Eddies in the Indian Ocean

Destination: Indian Ocean

Geraldine Foley and partner Peter encounter the stuff of dreams when they set off to do a circuit of the Indian Ocean.

Why would you do a circuit of the Indian Ocean? An Australian would do it for a circular cruise of great diversity and downwind sailing, and I have written this with WA as the start point. We did it to get from Kerguelen to Canada. Since leaving Ireland in 1991 partner Peter Maxwell and I have sailed 180,000nm aboard Mithril, including a circumnavigation south of the Great Capes in the Roaring Forties. In 2005 we made a where-next list. Top choices were Kerguelen, Newfoundland and a coral atoll. Having family in Perth made a visit to Fremantle compulsory.

Studying Ocean Passages for the World, the bible for long-distance cruising, reveals that the optimum time to leave Fremantle is late autumn. In the northern half of the ocean the southeast trades should blow a steady 15-25 knots by July or August. The optimum time to leave Cape Town for the return passage across the south Indian Ocean is between December and February. This all makes for a leisurely year-long cruise from Australia.

Stuff of dreams
Coral atolls are the stuff of ocean cruising dreams: waving coconut palms, white sand, colourful reef and warm sun. Cocos/Keeling was our first atoll experience. We anchored in the lee of the uninhabited Direction Island.

Here we wandered ashore, through jungly undergrowth with hermit crabs scuttling before us. Feral chooks disappeared at the first sniff of a human. Generations of cruisers have left carved and painted nameboards to mark their passing. We drift snorkelled among the black-tipped reef sharks and lumpy-headed parrotfish. Beachcombing on the weather shore yields up a collection of plastic shoes - never a pair though.

A dinghy ride away is Home Island where the ethnic Malays live. Descendants of workers brought in to harvest coconuts, they are Muslims and live apart from the ex-pat Aussie community based on West island across the lagoon Ð half an hour by ferry.

Chagos
From Cocos the recommended route across the Indian Ocean is direct to the Mascarene Islands. Visiting the Maldives or Chagos puts you too much under the influence of the unsettled weather of the inter-troThe passage was remarkable for the record daily runs and the steadiness of the breeze. Mithril is a steel ketch, home built. With all our worldly goods aboard she performs with comfort rather than speed.

As we surged along, under full main and poled-out genoa, I reflected on the difference between downwind sailing in the trades and Roaring Forties downwind sailing. I think that the Southern Ocean depressions create a "stronger" sea than the pressure gradient that drives the trades. Down there we feared the waves and always kept boat speed down, rarely leaving the full main up at night. The depressions deepen and move rapidly, often giving stronger winds than predicted. Here in the north Indian Ocean with minimal swell we kept a steady seven knots night and day.

Diego Garcia
Chagos is British and Diego Garcia is the biggest atoll. Since the early 1970s this has been a military base - for the Americans Ð and the Chagos natives were summarily evicted to Mauritius, more than 1200nm away. Now Diego Garcia is off-limits to everyone.

We anchored within the daisy-chain of palm-covered islands and coral reef that makes up the Salomon atoll. There was once a village here but now huge strangler fig trees slowly consume the scattered ruins.

The old graveyard has been cleared from the encroaching jungle and the tumbled and crooked headstones bear mute testimony to a vanished community.

In 2007 the charges for visiting Chagos rose from US$90 for three months to GB£100 per month, payable in advance. The price hike cleared the anchorage. Up until the end of June there had been about 30 yachts. With pot-lucks and parties ashore to mark just about any festival you can invent the social life was hectic. By late July only two yachts remained and they had been there since January!

Salomon
Salomon had coral-atoll-charm by the bucketful, but it was not a relaxing anchorage with squalls, poor holding and wind shifts at night. Westerly winds are supposedly rare but in our three weeks we had them twice. The second time we decided to take advantage of them to claw back some easting, which would give us a better angle for the sail south to Rodrigues. It was a good decision and with 24 hours of west and north winds we were able to pass 80nm east of Diego Garcia. Salomon to Rodrigues is considered, not quite the impossible voyage, but certainly very difficult. We had a fast, if wet, broad reach, mostly under double-reefed main and a small scrap of genoa with winds never less than 20 knots.

Rodrigues
Rodrigues is the only place we've ever been where there are no seagulls. The island is owned by Mauritius but is 400nm east of it. Our alongside berth in Port Mathurin was free with complete security including a policeman on the gate, and we were the only yacht there.

Rodrigues is completely surrounded by coral reef and Port Mathurin has only existed as a proper deep-water port since 1990 when they blasted a channel through the reef. Apparently 12,000 people turned out to watch the first ship come in. A turning or anchoring basin was also created, and this was where we lay. Contrary to our fears the holding was superb  the best we've ever encountered - and a good thing too because the drying reef was only a boat length behind.

Farmers and fishers
Some 35,000 people live on Rodrigues; mostly subsistence farmers and fishers. Almost every scrap of land is used in some way. The people were unfailingly polite and friendly and quaintly old-fashioned.

Tourists are treated as visitors to be welcomed, not cash cows to be milked dry. We walked more than 150km during our month there, using the local bus service to take us to the top of the mountains that bisect the island. Grassy footways zigzagged down the hillsides and between the various hamlets eventually meeting up with the main road. After a The view down to Port Sud-Est on the weather side is the most spectacular I've ever seen. A natural pass cuts a deep-blue ribbon through the silvery-blue of the reef. The deep water sweeps round to a lovely anchorage in the lee of an almost Our most interesting day out was to a giant tortoise reserve. Two hundred years ago the island had a large population, but they were rapidly made extinct by visiting ships collecting them for fresh meat. The tortoise in the park are from the Seychelles. Their speed was a big surprise to me. It was a bit worrying to see one raise itself up to its full height and charge towards you. There's always a doubt as to their intentions. They are supposedly vegetarians, but when they stretched their necks out I was forcibly reminded of the creature in Alien!!

