Bonjour Isle La Reunion!

Well after a great sail here with mainly plenty of wind we arrived in St Pierre in 24hrs on a Sunday morning. They say any swell over 2.5m and the waves at the entrance to the harbour starts to break. It was about a 2.3m swell with calm conditions and we were fine. We tied up alongside the main wharf and were told immigration ect could be done the next day Monday, very casual. 

The harbour is right in the middle of the town which is very touristy. Lots of people checking out this yellow boat and then as it gets dark all the "HomeBoys" start hanging out around there with their suped up 1.5ltr diesel Peugots with the loudest sound systems possible blaring out gangsta ragga and drum and bass! Ha, a little different to quiet old Mauritius, we have arrived in France :)

Michael and Sheila on Kantala arrived shortly after us and we arranged to hire a car and go up into the mountains. Definitely wasn't our idea but we woke up at 4am to do the 2 hour drive up into one of the cirques to see the sunrise, awesome and was well worth it! Absolutely stunning up there with massive canyons and beautiful winding roads. There was no way I was driving on the wrong side of the road so luckily Michael who is from Canada did it all and done a great job without loosing the €1000 deposit!

The rest of the days there were spent around town and doing a few little "jobs". I changed all the fuel filters and then noticed that the raw sea-water pump was leaking water. This is were the fun begins and you don't speak French. Tiny little Johnson water seal but it's a little harder than you think with the language difficulty! All was well though when I ended up spotting a mechanic working on an outboard in the harbour and after taking the pump off and giving it to him he ended up finding me a seal by the next day, perfect.

We tried to catch a bus but even that was quite hard working it all out but we ended up succeeding and seeing a bit more of the island which was nice. We also met a couple of the local yachties which was great and had them over for a couple of beers and get to know a little more about this island.

Friday night came and Julie spotted some flyers for a Colombian band that were playing in town. We got tickets and didn't know really what to expect. It was in a nice little theatre/club with a really good mix of people and 2€ beers. First up was a local band playing drums and some sort of sitar sort of instruments and bells, was different but really good. Then came the Colombians.... Ha, was like bam! 13 of them on stage with congos, sax, 3 trumpets, bells, whistles, keyboards you name it! Young fellas full of energy playing mambo, salsa and sort of jazz was really great fun. Great vibe with everyone having a good time! Great to see some good live music and it was a great night out.

 The harbour is great and gives you the first 3 days free and then €15 a day. Fuel we have heard can be got duty free at euro 80c a litre which would have been great if we had of known before filling in Mauritius. Everything else is pretty expensive as it is all shipped in from France. Although saying that it is still cheaper than Australia :)

Good to see a little slice of France in the middle of nowhere and a seriously beautiful rugged place once you get inland.

   

Thank you Mauritius!

Flying back to Mauritius after being away for 7 weeks I was very surprised to see Julieta at the airport as I was about to look for a taxi! Very nice surprise indeed as Sebastian had offered to come and pick me up. I had a great 5 week swing at work and a really good catch up with family and friends in Perth but it was so nice to be home with Julie and back on Sunflower. Arriving back to the mooring Sunflower was looking pretty sexy with her new charcoal grey boom cover (Julie was also). She had gone a little crazy while I had been away and bought out a shop  in town off all their canvas. There were grey covers everywhere!! BBQ, winches, Chartplotter, liferaft and of course the boom cover! Yep, Julie had been busy. The varnish was all looking perfect once again inside and out and everything very well organised and clean, but not for long :)

I brought back a new solar panel to add to the collection so got busy with that over the next few days having Gadel the Stainless steel guy get started on a new frame to mount it alongside the others, he did a perfect job at a great price. Now we have 350w of solar and it seems to be just enough to keep us going without having to run the engine.

Julien from MU Sails also came down and fitted the new headsail. They did a great job on it and we are very happy indeed and glad that we made the choice of having them make it. Sunflower is hopefully bulletproof once again! We hired a motorbike and finished storing up with all the goods ready for Reunion and Madagascar. Grand Baie is a super easy place to do this with a couple of really good supermarkets all close to the boat.

