Our five days on Rodriguez flew by. We had a hectic time sorting out satellite communications after the death of our Iridium!Go, completing several small boat jobs and, finally, seeing a bit of the island. We managed to install Starlink and acquire a Garmin Inreach (as backup and for gps tracking in a liferaft).
We decided to skip Mauritius as it was the only way of staying ahead of the World ARC rally. As it was, even leaving at a far from optimum time, we would arrive at La Reunion on October 19th, just 8 days ahead of the rally, leaving us limited time to find a suitable weather window to leave for South Africa. The marina had promised to evict us on 27th October as the World ARC have block booked all berths from then.
The 480nm passage should normally take Skyfall three days and, with the SE trade winds, require zero diesel. If we had left two days later then that would indeed have been the case. But then we would only have had 6 days to find a weather window for the most difficult leg of our RTW adventure.
An alternative plan would have been to sail to Mauritius and skip Réunion Island. Again, the World ARC had booked out the marina. But there is (supposedly) a lovely anchorage in the north, Grande Baie, with a welcoming yacht club and space for everyone. The downside is that Mauritius is further from Richards Bay, adding a day and a half to an already difficult passage.
Therefore, we chose to leave Rodriguez late on October 15th, once we had figured out our newly acquired Garmin Inreach gps tracker.
The passage started well enough. We had enough wind to manage six knots under full sail. However, as expected, the winds started to fade after 24 hours. La Réunion, the port, is not open 24/7. At the weekend, you must arrive between 0800 and 1200 or you will not be allowed to enter until the following day. I calculated that we needed to average 5 knots to arrive in time. We could motor or motor sail economically at six knots which meant we could keep sailing until our speed dropped below 4 knots for some time.
Unfortunately, we ended up motoring for almost 50 hours, consuming more diesel than I had used from Papua New Guinea, through Indonesia and 3000nm across the Indian Ocean to Rodriguez!
You can imagine how pleased I was with the World ARC and the effect their presence has on other cruisers!
With little to do as we motored, Chris settled down to read books on his Kindle. I decided to use our newly installed Starlink and try and get my blog posts up to date. I believe that our Starlink experience is worth a seperate post. In summary, our installation works well when connected but, with any sort of sea state, on a rolling monohull our dish would not reliably connect. When discussing with Inga (SV Marisol) she nicknamed the product, "No link"!
The slower pace and lack of wind prompted Chris to start taking the fishing more seriously. He hooked two, but they both got away. The issue is that he is a 'sports fisherman' and sets up his gear to give the fish a 'sporting chance'. Too late to react to a bite, and the fish is gone. I am trying to convert him into a hunter!
Compared to the rest of the Indian Ocean, this stretch was simply buzzing with marine traffic. It seems that most of the traffic rounding the south of Africa and heading for Asia passes this way. Yet the ships were all well behaved, keeping a good distance and, when I felt the need to confirm we had been seen and called using VHF, the response was always courteous and positive.
We planned to arrive at La Réunion at 08.00. This meant that, through the early hours of the morning, we could study the lights on the island. The street lights had a completely different look to anything we had seen since New Zealand. There was a structure, the lights were plentiful and it was clear that the island infrastructure was modern and worked.
At dawn, we sailed past the most expensive road (cost per km) in the world. The port and the capital are linked by a highway built on stilts out into the sea. With a steep sided, volcanic island this was supposedly the only viable solution. Given that the structure was built to withstand cyclones, the price came in at US$130M per kilometer! I wonder how much was paid by France and how much by an EU fund!
There was another reason to ensure that we would arrive on 19th October: that would be Chris's birthday.
Celebrations started with a special breakfast treat: Scotch pancakes. They are not dissimilar to the english crumpet but thinner and served cold. We had found great jam in Rodriguez to accompany them.
Once ashore, and after clearing in, we walked into town for a celebratory drink. THB (three horses beer) is brewed in Madagascar and was excellent. Or maybe any beer is excellent after an ocean passage! The rest of the day we focused on indulging Chris with his guilty pleasures; pizza and cakes.
We are not really in a position to recount much about the attractions of La Réunion. We were cleared in around lunchtime, only to learn that a bevy of yachts were planning on leaving the following Monday or Tuesday. They had been waiting sometime for the right weather window and I was loathe to miss it. However, one of the attractions on La Reunion is their 'hollow' trees (see top photo).
Fortunately, despite dedicating Saturday to Chris's birthday, we were able to complete provisioning and preparations on the Sunday and Monday morning.
We did have time to invite SV Manxman (Gary, Christian and Linea) on board for Sunday dinner followed by cards (which the crew of Manxman again won convincingly).
From the skipper's point of view the passage was uneventful and dull with nothing much to say, too much motoring and not enough sailing. From the crew's point of view, it was bliss: easy and relaxing.
We cleared out of La Reunion late afternoon on 21/10. The most difficult leg of sailing the Indian Ocean, and indeed our round the world trip, was underway.
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