own little Paradise within the next week or so. See you then.
JB
Indian Ocean Blues
O Mauritius, cher Mauritius,
With your welcome most auspicious,
We came, departed, then we came again
To your sunshine of delights,
To your entertaining nights,
To your welcome in the soft and gentle rain.
Just a single night at sea
Before we missed the repartee
Of the many of our new-found ‘bon amis’
So we turned the boat back North
And with motor sallied forth
To the now twice-entered arms of Port Louis.
O Mauritius, grand Mauritius,
Our return is not suspicious;
Its just that “le bateau est pas tres bon”
We love your people, never fear
(not to mention rum and beer)
And a generosité that won’t say ‘non’.
(with apologies to the French-speaking but it rhymes don’t it?)