Our good friends Diane and Sebastian offered to take us away for the weekend on their 30ft Wharram Tiki. Was great! We had a blast, weather was perfect and we went around the top of the island to an island off the east coast. Their friend Ben who also has a Wharram joined us as well, was great to see the 2 boats anchored in the little cove. Julie and I camped on the beach in a tent they had leant us. We lit a fire and had a BBQ and a few beers. The next day we went for a bit of a "Tiki" tour around the island and through some mangroves in Bens boat. Great little 26 foot fibreglass Wharram he bought in Thailand and sailed back to Mauritius, just like a big Hobbie Cat!

Great place to live Mauritius, and we were very lucky to get to meet a few of the locals and make really good friends. Is great to see inside and see how the people really are and not just from a tourist perspective. Such friendly chilled out people the Mauritiuns! Nothing seems to really phase them.

After being back 10 days Sj Sunflower was ready to go once again. The forecast was good for a fast sail to Reunion Island. We said our goodbyes to all the great people we had met here and made our way to Port Louis just 12 miles away to check out. Was a great sail with our friends Michael and Sheila on Kantala. The headsail was perfect and we had 20kts on the beam and Sunflower was doing 7-8kts in the flat water. We tied up alongside the customs wall for the night to check out first thing in the morning for the 140nm sail to Reunion. The easiest check out possible with no cost at all and we were off by 10am with a fair breeze, life is good!

Mauritius

A lots gone on in the last 7 weeks since we arrived in Mauritius. I am now back in Aus and captain Hooly has taken the helm on Sunflower on a mooring in Grand Baie.

We arrived in Port Louis and it couldn't have been easier with the officials, after half hour we were cleared in and had a 3 month visa with no cost at all and very friendly officials. We then made our way over the other side of the harbour to the marina. For $12 a day you have water, power and hot showers right in the middle of the town, it's great. It had been nearly 6 months since we had had a proper hot shower and to say Julie was very excited would be an understatement! Sunflower thoroughly enjoyed a freshwater scrub also. We stayed for 3 nights and had a look about the town and ticked of a few jobs also. The main job was meeting up with Julien from MU Sails to repair the head sail. The sail was pretty trashed and the fabric very old so we ended up deciding to go with having a new one made. He gave us a very competitive price and the sail is now ready to pick up from his loft as soon as I get back which will be very exciting (amongst other things:)

Port Louis was a bit of a shock also to us after life being so quiet, it is bloody busy! With the main population of Indian descant it can get pretty hectic in the markets but still relaxed compared with India. The vege markets are great with everything you could ask for and the prices are pretty good also.

 After a few days of doing that and our washing we had had enough though and were looking forward to being on anchor again so we headed up to Grand Baie up the top of the island and anchored in  front of the yacht club. There was a regatta on that day and Julien the sailmaker was racing on his dad Phillips boat so we went for a few beers at the clubhouse when they got in. Was great, there must have been about a dozen boats racing and most of the crew involved were reasonably young and the club had a really good vibe and we made a few new friends very easily. And that was it, we slipped into the Mauritian lifestyle very easily, Julieta more so as she is still there enjoying herself and making more friends. Other cruisers we had met previously were also there and coming and going which was great so there is always someone about. The World Cup on the big screen in town took up quite a few good nights with a few beers also which was good fun with our friends from Holland, Brazil and France and obviously Julie's from Argentina and very passionate about football so it was a good laugh.

We hired cars and motorbikes on different occasions normally to do boat jobs but we did do a little sight seeing but have still got to go for a proper look down south for a couple of days were it's meant to be really nice. 

It was quite a shock though how modern Mauritius is, I didn't imagine massive shopping Malls and the biggest supermarkets I have ever been in! Big duel lane motorways with really good roads but the driving is pretty ordinary to say the least, I think they definitely brought their skills from India.

We managed to get a few boat jobs done like re galvanise the anchor chain, service sewing machine, big service on outboard, some stainless work, finally finishing the cockpit table and the most important job of all was having a new burner fabricated for the BBQ. 

Julie is still really busy ticking of loads of jobs as I write this now! The star that she is, busy varnishing, painting and got lots of sewing projects on the go. Through a friend she managed to find in town a fella selling Sunbrella canvas for the bargain price of $13 a metre for the charcoal grey we wanted. So there's grey popping up everywhere, new liferaft cover, BBQ cover, winch covers, covers for covers and even talk of a new cover for the mainsail!

