13 April 2017 Koolamafushi to Lhossah, North Huvadhoo Atoll
We were woken up last night by someone shouting “Hello” outside our boat. Dragging ourselves out of bed, we found a local guy in a 5 metre long, heavy, fibreglass boat hanging onto our port side. He didn’t speak much English, so there was much confusion for five minutes, especially because he had a horrible piece of rusty steel bar sticking out from the side of his boat, which would have gouged our topsides, if I didn’t keep telling him to fend off.
We eventually gathered that he had been fishing along the shallow reef using a long pole to punt about. The strong wind and current had pushed him out to sea. He had no engine, no paddle and no rudder on the boat, so he was lucky to get blown into us otherwise goodness knows where he would have ended up.
I situations like this I’m always worried about our safety. Was this a scam to steal my dinghy and outboard? However, the guy looked exhausted and scared, so I lowered my dinghy and started to tow him to the shallow water. It was a struggle because his boat had no rudder and he seemed very clueless, not knowing what to do. I eventually got him to lengthen the tow rope and attach it to his bow, but his boat still veered around making progress slow.
I’d taken the portable VHF radio and while talking to Glenys about our progress, she had the good idea to take the guy to “Zangra” and get assistance from Haneef, the Maldivian rally coordinator. I was hoping that we’d find out more about what was going on, but the fisherman only spoke a local dialect, which even Haneef found difficult to understand. We dropped the fisherman off close to the beach and he looked very relieved.
It was another rolly night, so we decided to move a couple of miles further south to Lhossah Island. We anchored at 00°49.39N 073°12.25E in 8 metres depth on sand between flat coral reefs that were at least five metres deep. It’s a lovely spot with a long island with palm trees, a white sand beach and there's dolphins swimming around the anchorage. I tried several times to get close and swim with them but as soon as I went within 20 metres, they just sank below the surface and re-appeared 50 metres away. The island gives good protection from the south-west winds, but the damn swell was still rolling into the anchorage. By mid-afternoon, most of the fleet had anchored close by.
We spent most of the day snorkelling on the reefs around the anchorage, which were surprisingly good with 50% live coral and plenty of fish. At the moment, there’s an established pattern to the weather with clear sunny mornings, but by lunchtime the clouds build up and the afternoon has rain squalls - this afternoon, we had a squall giving us 30 knot winds for a while.
14 April 2017 Lhossah to Fenfuttaa, North Huvadhoo Atoll
The persistent rolling is annoying, so we sailed ten miles south to an isolated reef that is west of an island called Fenfuttaa. We anchored at 00°43.184N 073°15.04E in 18 metres of water amongst deep coral patches, so I put a couple of fenders onto our chain to lift the chain.
As soon as we’d checked the anchor, we went snorkelling on a pinnacle to the south of the anchorage at 00°43.11N 073°15.14E. It was very nice rising from the seabed at 20 metres to within 1 metre of the surface. The coral was very healthy with only half of it dead...
After lunch, I ran the water-maker and filled two scuba dive tanks ready to do a dive on the pinnacle tomorrow morning - surprisingly the generator ran for 90 minutes without a problem. Later in the afternoon, we went for a snorkel on another pinnacle to the NE of where we’re anchored. It was similar to the other pinnacle, but the coral on top wasn’t as colourful.
We invited all the boats in the anchorage for sundowners - “Jackster”, “Luna Blue” and “Ngalawa”. Depressingly, we finished off the last four of our beers with no prospect of buying any more until we get to Rodrigues in June. Fortunately, we still have four bottles of rum, one bottle of gin and 12 litres of wine, which should keep us going for 6 weeks, unless we keep partying every night…
15 April 2017 Fenfuttaa, North Huvadhoo Atoll
The coral on the two pinnacles looked so good that we did two scuba dives with Dave and Jacqui from “Jackster”. They were both good dives circling around the pinnacles starting at 20 metres and working our way up. The visibility was good at one side of the pinnacle, but had more sediment on the other side - I guess that it depends on the tidal current direction. On both dives we had very little current making it nice and relaxing. The pinnacles are at 00°43.11N 073°15.14E and 00°42.65N 073°15.29E, but I suspect that most of the shallow-topped pinnacles would be good.
In the evening, we were all invited over to “Ngalawa” for sundowners.
16 April 2017 Fenfuttaa to Fulangi, North Huvadhoo Atoll
Every morning, John from “Atea” hosts a radio net, announcing a weather forecast and holding a discussion about the various plans for the rally boats. John said that the westerly winds are coming to an end and the winds are starting to back around to the south. The rally finishes at Gan, which is 90 miles south of our current position, so a few boats have decided to take advantage of the favourable winds and have headed south to sail to Gan tomorrow.
I’ve looked at the weather and think that the southerly winds will probably be very light and in seven days will be back to light westerly. Once we get to Gan, we’ll be provisioning and then waiting for a good weather window to sail 300 miles to Chagos. Looking at the GRIB files it seems that there will be light and variable winds on that passage for the next two weeks, so we’re biding our time and want to spend more time in this atoll snorkelling and diving.
We upped anchor and motor-sailed eight miles around to Fulangi. It’s very similar to the last anchorage, but the water is deeper at 24 metres. We anchored at 00°40.33N 073°11.44E, but some of the other boats anchored just south of the island in 10 metres. I didn’t like the look of that spot because you’d be anchored amongst a lot of coral and if the wind picks up from the south-west there would be a ¾ mile fetch and more wind waves.
