We are BACK….. connected to the internet that is! Thankfully we are writing this safe at harbor at Port Mathurin, Rodriguez Island. But first we will back up where we left off as we are casting off from Gan, Maldives headed for Solomon Island in Chagos.
Well, things never work our exactly as planned: Our strategy was to sail the ENTIRE 288 miles to Chagos, mostly to conserve on diesel for our next passage from Chagos to Mauritius. However, we did the exact opposite…we motored the whole way?! Additionally, we didn’t want TOO strong of winds, which create large swell, since we were headed almost due south and didn’t want to “bash” our way there. Instead, when we had to leave Maldives, it was forecasted to be 5-10 knots from the SE (low swell) and possibly clock to ESE…thought it would be a good conditions for our point of sail. However, the wind angle and strength just wasn’t enough to keep the sails full.
We left Gan about 2 pm on Wednesday, May 8th with sunny skies and very little wind, and it was predicted to light winds all the way to Chagos. As soon as we left out of the southern pass, it was evident we were in the middle of an ocean: the swell was 1.5-2 meters and they were coming from a direction just aft of our bow. With no wind to “push” us through, we had to motored through them. These conditions were incredibly noticeable after the calm and protected waters of the Maldivian atolls….we were trying to get back our “sea legs” and I, my “big girl pants” on! But as we bob and sway, we are blessed with a small pod of dolphins…always a good sign to a start of a passage.
Still love having dolphins on the bow!!!
Of course, with the good comes the bad…. our Garmin chart plotter display head in the cockpit decided to “fritz” out and our charts just went gray! I had just plotted our route just an hour or less…?! We have a back up one and so we replaced it, re-checked our SD card with the charts loaded, Trevor checked the data cable, but nothing seemed to work. Discussing turning back to Gan to re-asses the problem, Trevor just happened to check the cabinet where our NMEA 2000 backbone is located and wiggled the data cable and “viola”….everything came back on. NMEA 2000 is a plug and play communication standard protocol used for connecting different marine instruments/sensors and our display units…in other words, our wind indicator, depth sounder, radar, GPS, and charts can be viewed on a single display. Whewwww….all good again!
Other than that it was a pretty uneventful passage, which we like.
A total of 46 hours….of motor sailing. Wind would come up to about 10 knots and then die back down again to 5 knots. At times we had to put the jib away or reef it so that it would stop hitting the rigging and spreader as our point of sail was about 30-60 degrees to our port. The wind is either too little or too much (LOL)!
Night one: Sliver of moon…it was so calm and clear that I could see the stars reflecting in the water during my night watch. 
Night two: Starting to get a bit squally around us… but a wonderful sunset!
Plus a Double Rainbow?!!! I promise no one started to cry (LOL)!
If you haven’t seen the viral “Double Rainbow” YouTube video back in 2010…you need to watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI
May 10th about 9:30 am, we saw land…. just barely : )
Land HO!!!! 
It was good to see other boats here. We were told from another cruiser in Gan that their friend was at the same anchorage by themselves for a month!
Time to put up the BIOT flag….though there is technically no “check in” to the territory as the cruising permit we applied for was all the official paperwork we needed to do. However, the 5 boats that were there before us said that a large patrol RIB came into the atoll the day before we arrived with a customs and immigration personnel on board to check permits and stamp passports. I guess the patrol boat comes once a month to to the anchorage during cruising season….we were super jealous… maybe we will be here for the next round to get passport stamps?
We decided to take the East pass into the atoll rather than the west pass as we had read the west pass is “curvy” dodging coral bommies. We thought having a straight line through the east pass would be better in case we had to leave the atoll in an emergency. We dropped anchor (after dodging coral reefs and circling around to check our depths and bottom) on a sand shelf in 50 feet of water with 280 feet of chain out.
SV Yolo wrote in Noonsite that he took the East pass and saw depth of 20+ feet…we saw a minimum of 18 feet an hour before low tide…plenty of room : )
Also published on Noonsite was an article by Susan Richards from SV Papagena who visited Chagos back in 2002 warning cruisers to take care while in the Solomon anchorages if/when a violent NW squalls occur. Generally speaking, the winds come from the SE which makes for good anchoring on the sand shelf in the “permitted anchoring area” in Solomon island. However, when the wind blows from the NW, you have a lee shore (the back of your boat is facing the shore so if you drag anchor the wind will push you into land…no bueno!). In fact the year she was there a fero-cement boat “ended up on the reef and sank immediately” which we believe it is the same wreck we saw there. There is a black buoy marking the wreck near/around: 05 20.1786 S, 072 15.6479 E.
Speaking of squalls…being near the equator the area is prone for “unstable” weather and for squalls to hit any time of the day. This photo below is just an hour after we set anchor at 10:45 am.
Ekks….time to hunker down and enjoy our anchor beers!!!!
Getting settled always take a day or two and the 2-3 day passages are almost worse than a week passage…but after some rest we were ready to go exploring and meet our new boat neighbors!
Up next: Chagos….Comfortable Bored….but still massive amounts of fun!
We love you. Safe travels always. Such amazing incredible stories u have. U do have a book when u come backbtonus. But I am betting this will be your life’s journey. Once a sailor always a sailor!!! We miss you. You’re dad is sleeping more but doing ok! We missed Lisa and Jake and Kyla as the tornadoes were going n their path!! So sad… Hoping for another time…Lots of love to you both😘🤗