When she's not busy with jobs she has been having a fine time with friends she has made. A young Mauritian couple we met, Sebastian and Dian have been really good. Dian always inviting her out for lunch or to parties and introducing Julie to a lot of new people so she even had the opportunity to go diving the other day which she really enjoyed. The Mauritian people couldn't be friendlier, it's great. 

Phillip, Julian's dad has leant us his cyclone mooring which was also a really great thing. Just before I left we had a couple of 30knot days and since then Julie has had quite a few more. It's quite some job for her raising and lowering the dingy alone when it's blowing so some days she is confined to the boat but so far she hasn't gone too crazy :)

If it wasn't for the cyclones that sometimes make their way there it would be a great place to make a base for a year and see some of the islands around there. But it would be too hard for me to leave the boat to come back to work and not have somewhere safe to keep her so we plan to move on when I get back hopefully to South Africa via Madagascar but it is also subject to change with work!

I've got a couple of weeks left of work and thoroughly enjoying it after having so much time off. Making the most of the chef cooked meals and freezer full of ice cream makes it even easier to deal with and the cash injection hasn't hurt either.

Whale of a time!

The breeze died a little yesterday afternoon and we were left rolling around in lumpy seas doing 4-5knots. Julieta and I chatting away in the cockpit I decided to go down and make a toasted sandwich. With the wind behind us like this the mainsail sometimes bangs around, making a cracking noise and sending a shudder through the boat. Just as I got down the steps a noise like this only with a lot more momentum and almost a crunching noise I thought maybe we had a problem with a piece of the rigging?? Julie then yells out we have hit something..... A whale! I race outside and it is just passing down the starboard side of the stern. Sunflower got pushed aside and it was definitely a whale. There was a lot of blood, the poor fella didn't look too good at all. As bad as I felt for it the fear for the boat was much worse. Only a few days ago we were speaking with a Frenchman on a 55 foot Amel, a quality, very expensive boat. He was heading down the coast of Argentina when he also hit one but also put a big hole in the stern but luckily he had watertight doors so he made his way into Buenos Aries for repairs. Anyway with all this going through my brain quickly checking bilges but we were fine(I think so anyway). The chances of this happening are super slim but luckily we have a super strong boat that seemed to just shrug it off!
Anyway the breeze has just picked up a little now and we are still on track to make Port Louise tomorrow morning.

Rodrigues, thank you it was great!

The last 2 and a half weeks at this place has been great, it's a very special unique kind of place. Just can't get over how friendly everyone is and nothing is a problem at all. The last couple of weeks we had been getting pretty bloody lazy though but it was great. A few walks, lunches with a few beers, couple of boat jobs, go back to the bakery, walk around the town or just go and chat with another yachtie and have another beer.
Its a pity we can't speak French. Even though most people speak a little English you still can't have a proper conversation which is something we really miss out on. I think if we stayed a while we would slowly start picking up the language alright though and that would be fun but it's now time to go. A few yachts the last couple of days came in that we only got a brief chance to meet but hopefully we will catch them further down the line.
We left yesterday(Monday) lunch time with a good forecast for the next few days with all the wind supposably behind us at 15-20knots which is perfect. So far it is about right. Mauritius is only about 350miles from Rodrigues but is just that tiny bit too much to do in 2 days so we are just cruising and planning to arrive in Port Louise daylight on Thursday morning making it a 3 day trip. It's a little rolly at the moment but not too bad, still managed to do a roast chicken with veges for dinner last night. The weather is a little chilly, we have to put on long pants and a jumper at night which really is just not on! Already looking forward to getting back to the tropics.

Rodrigues

Arriving mid Friday afternoon was just too easy. There were 5 other yachts there, 4 of which we knew from Chagos. As Rob from "Inish" grabbed our bow line humming a wedding tune I couldn't help smile but completely puzzled as we hadn't said anything to these guys here??? Turns out our good friends on Gaia and Divanty who were sailing for India had spread the word around on the SSB Radio to the whole of the Indian Ocean! Well we cracked up anyhow.

