What a place! But really what makes a place is the people you share it with!!! So let’s meet the Chagos Fleet…a truly international one at that!
SV Ostrika – 54 foot Oyster (Holland flagged) with Captain Patrick and Paola with 3 crew members (2 from Italy and 1 from Kenya).
SV China Dream – 44 foot Lagoon catamaran (China flagged) with Captain Jackie and wife Sofia.
SV Dream Away – No idea of the details of their boat…but we called her the “Orange Boat” with Captain Graham and wife Av.
SV Rierol – Wish I had a photo of their boat…they had a cut out aft perfectly fit for their dinghy! French flagged with Captain Bernard and Bee.
Honnary mention goes to the 2 boats moored at Boddam anchorage in Solomon atoll:
SV Neptune’s Highway – Captain Bruce and wife Laura
(USA flagged)
SV Yara – (German Flagged)
Our first morning, waking to blue skies and puffy white clouds drinking our morning coffee we were graced with the presence of this guy….we were elated!
And so the fun begins!….quickly we introduced ourselves to our new boat neighbors and got the “down low” about things to see and do. It seems as if the daily activity was to fish. You can only fish with rod or hand line but that’s not a problem. There were plenty of reef in the middle of the atoll in which you take your dinghy and troll for fish. Pretty much we all did this and the fish were pretty decent sized, especially for dinner for two or four! The first few nights we had dinners over at Ostrika and the next at Dream Away….full of good food (fresh fish) and lots of “adult beverages”…maybe a little too much ; )
Trevor would go out fishing every day for the first week. He caught a total of 4 fish…this one we have no idea what kind it was but it was good eating! SIDE NOTE: Trevor also caught HIMSELF AGAIN (remember we went to the ER back in Malaysia for a fish hook in his finger). This time the hook was smaller and he pulled it through…the advice from our Malaysian experience! 
Resident reef sharks remember boats that clean their fish and hang around for a cheap snack. Once Trevor started to fish we saw these guys every day swimming around our boat, whether we fished or not : )
However, about 4 days after we arrived….Trevor and I started to get little red bumps on our legs and back that look like pimples. We had a friend who had a similar looking rash (maybe a staph infection?) and he finally got antibiotics and it cleared up right away! So we started taking a does of antibiotics. With no real way to tell exactly what was happening we had to go on was what little we thought we knew about staph: People often carry this bacteria on them and don’t even know it but if not treated, the skin irritation could get deep into the skin and could be ‘life-threating’…. we decided to error on the side of caution and assume it was a staph infection….and contagious!…..so we informed SV Ostrika and SV Dream Away of the conundrum so they could keep an eye out for any signs and then we put ourselves in “quarantine” until we started to see the antibiotics work. We proceeded to immediately start the process of washing EVERYTHING…and I mean EVERYTHING! Cushion covers with color safe bleach, floor coverings, bedding and towels every other night, all clothing bleached and washed….it was a crazy first week in paradise!
Groos I know….. are these “sweat bumps” or a staph infection? 
Mostly all better…. As of the writing of this… nobody has any evidence of any skin irritation..yeah!!!
After about 3 days of just being on the boat, we started to see the “bumps” fade and had a few more discussions with others and discovered many had had this and we determined they were “sweat bumps”…or whatever….and it seemed to be a fine and nobody felt (after looking at them) this was contagious or a problem. We finished the regiment of antibiotics anyways and tried to keep cool/dry and cover any open scraps/cuts. We are glad we took precautions anyways, even though everyone was not concerned, we were thankful that we could be once again socialize without fear of transfer any “discomfort” to anyone else ; )
With this behind us…mostly, it was back to exploring!
Ile Fouquet – Is the island in front of where we anchored.
There is large catamaran wreck on the beach of Ile Fouquet that you can see from the anchorage and Google Earth?! We had to check it out…eerie as it is.
Walking around the Ile Fouquet was really only possible at low tide. We had heard Il Takamaka was really hard to navigate around the island and on land you almost needed a machete…in our opinion, really going inland anywhere here took a machete. The forest of palm trees and shrubs were dense so lazy as we are…we stuck to the coast.
Even though Chagos is hundreds of miles from any major land mass, there is a healthy Red Footed Booby colony here….along with other type of birds that followed us on our walk and came very close to giving Trevor a “buzz haircut” or riding in the dinghy…some would hover close by to catch a nibble of a fish we might of caught. Visit the site below to see what birds are present in Chagos…
“I made a funny….” 
“…Son….” 
“….And you are not laughing!”
A bunch of us went for a drift snorkel in the pass between Ile Fouquet and Ile Takamaka. But Trevor and I were the first in the dinghy and was just puttering around…then we saw them!!!! A decent sized pod of dolphins….we started to go a little faster, then a little faster, then all of a sudden they were ‘racing us’?! After a few minutes, they would slow down and we would turn around and do it all over again (7 times to be exact) … and they FOLLOWED! It is one thing to see a pod of dolphins from the bow of a sailboat…it’s another to have them a few feet away right next to you in a dinghy….just fantastic!