We went for a snorkel in the afternoon on an interesting reef at 00°40.56N 073°11.41E. It’s a long thin shallow reef that fringes a small 10 metre deep lagoon. It would be nice to anchor in there, but the fringing reef is too shallow to cross in a sailboat. We had a quiet night in.
17 April 2017 Fulangi, North Huvadhoo Atoll
We went for a dive with “Jackster” on a pinnacle about 100 metres to the south of where we’re anchored. It was disappointing and not as good as the pinnacles in the previous anchorage, with most of the shallow coral being bleached and dead. At depth, the coral was in a much worse condition and there wasn’t as much sea life. I’m quite amazed by the difference in the condition of these reefs, which are only six miles apart.
In the afternoon, we went for a snorkel in the pass to the north of the anchorage. There was a strong current in the pass itself, but we found that there was no current on the edge of a reef at 00°40.92N 073°12.66E. The sea bed sloped away at about 45 degrees and the coral was mostly dead, but the water was incredibly clear. The highlight was a Spotted Eagle Ray which came swimming out of the depths to have a look at us, passing a few metres below me.
18 April 2017 Fulangi, North Huvadhoo Atoll
The dive yesterday was so mediocre that we couldn’t be bothered to fill the scuba tanks today. Instead, we went for a snorkel in the pass to the west of us (00°40.02N 073°11.09E), but the slope was about 30 degrees and the coral was mostly dead, especially at the shallower snorkelling depths. Again the visibility was amazing, but the sea-life was uninteresting apart from a shoal of large Sleek Unicornfish that kept swimming very close to me as dived down.
After 20 minutes, we gave up and went back to the reef next to the anchorage, which again was very interesting, with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. There’s plenty of fish and in particular, the Maldive Anemonefish seem to thrive here.
We had a very lazy afternoon, reading and having a nap. Glenys has started to make a batch of homebrew ginger beer - we’re hoping that she can make it alcoholic to replace our depleted beer stocks. The alcohol situation is getting critical, so we’ve started to ration ourselves - if we have wine with dinner, we’re allowing ourselves a maximum of ½ bottle per night.
19 April 2017 Fulangi to Meradhoo, North Huvadhoo Atoll
After a couple of nights in Fulagi, we felt like a bit of a change, so we motor-sailed around to another isolated reef, this one near to Meradhoo Island which houses the Jumeirah Dhevanafushi resort. We tried to find a shallow anchorage near to the reef, but gave up because there were too many bommies and the depth was still 16-20 metres. Eventually, we dropped the anchor at 00°36.29N 073°05.50E in 24 metres of water.
The resort doesn’t look anything special - just another small island with some wooden hotel rooms on stilts over the water. I was therefore astounded to find that it costs $2,000USD per night for a double room. The price apparently includes breakfast and free wifi - it had better be a damn good breakfast… Other sample costs are $ 50US for a beef steak and $150US for a massage - all prices subjects to 10% service charge and tax, of course. What are they on?
We did another dive on a pinnacle near the anchorage with Jacqui from “Jackster”, but it was very poor, with hardly any sea-life. In the evening, we invited Dave and Jacqui from “Jackster over for sun-downers.
20 April 2017 Fulangi to Thinadhoo, North Huvadhoo Atoll
It was time to get some provisions, so we motored to Thinadhoo, where we went through an easy boat pass and anchored in 8 metres of water at 00°31.98N 073°00.22E. There are four other rally yachts in the anchorage - “Jackster”, “Atea”, “Barbara Ann” and “Relax”.
Our fuel was getting low, so as soon as we’d settled, I poured the diesel from our three jerry cans into main tank, so that we now have about 180 litres in the fuel tank, which will be enough to get us the 100 miles to Gan.
This is a busy fishing port with lots of fishing boats coming alongside to get ice and fill-up with diesel from fuel trucks. I was thinking of refuelling here, but we will still have to refuel before we leave Gan, so I can’t be bothered to do it twice. A couple of the other boats refuelled here without any problems.
We went ashore just before noon and found a small restaurant called “The Happy Hour Café”, just two blocks back from the sea front. They didn’t speak any English, but the place looked clean and they had a menu with English and Maldivian, so we chose to have some Kothu Roshi Chicken. It was very similar to the dish that we had in Sri Lanka made from chopped pancake - spicy and very filling. The café owner entertained us by doing some impressive close-up magic - making cigarettes and coins disappear.
After stuffing ourselves with lunch, we walked around in the beating sun, but it’s just another sleepy town - albeit much bigger than the villages with many shops scattered around. All of the towns and villages that we've visited so far have a very rectangular street layout and there seems to be some social engineering happening. The smaller islands seem to have a maximum of 1000 people and a single school, whereas the larger islands have new blocks of flats. Are they moving excess people from smaller islands?
There’s even a chandlers, where “Jackster” managed to find a 24V Jabsco water pump. We stocked up with enough provisions to last a couple of weeks and escaped back to the boat, where we collapsed in the heat.
The Ginger Beer that Glenys made has come out very well, but there's a lot of sediment in it, so she's trying a slightly different recipe. Sediment or not, it goes very well with rum to make a Dark and Stormy.