Then there were the officials also helping with our lines.... What a great surprise. We didn't expect at all to come here so hadn't done any research really and what we found was really special. Was like what I imagined it would be arriving in the carribean. The locals here are 97% African decent and all talk Creole which is pretty well French. All really laid back, smiling, just no problem at all. They all came onboard and the paperwork was done in less than an hour. We had the "junior" health inspector Serge who was a super cool smiling sort of fella and the only one we had to pay. Because he was a junior employee the fee was also half! Fantastic, after paying big bucks for Maldives and Chagos the fee here is $30 for a 2 month stay. It was a full moon the night before we arrived so spring tides. We arrived at the top of the tide so it was a bit bumpy alongside so after talking to Gilbert the harbour master (also a champion) we decided to anchor in the dredged harbour. For us it's much nicer at anchor and there is plenty of room there for a  half dozen or more yachts and good holding in mud.

Then into town and off to dinner we went with the crew from La Luna Denise and Etienne. Music everywhere, big mamas all dressed in colours, super cool fellas just hanging out, absolutely no stress whatsoever and almost everyone we passed saying "bonjour", love this place! Is a complete culture shock after being in a Muslim place for so long. Arriving at the restaurant was also a pleasant surprise with the Finnish boats KasteHelmi and Ever After also there. Smiles all around and then the Finnish surprised us with Champagne for a toast to Julie and I! Great night. Also the steak and sausages weren't too bad either!

Saturday we discovered the Bakery or "Pattisserie" as the French say and also the fresh markets. Was heaven... The super fresh vegetables just made us drool, all beautifully displayed and also fresh Meats. The prices are reasonable for most, just some of the imported fruits a little expensive.

 We also went to the "night club" Sunday afternoon for local music. Didn't know what to expect,thought it might be pretty upbeat. Arriving we could could here the music, especially the squeeze box and a drum. Turns out all the old folk after leaving church come here. All the old mamas come to dance and shake their Booty dressed in their best and brightest outfits. The dance I suppose is a Waltz sped up, all moving about in the dance floor with perfect timing. Unfortunately not enough beers could get me up there with my goofy feet!

Since then we have been around the island on a motorbike also seeing the tourist attraction with giant tortoises. Massive things they are, Julieta in heaven. Is well worth the visit, set in a canyon with hundreds of these big things wandering around the place. There is also a cave on the grounds that you get a guided tour of and I would say it is the best cave I have seen. It goes for 500m and is really impressive. 

Yesterday we went by bus to the other side of the island and did a couple of hour walk along the beaches and hills. We took fresh baguettes, cheese and a bottle of red and just hung out on a beach all to ourselves was really nice. Spectacular limestone coast. A little windswept but green with these very small pine trees growing. Loads of goats and sheep wandering around happy out. The bus goes over the small mountain and is a pretty spectacular trip also. Once a bit higher than sea level there are big eucalyptus trees that remind me of home. 

Then we must have timed it about right. The quiet bus ride soon changed. School was out and about a hundred pint sized little African Creole grommets jumped on and it was hilarious. All really well behaved, smiling happy sitting on top of each other or standing and messing about. Julie also  pointed out that they are only about 6 years old and get on the bus themselves with no problem or worries that you would have in most other countries.

We haven't been out fishing yet but plan to go today, I think it is going to be good.

Chagos-Rodrigues

The forecast was good so we had to leave Chagos unfortunately. We had a 12-15kt SE breeze and had beautiful sailing heading down the west side of Chagos bank with another boat "Ever After". That was until the 2nd night out when it went to custard and the wind came almost from the south with lots of rain and a big swell running and the breeze up to 25kts. We made slow progress then, we really had to nurse our Headsails as we didn't want another casualty! The next day it eased but still a lot of rain about the place but went back to the SE at least and then the following day started to come around to the East and then we had great sailing once again for the next 3 days heading south the last under Spinnaker. The seas were calm and we made good speed but unfortunately we were just a tad behind the most of the breeze that was just a little further south than us and then as we got a couple of days out from Rodrigues the wind died altogether and went NE which was directly behind us so on went the engine. The trip took us 8 days for the 1000 mile journey and we arrived fully rested and ready to go which was a great surprise. Geez, Julie even made a cheese cake towards the end of the passage the weather was that good! I really don't think there are many weather windows that you don't get smashed about and break lots of things on this passage from all the stories we heard and blogs we read, maybe we are just lucky??! Sunflower went great once again and we really enjoyed sailing with the Yankee And Staysail as a proper Cutter rig as we don't normally do when we have the Genoa.  Julie also got very busy trimming sails and playing around which was great to see! 

And some other news is that I popped the question just before we left and the answer was yes, Happy Days!!