First of all, I'd like to confirm to you all I am indeed alive and well and home at long long last. I sailed successfully from Darwin in Australia 2900 miles to Phuket in Thailand. It took a month, was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done but saw some incredible things, ate some lush fish and got a lovely tan. I did write a blog to post in Christmas Island, however being a tiny little dot in the Indian Ocean means there wasn't very good internet so this blog is divided into two parts.
PART 1 - DARWIN TO CHRISTMAS ISLAND
Geez what a journey. I've made it to Christmas Island, halfway through my epic voyage.
Sailing
So we (me and skipper Michael) set sail at 1.30pm on Saturday 24th July aboard a 42ft catemerang yacht called Shayler heading west to our first stop Ashmore Reef. Experienced a couple of rounds of sea sickness over the first couple of days which was lovely and at first I found it very difficult to cook down in the little kitchen without feel rather queasy but I´m getting pretty used the constant rolling now. Was particularly tired and queasy one evening a couple of days ago but all was made better after I sat at the front of the boat for an hour in front of an awesome sunset watching 50 odd dolphins swimming and jumping along side.
We divide each night into 4 3 hour watches where you have to watch out for other boats and storm clouds and general happenings with the sail. It´s been pretty tough in all honesty getting up at random hours and trying hard to keep my eyes open. Especially tricky because when something goes wrong it seems ten times worse in the dark of the night. On the other hand there´s an immense stary sky to look at and book to read (I´ve made it through 4 and a half so far). Key is having plenty of naps during the day to make up.
Foods been a funny one. I just haven´t really had an appetite for the past 5 or so days which if you know me or have been reading this blog is very very unusual in the world of Grace. Sometimes my stomach actually hurts with hunger and I can´t face eating anything more than an apple...we´re reaching land soon, I´m going in full search of ice cream, cake and pizza.
Ashmore Reef
So 500 miles, 3 days, west of Darwin is the Ashmore Reef. Turned up and kindly got escorted into the reef by Australian Customs which is very unusual. Turns out the sea between Darwin and Christmas Island is key route for boats full of illegal immigrants so we´ve had many chats with Australian Customs over the radio. We were the only yacht there and couldn´t have been more in the middle of nowhere. The reef is pretty big and contains lots of beautiful coral and 3 small sand islands. We were only allowed to visit one - West Island, in my mind it´s the definition of a desert island. Circled by a narrow white sand beach and mangrove trees, the island has 1 palm tree, 1 other tree, some Indonesian graves, birds and lots of turtle nesting sites.
Did few bits of snorkelling too. I tells you it were a-maaaaz-in. (Better than Whitsundays sorry ladies). Soo many little random reef fish and I even saw a pretty large shark although I had a spear for self defence so Copper was safe. Floating about a fair few fish had some characteristics of yous lot so I´m going to describe a few.
-The fish with scales whiter and than white that blended into the sandy bottom - Ray Read
-The fish that nibbled on everything - Stephen
-The flying fish (turns out they actually exist) - Grace Gimson
-Lastly a fish with vibrant (almost neon) stripes of white, yellow and black, blatently gagging for the next underwater rave - Mackley
So thats it for now, I´m off to explore Christmas Island and might put a little info up before I leave. It´s the same distance as it was from Darwin to here again to Phuket, Thailand so about 10 days which seems like an awfully long time right now, I just keep imagining all your beautiful faces to keep me going.
PART 2 - CHRISTMAS ISLAND TO PHUKET
Spent 4 nights at Christmas Island, a lovely slightly random little place in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Originally and mainly populated by Chinese and Malay people the island is now inhabited for 2 main reasons. 1) A phosphate mine and 2) the Australian detention and asylum centre. This makes for a little close knit community where there's zero unemployment so many people do 2 jobs. Anyway I did plenty of exploring.
Crabs
Got a lift to the Christmas Island Hash House Harriers running session in the middle of the island. The island is covered in dense rainforest and as I was going along the tracks I would come across the occasional Robbo Crab. The place is literally crawling with a whole variety of crabs. These Robbo ones are the size of a small cat and live to like 80 years old. Theres also thousands of little red and grey crabs about the place, kinda surreal and apparently when they all migrate to the sea in October the whole island stinks because everyone runs them over and then they rot in the sun.
Other than that I did some mopeding around to see the gorgeous landscape, some tiny seccluded beachs and massive stretches of coast with huge crashing waves. Slightly delayed departure due to an incident involving the sea, a small motor dingy, alcohol and a loss of balance leading to a loss of camera and wallet. Not the most ideal situation to be in but just about managed to resurrect the situation.
Sailin
Set off for Phuket. At first all was good, did a 6 hour shift each during the night which worked out a lot lot better, got my appetite back. However, about 4 days in, as the sun was setting we sailed towards a very dark and ominous looking line of clouds with a flat bottom (this means bad weather). Proceeded to spend a night in horrible stormy gale force winds which were blowing us back in the direction we came, the boat was crashing about all over the place, the captain was sick, one the engines broke, just a generally unideal situation so next morning we took cover.
At this point we were sailing up the west coast of Sumatra so we headed towards the off islands of Sumatra to take a more protected route. Weaving in and out of these tiny little islands was incredible. Packed with palm trees and you see the occasional fishing boats coming and going. However the epicentre of the 2004 Tsunami was only a few hundred miles north of this area and what with them being so tiny and exposed I dread to think of the impact which it must have had.
Rest of the sailing was a similar story with winds blowing the wrong way or just not blowing at all but we just has to keep going.
Fish
Fishings well easy off the boat. Just put a little plastic octopus and massive hook on a strong line, let it drag behind and wait. Caught 3 fish, each almost 1 metre long. First a tuna (I made sushi), then a Mahi Mahi (it was gold when we got it out the water, then it turned silver with blue spots, and once it was finally dead it turned gold again - tasted lush) finally caught a massive Spanish mackerel (again over a metre long).
Home straight
As we came up round the top of Sumatra to cross over east to Thailand we had to cross the beginning/end of the Malacca Straight's (the equivalent of the M25 for container ships). In darkness my watch happened to coincide with the busiest section. Other than the stormy stormy night it was the scariest thing. At point there would be 8 container ships all around you, you have to try and work out where they're going and if they'll hit you. One came within a 1/4 of a mile of the boat, we literally would have been crushed if it was on a slightly different course.
Finishing up
So made it into Thailand a fair few days behind schedule. Despite only having a few hours in Phuket I think I pretty much managed to eat everything, then flew to Singapore, had a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel then finally boarded my plane home.
And here I am sitting at 10 Goldney Avenue on the remains of my final day of travelling. I'm exhausted and have definitly written to much, I hope you didn't worry too much. Thank you for reading,
Love from Grace
P.S I will put some pictures up in the next week or so, promise.
