Fish Paradise

29/4/14
I new this place was going to be very special but it still really doesn't get you ready for it. People say how many fish there are and how easy they are to catch but it still doesn't get you prepared. We had 5 nights over at Peros Banhos Atoll and the fish and marine life there is amazing. Snorkelling in a couple of metres or less with loads of coral trout, big groupers, snappers, trevallys, you name it plus all the colourful tropical reef fish. Then there's the sharks.... Loads of them too. Yea they're well fed?? Sure but it still makes me very nervous with 5 or more of them swimming around you. They're just reef sharks but there are others around that luckily we haven't come across yet.
So the days are gone were it's a bit of an effort to catch a fish for the daily BBQ. Now we seem to have too much time on our hands once the daily fish is caught! And the other problem is the size of the trout, massive. We are now at Solomon Atoll and yesterday went outside the reef towing a lure and hooked onto a trout and could see what looked like a shark about to take it as it was being hauled in. Nope, the shadow was 4 big trout following it up! There must be so many of them down there! So we catch 2 and fillet them up and give some to our friends for their lunch and dinner and BBQ the rest ourselves. Is funny because there are 7 other boats here and hardly anybody goes out fishing?? Maybe they don't like fish or fishing as much as we do I'm not sure. We have had a couple of BBQ's on the beach with all the cruisers which has been fun. There's a couple of American boats, 1 Canadian, 1 English,2 Dutch, 1 French and a couple of Finnish boats over the other side we haven't met yet.
Yesterday BIOT, British Indian Ocean Territory came to check our permits. They are from Diego Garcia an atoll further south of here that's an American Naval Base. They were really friendly guys, mainly interested in seeing if we had seen any illegal fisherman on the way here. Also told us the best places to snorkel and where not to snorkel with the sharks. I chanced my arm and tried to buy some beer as our supply is getting alarmingly low, but to no luck:)
7/5/14
The Last week has been much of the same, BBQs and fishing. The weather hasn't been to great until yesterday when the sun came out. The weather changed very quickly from south westerly winds to south easterlies marking the new season. With that came lots of rain and squalls but also filled up all our water tanks and washed the boat so it wasn't all bad. Out of about a dozen boats that were here there are just 4 of us left now, they have all been leaving the last week for Madagascar, India, Rodrigues and Mauritius.
Our good friends Jim and Hellen on Gaia and Antony and Davina on Divanty both left a couple of days ago for India which was quite sad. Gaia was leaving for Madagascar but then changed there minds last minute as Divanty has been to India several times and loved it so much that Gaia decided to stay another season in the Indian Ocean.
We were planning to stay another week or 2 but may even leave ourselves tomorrow if the predicted forecast stays the same. As tempting as it is to stay here in this Paradise the forecast is looking too good to resist. The next passage to Mauritius or Rodrigues has a pretty bad reputation for weather so the tempting prospect of a good one is too hard to ignore. The later the season gets the stronger the winds get. So we will see what the forecast says tomorrow.
Everything else onboard is going very well, Julie included:)