Blogs from Indian, Oceans and Seas - page 9

Sorry, it's been a while. I've had this miserable cold for the past week and haven't felt like doing much at all. Luckily, we've been "At sea" since last Thursday. So I'll try to catch things up. Freemantle was lovely. An old fashioned city just an easy walk from the ship. We arrived very late in the afternoon (the first time we have been late!) so I was only able to walk into town and wander around for a while. They have lots of nice shops and one very good department store, Myer. Another Target, too. The next morning mom and I took the shuttle bus to the train station and took the train up to Perth, about 15 miles away. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 80 degrees. The Perth station is right in ... read more

The Indico Project is complete! 3 months and about 15000 km after squeezing through the Torres Straits, we rounded the Cape of Good Hope on the South African coast and slipped into the lee of Table Mountain. I have now sailed 72% around the world. The night before, we rounded Cape Agulhas, Africa's southernmost point and the true divider between the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and cool currents of the South Atlantic. That night, during a sudden squall of 25 knots, the water became ablaze, the phosphoresence glowing all around us and illuminating the wave tops, eeiry white horses galloping by in the black night. A week earlier, we reached the African Continent farther up the coast at Richard's Bay after crossing the Mozambique Channel, which separates Madagascar from Africa. The channel offered up ... read more

This Hand Wants Another Beer And Other Personifications Oct. 5, 2008, Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles east of Mauritius, and 1,000 miles west of Cocos Keeling Part 1 “The cabbage prefers to be peeled first, then cut. Rather than cut first,” Norfy yelled to James, who was preparing dinner down in the saloon. ”Gotcha,” James replied. On Yacht Cleone we are always trying to extend the life of our fresh vegetables before they go bad and have to be thrown overboard. “What?” I said. “The cabbage doesn’t have an opinion. It doesn’t want or need or prefer anything.” “Sure it does,” James yelled up to Norfy and I, as we sat in Cleone’s cockpit. “Alex, you just don’t speak cabbage.” “True, I don’t speak cabbage. But what I can say is that I didn’t hear the ... read more

Sept. 25, 2008 50 meters west of Direction Island, Cocos Keeling, Australia As we approached Cocos Keeling I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. About four or five miles away on the horizon, a long strip of palm trees seemed to grow out of the ocean. As we moved closer, a white strip of sand separated the trees from the sea. The water grew bluer and bluer as we got closer, and the spectrum of colors widened. The shades grew deeper. Some of the blues are so bright and so blue there is no way to describe them. They are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Any image from this atoll, which rests 1,000 miles from Western Australia, could be on the cover of a National Geographic magazine. At first glance, Cocos Keeling is paradise. The ringed ... read more

The 10th and 11th of November 2007 were spent cruising the Java Sea en route to Bali. We cruised with Sumatra on our right and Kalimantan on our left. We spent the sea days as normal, D attending lectures, M went to art and craft groups, we enjoyed time on deck reading/sunbathing and, of course eating ... and more eating!... read more