Two Weeks at Sea - Cocos to Rodrigues Island

Two weeks at sea seems like a long time when we first start a passage, but gradually the days pass and we're in the groove. Miserable weather makes for long days; fine weather days are a delight. We had a little of both on this passage. Here are the pictorial highlights of our passage from Cocos Keeling Islands, Australia to Rodrigues Island.  

A booby landed on our solar panels and decided to hitch a ride. We thought he'd stay the night and take off at dawn, but he was in for the long haul which necessitated strong urging on the part of the captain to encourage our hitchhiker to leave (much to the enjoyment of the first mate).

We had several squalls en route. Some brought gusty winds and torrential downpours. The dark clouds in the pic are what we saw … enough to encourage us to reef down quickly.

We didn't enjoy the squalls, but the rainbows were a delight.

Nearly every morning we found flying fish in the scuppers. One made its way into the cockpit and presented himself the next morning on the cockpit mat.

David trolled a line almost every day without luck until finally near the end of the passage, he snagged a beautiful dorado.

We saw lots of ship traffic this trip. We were evidently in a shipping lane between Asia and the Cape of the Good Hope. We had two near misses. Thank goodness for AIS.

We had the usual break-downs and equipment failures en route which always present interesting challenges when attempting to make repairs. Above, David replaces the wind gen tail which he fabricated from spare plywood aboard.

The Indian Ocean is considered the saltiest of all the oceans and Nine of Cups was covered with salt crystals. We thought about starting a little cottage industry for collecting and selling it … direct from our stainless to you.

There's nothing like seeing the anchorage at the end of a long passage. We were definitely ready for some land time. It wasn't our best passage, but certainly it wasn't our worst either. Time to relax for a week or so. We celebrated our arrival with champers … of course!