We anchored our dinghy near the mouth of the pass closest to the anchorage and swam up stream then drifted back down. The water clarity seemed to be best just at high tide however, we made sure to do it when the tide was in our favor (incoming) so we wouldn’t get “sucked” out to the open ocean. There looked to be a lot of damage from a “bleaching” back in 1998 but the red and blue coral was a nice surprise!
Ile Boddam – SV Ostrika organized the entire fleet to do a BBQ lunch at the “authorized” fire pit near the Ile Boddam moorings. It was about a 3 mile dinghy ride with coral bommies to navigate through but we all dropped our fishing hand lines on the way to see if we could catch lunch!
Do you see all the coral heads above? SV Neptune’s Highway originally was anchored by Ile Fouquet when they first arrived to Chagos but moved to Ile Boddam due to northerly winds for better wind and wave protection…however, being near Boddam, there is no real anchoring (unless you want to be wrapped around coral) so there are old moorings that were installed by past cruisers. SV Neptune’s Highway specifically added a new chain lead to the floating mooring ball off the chain around the coral. I didn’t get any depth reports from them but they did mention they felt pretty safe…unless they had to leave the anchorage an in emergency.
Ashore there is a “Yacht Club”, an abandoned processing facility with a church a short walk inland. This island use to be a large coconut plantation that would process coconut oil that would be shipped to Mauritius and other island nations.
Time to start the BBQ….we didn’t really know what to expect at the fire pit as no one currently had been there. So we were happy to find a stand up grill/screen and all we needed to do was find things to burn. Patrick and Bee got busy with digging the pit while others gathered sticks and leaves…we contributed burnable items like used kitchen paper towels while some brought cardboard from their beer stash : )
There was a cute little circular (short) picnic table and a few log benches..it was perfect to set up for a day spent here!
Nobody went hungry..even these guys got a snack!
Hermit crabs were EVERYWHERE!!!! I was having too much fun to organize hermit crab races ; (
Some of us went for a beach walk to see white eels that get caught in the coral at low tide…at 3 pm that day…so we headed off while others stayed at “the pit” to chill out.
We ended the afternoon with the last of our “grog” and some hand strummed tunes….but don’t forget to bring your bug spray….it’s a mosquito’s paradise too!
Dinghy ride back home….3 miles each way…2 gallons of gas round trip….after all the fishing, dolphin racing, and snorkeling…we only had enough gas for 1 more trip to this place : )
Ile Takamaka – We all were still looking at weather almost everyday to determine when the best time to leave for each of our destinations. We had a quick “Weather Meeting” on Ile Takamaka accompanied with beers and chips and of course tablets and phones all loaded with the most current grib files. We took a group photo…soon to come from SV China Dream….
Trevor and I had wanted to host a dinner on “Flo” with the Chagos fleet and we finally got our chance! We prepared 3 different types of baked pasta, fresh baked french bread with garlic, coleslaw, and the bar consisted of 7 bottles of red wine, tons of beer, Glenlivet, run and cokes, gin and tonics, and even Baileys?…..I don’t think there needs to be a lot of explanations here…you can image how it went!
There looked to be a decent weather window coming very soon. Trevor and I debated leaving in a few days…but this meant that we would be leaving almost 2 weeks before our permit expiration…..it was a hard call. The upcoming passage has been one that I have been very freaked out about since we decided to cross the Indian Ocean…why you ask? Read the next blog post to find out…..
But…the decision was finally made….we were going to head south to Rodriguez on Wednesday May 22nd. We spent the day before hand cooking and preparing meals for our passage. We tried to switch out our 130% jib sail to our backup jib which is smaller but the wind was blowing too hard and no really good/safe way to get it down. Engine and generator checks and Trevor replaced our hydro-generator propeller to a larger one to get the most out of a predicted fast passage. Quick look at our rigging, though we didn’t go up the mast as we already learned the wind was too much after the failed try to switch out our jib sail. Other than that, we were ready to go…physically…maybe not mentally ; )
It didn’t feel like we were here for very long or got a chance to explore as much as we wanted (there was so much more to do!) but as most of you know by now…weather dictates and prevails our wants to stay longer…But for our 11 days here, it was still massive amounts of fun (minus the bumps). Overall, we never experienced a northern squall that made our anchorage “dangerous” as warned in an article by Sue Richards (and on our last blog post)…however, the wind was blowing strong, good for ventilation…not so good visibility for snorkeling. Most days it was overcast but when the sun came out we all seemed to be out and about together. Mostly, we all had small repairs to tend to and preparations for our next passage. Best of all, there was no shortage of sharing good food, lots of adult beverages, with extraordinary people! We hope to see everyone soon…safe sailing Chagos fleet and see you down the coconut rumb line : )
Next Up: Passage from Chagos to Rodriguez – We wanted the Southern Indian Ocean Experience…. It did not disappoint!
Wow what an amazing experience. Thank you for sharing these pictures and your thoughts. Sv FullCircle