As we heard, a cheap place to stay here at a resort in the Maldives costs about $800 USD a night …. on a cruisers budget (though every budget is a bit different), we are not sure how our wallets will manage, but the cards were in favor of us stopping here and weather and time restrictions allowed for us to check out atolls once again!
Sad as it was to leave, we lifted anchor just before noon on Saturday 23rd of March. Immigration took a bit longer than expected as there was a cruise ship they had to check in and additionally there were 2 Australian warships that arrived in the harbor that morning….busy day for everyone!
Cruise ship to the right and the warships to the left 
I generally thought warships would not have AIS on…but maybe that was because they were coming into a new country. 
Question: there is a white Australian flag flying astern….?! This must be specific to warships.
As predicted….not a lot of wind and only about 6 miles off shore we were in prime fishing grounds and only had about 150 feet of water underneath the keel.
A lake?! 
Had a few friendly waves and a request for beers…. the universal sign is lifting your hand to your mouth like you are holding a can of beer…it works across all languages : )
Waiting for the predicted wind to come up on Monday…we were still motoring when we came to the most southern point of Sri Lanka. It was like the Singapore Straits! Most were fishing vessels but many were cargo ships.
At one point during a night watch shift, I watched these fishing vessels all congregate at this one point….I almost wanted to take a detour and come join the party! 
Singapore Strait…Sri Lanka Style! We tried to stay out of the shipping lanes. At one point we almost hit a fishing vessel as Trevor and I changed shifts. I had to take a hard left and we were only meters away….really close call.
On Monday am, the wind finally started to fill in …but…right when Trevor’s shift started and we set the sails and turned off the engine…the prop wouldn’t collapse and would keep spinning the shaft that is connected to the transmission (me just learning this). From my little knowledge and understanding, our feathering prop “should” collapse to keep both resistance down as we sail as well as protect the transmission from damage that can occur if the prop freely spins and the cooling element on the transmission is not engaged like it is when the engine is on.
So in the water Trevor goes…without really having a plan or really talking about how he would get out of the water, cut the line if there was one, stay close to the BOAT all while the boat is still moving at 1.5 knots!!!! I was scared to death…tired, now irritated….. all went well but don’t do what we did….talk about it first!
Trevor cut this from the prop….we must of hit another net in the middle of the night as it was a different material than the net we caught before as we were coming into Sri Lanka.
When you see white caps…that means wind… 
Yeah….the engine is finally off…..
It was time to make water….yeah….it’s not WORKING! We generally get a PPM reading of about 200-250 when we make water. This time we were seeing a PPM of over 500?! This is what we call “city water” and is still fine to drink but we would feel more comfortable with a lower PPM. We could of put a small does of bleach in the water tanks but bleach is a killer to our water maker so we just don’t use bleach…we just rely on making water that is low in PPM…and we are still alive to talk about it.
So we “pickled” the water maker which means we dilute an organic material (Sodium Metabisulfite) in water and run it through to essentially “soak” the membranes in the solution to kill and flush the system. We left the solution in for a 24 hour period and tried again…still a high PPM reading. SO Trevor off to work…
I cringe when I see the saw coming out of the closet! 
New pre-filters, rigged to try only 1 membrane to determine which one is “blown”…. 
After using 1 membrane, we were able to get a PPM reading of just under 400….. It will take longer to fill our tanks but at least we can make water.
And so it goes…we aren’t going to die but we did decide to “blaze” to Uligan, our check in point, so we could take care of the particulars of the water maker parts. We called Cruise RO (Rich and Charlie) on our satellite phone, ordered 2 membranes and a low pressure pump to the Maldives….not sure what that is going to cost us but it doesn’t matter…we have to have water!!!!
A day earlier, our refrigerator sensor stopped working….it happened to be the ethernet cable was loose and Trevor just zip tied it so it wouldn’t wiggle….still…there is ALWAYS something to fix…it never end!!!
By Tuesday we were south of India and the currents were shifting , the wind had dies down, motor on, but this crazy 2 meter swell came from our starboard beam for about 8-10 hours…I literally saw us heel 30 degrees!… otherwise we did a lot of this…
Trevor listening to podcasts on the iPad….. I would listen to podcasts at night while looking up at the stars…I really enjoy doing this!
By Wednesday …we were in experiencing currents about 1 knot with and against us….but still flat calm…tired of motoring but at least there was no wind against us…the reason for leaving Sri Lanka when we did as the wind was predicted to start to shift against us by the weekend.
Main sail still up, pulled in tight and reefed just to keep us a bit more balanced.
Thursday, we arrived by 11:30 am local time….
Ahhhh..Atolls…back to where we can see the bottom in 50+ feet of water! 
A side note: The Maldivians are ALL Muslim…in fact you can’t be a citizen here and practice another faith…Their flag represents this with the Islamic green field and moon crescent as a symbol of Islam.
Anchor down, as David on SV Starry Horizons suggests a spot right behind them, avoiding the reef between us of course. We dropped in 67 feet right on the edge of the reef and I was able to back her straight to keep our chain from going into the coral…it was perfect if I do say so myself…I will never be able to do that AGAIN!!!!!
It’s so nice to see and hear from Starry Horizons as we round the corner coming into the anchorage at Uligan Island. Also here was SV Serafina and SV Alamic.
- 5 days passage
- 120 hours passage
- We motored 107 of those hours
- This equates to about 100 gallons of diesel
- Of about 700 miles we might of sailed about 78 miles
So I hope this title does not discourage others of coming here…In our opinion, the welcome we received from the Maldivians has been the most generous and friendliest for us thus far, and that is saying something!
See the next post about our welcome here at Uligan… full of generosity, laughter, and no cash?!