Normally, passages allow me to catch up on the place we just visited but this passage has been exceptionally busy so I am just now sending out what happened two weeks ago.
Later I will send the Christmas Island recap.
All is well on Charm tonight. Winds and seas have been extraordinarily pleasant - a nice respite after several days of high winds and seas. We have a few more of those days in our future but nothing out of the normal range. We have caught back up with Nor’easter and have been traveling within AIS range of them most of the day.
Cobin accidentally dropped two-thirds of his beloved tiny magnets (called Speks) down a hole in the cockpit floor but everyone else is in high spirits. Before the big loss, Cobin made snickerdoodles for the sub-1,000 mile mark. He rallied later to make custard to put in the ice cream machine. So sugar will comfort him while he grieves.
Here’s the scoop on our time in Cocos:
Our time in the Cocos atoll was fantastic. It was like a beach vacation on an uninhabited, gorgeous island with amenities for day-users (picnic tables, campground toilets, etc). There was a somewhat-cleared trail around the island (about a 45-minute walk takes you around the whole thing) with signs detailing a big naval battle between the Germans and Australians during WW II and plenty of shady trees and sugary sand. In the less maintained portions of the island, there were deposits of discarded flip-flops. This was perplexing to me. How many flip-flops does a person lose in a lifetime? Given the number of flip flops we see on beaches, it seems that the answer is: quite a few.
We were anchored next to Direction Island, which was a 10-minute splashy dinghy ride from Home Island, where the predominantly Malay Muslim population of about 600 people lives. From Home Island, a large, comfortable, air-conditioned ferry makes the 20-minute trip to West Island, home to about 150 predominantly non-Malay-Muslims, several times a day. According to my primary source of one person, the people on Home and West Islands have a positive relationship but, due to cultural differences, they don’t often develop lasting friendships. Once the ferry reaches West Island, you can get on a waiting bus and travel the 2 miles to town. Town consists of a visitor center, a store, a school, and a handful of restaurants, along with an airport that has twice weekly flights to and from Perth.
For those of you (like my mother) worried about us getting enough to eat, well, it wasn’t a problem. Luckily, we arrived in time for the fortnightly plane delivery to the grocery stores from Perth. There is one store on each island (Home and West) and we got there early on Saturday morning, in time to stock up on produce before it disappeared. I had prepaid for 7 dozen eggs, securing one of our primary sources of protein for the trip. In addition, a wonderful man named Tony, a resident of West Island and proprietor of a bakery and pizzeria there, gave us the opportunity to special order boxes of fresh produce that arrived on a flight from Perth. Without knowing what would arrive at the grocery store on Saturday, we put in an order for a variety of produce. It wasn’t cheap but between the fresh box and the grocery store, we got far more fresh food than I thought possible.
We went to West Island one day specifically to get groceries and have lunch. They had a great selection of frozen meat that was even better than what I found on Christmas Island so I topped up my supplies. The kind woman at the store let me leave all my frozen things in a bag in the freezer until it was time to hop on the bus (and then ferry, and then dinghy) and head back to Charm. So we made it back without any unpleasant thawing.
The rest of our time on Cocos, we spent playing, planning for the big crossing, and socializing. Cobin, Joe, and Carl rigged several variations on a zip line that was very fun. We did dinghy catapulting, and met an American family from Iowa on a boat called Nimbus. Their son was turning 14 so they came over for dinner the night before they left for their crossing to Mauritius.
Tully did a sleepover on the island with the kids from Niobe, Fidelio, and Nimbus while Marin and Cobin opted for more comfort on Charm. Carl and I did a dive and saw a manta ray! I have been on a quest to see one for a while but had given up hope. It was about 5 minutes into the dive and I was adjusting things and fiddling with my mask when I caught a glimpse of something over my shoulder. Sure enough, it was a small manta. I thought it might be just a large ray but then I saw its distinctive filters. We also saw all kinds of other interesting creatures – definitely a worthwhile dive.
One of the highlights of Direction Island was “The Rip” – a drift snorkel where a channel of water coming from outside the reef passed into the “lagoon” of the atoll. We have done these snorkels in other, similar locations and they’re always very rich in marine life. The fresh water coming in brings in all kinds of nutrients to the creatures that live inside the lagoon and the smart ones just open their mouths and wait for the food to swim in. The morning after we arrived, the family on Nimbus was going so Carl and I jumped into our dinghy and followed them.
How it works is that you drive your dinghy up the deep water channel as far as you’re willing towards where the waves are crashing on the reef that demarcates the outer edge of the atoll. Then you turn off the motor, jump off the dinghy and hold onto a line attached to the dinghy and go for a ride with the current. It’s like being on a conveyor belt that takes you through an aquarium. Except you’re in the aquarium. You pass by a coral “wall” and peer into the daily lives of fish, reef sharks, coral, and everything that lives there. The first time Carl and I did it, we were there almost at slack tide and we drifted fairly gently along. Later, I took the three little girls of the fleet – Lucia, Marin, and Tully, and the rip was ripping! The girls loved it, as much for the feeling of flying underwater as the current pushed us along, as for the marine life. We got back into the dinghy and went again and again. Later Cobin joined us and Talia and Josh came on the morning before we left.
Much like Christmas Island, Cocos is a small place and people help each other. I had to mail some documents to the US but I wasn’t sure of the address. The internet wasn’t working for me so the lady at the Home Island post office let me use her phone. I still couldn’t get the information I needed so I put my best guess on the envelopes but asked if I could confirm when I was back at Charm. There’s a phone next to the picnic table on Direction Island in a rusty metal box attached to a pole. You can use it to make free calls anywhere on the islands. I called and confirmed the address. A couple of days later I got a clarification on the address via email and called to see if the mail had gone out. It hadn’t so the lady working that day pulled the envelopes out and changed the address for me. I don’t think that would happen back home J
We left Cocos two days after the rest of the fleet because we were waiting for a crew member, Talia, to join us. She had told us she really wanted to join us but would be unable to come until the flight on October 8 since she was already committed to do a hike in the Himalayas. We decided we would wait for her. Talia was our first committed crew for the long crossing to Mauritius. Later, Carl signed on for the entire Lombok to Richards Bay section and then Josh, Talia’s friend, rearranged his schedule so he could come too.
Josh, a man of many talents, is a certified pilot and has taught bush navigation. He spent one afternoon setting up a treasure hunt for the kids on the island, teaching them to use compasses and magnetic variation. It was very refreshing to have another teacher for a change and we all enjoyed the class.
Josh spent the day of Talia’s flight on West Island so he could meet her and help her figure out how to get to us. We e-mailed him last minute requests from the store and Joe went on a night dinghy ride with Carl to get Josh and Talia on Home Island after their ferry ride over. We all went to bed (Talia had been flying for 30+ hours from Nepal) and then woke up the next morning, swam to the island, then walked down the beach to do The Rip one more time with Talia. We rinsed off, packed up our snorkels and fins, and headed off on the 2,350 mile journey to Mauritius.
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