James Waterstone has been keeping a scrap book of visiting yachts for almost 20 years. Lots of people wrote that Rodrigues was the best island they'd visited on their entire circumnavigation.

Travelling from Rodrigues to Mauritius and Reunion is like going from third world to first where things get progressively dearer Ð a local lettuce rises from 15c to 20c to $1.25. We went to Reunion only because the marina at Le Port gives visitors a week free.

Contrast
Mauritius is a complete contrast to Rodrigues and Chagos as with 17 people per km it is the third most densely populated place on the planet. The yacht berths in Port Louis are alongside the Caudan waterfront development in the centre of town. Security is a man with binoculars standing in a tower and every evening locals parade along the waterfront asking questions and peering in through hatches. A quieter anchorage can be found to the north at Grand Baie, an upmarket tourist town with a very Mediterranean feel. A large proportion of the population are Hindus, making the island a little India with Bollywood movies, biryani stalls and shops selling fabulously embroidered saris. Apart from urban air pollution the diversity of religion is what we shall remember most. The Christian graveyard is a visual history of the island with monuments to soldiers, planters, cholera and cyclone victims.

Choice of routes
From Reunion cruisers face a choice of routes. Many go back north to Madagascar or the Seychelles and approach South Africa by the Mozambique Channel calling first at Richards Bay or Durban. We disliked this option because the prevailing summer winds on that coast are south east and you can wait a long time for a weather window. We preferred instead to sail direct to Cape Town if we could. For many tradewind sailors there is too much open ocean between Reunion and South Africa. We watched the weather charts more carefully now and no longer did we run at seven knots under full sail; we were too far south for that kind of carefree sailing. And indeed we were caught out by one unforecast front bringing 60 knots from complete calm. We had seen the cloud-line on the radar but assumed it to be rain and didn't reef. Even though it was not rough we furled all the sails and lay ahull for 12 hours until it passed.

The Agulhas current is warm water running south and then west mainly on the 200m contour along the coast of South Africa. The strongest section Ð up to six knots Ð is between Durban and Port Elizabeth where the continental shelf is narrowest. In this area the pilot book says: "Abnormal waves of up to 20 metres in height, preceded by deep troughs may be encountered in the area between the edge of the continental shelf and twenty miles to seaward thereof." The advice is to stay close inshore. The current peters out over the Agulhas bank and is replaced by the cold water Beneguela current coming northwards from Antarctica. This meeting of the waters makes for a very rich marine life and whales are often sighted. As with the south coast of Australia the southern right whale visits in winter to calve. Humpbacks can appear any time and on the morning of our arrival off Cape Town Peter woke me at dawn saying that he'd spotted some whales blowing ahead.

Table Mountain
Cape Town has a spectacular setting, with Table Mountain towering above the city centre. It is a great base for getting boat work done and the boat can be left in safety if you want to travel inland. The summer south-easterly "cape doctor" wind blows, often with tremendous force, sending the famous table cloth cloud cascading down the face of Table Mountain like a swirling gray waterfall. We hauled out for antifouling on the slip at the Royal Cape Yacht Club and had the worst night of our lives as a southeaster ripped through the marina. In bed we lay awake Ð feet jammed against the bulkhead, teeth clenched, waiting for the gust that would wrench us from the trolley and scatter us across the yard.

Daunting - but it needn't be
The 5500-mile passage from Africa to Australia is daunting for most people. But it needn't be. There is a band of lightish winds between the Indian Ocean high and the Southern Ocean depressions at around 38-42S. With continuous monitoring of weather data, by HF weatherfax or GRIB, you can adjust your track and try to keep northwesterly winds. Aboard Mithril we reckon on averaging 90nm per day on a voyage like this. That seems slow but our experience is that slow equals getting there in one piece and relatively relaxed.

Not many people venture to Kerguelen. It's a poorly charted, windy, wilderness filled with penguins, seals and a bare, brown landscape of bog and rock. Peter had thought about it for 40 years since seeing it in a school atlas. I'm glad we went but don't ask me to go again.

St Paul
A much more pleasant break is at the small volcanic island of St Paul. The anchorage is stunning Ð right inside the circular caldera, with the rim towering 250m above. The crater has collapsed on its eastern side, leaving a shallow entrance through a wall of rubble and rock. It's a perfect natural harbour. The great surprise is that there are thousands of penguins and fur seals ashore. There were even a few elephant seals. Albatross and prions nest on the higher slopes. It has a good sample of Antarctic wildlife, even killer whales and leopard seals, and without the hassle of going to the ice. Inside the refuge hut were tins of food, a visitors book and a used condom on the table. We speculated on its origin. Perhaps someone was doing a remote-islands version of the mile-high club?

Now there's a novel reason for doing a circuit of the Indian Ocean.

AUTHORS BIO.
Since launching Mithril in 1991 Geraldine and Peter have sailed 180,000nm. Mithril was the first Irish yacht to visit South Georgia in 2002 and the same for Kerguelen in 2007. The pair hopes to return to Ireland in September 2008, when they will sell Mithril and begin a different type of cruising through the inland waterways of Europe.