Mitch”s Late Life Adventure

  Mahi Mahi: I caught a fish! For me that is quite an achievement.  The colour of Mahi Mahi is green and yellow when in the water but changes to the iridescent  blue when taken out. That wasn’t the only adventure yesterday. On my overnight shift from 2-4am I noticed lights on the horizon. The very first contact we have had of any sort after leaving Port Blair. Near midday this vessel started following us and was getting closer. It may sound weird but when this was happening there was no way for us to know what the intentions of this boat were. Could they be pirates? Possibly. Ally was getting visibly shaken. I mean we are in the middle of nowhere and they weren’t responding to our calls on the VHF radio. As they got closer our conversation became more of how do we respond if there is a boarding situation. This is a self talk that I have had during my late night watches. What to do and how to protect the boat. Anyway turns out it was a Sri Lankan fishing trawler that on...

  Peace Out Port Blair: Wed. 02/12 After a month sailing around the islands of Andaman with two different groups of people, Shawn and Ally of course, then Riss, Edgar and Alex, (the Russian with three names, Alexandra, Alex and Sasha. She reminds me of Rocky Racoon’s girlfriend. Her name was MacGill and she called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Nancy). That was a long way wasn’t it? And of then Caroline and Roberto, we finally said goodbye to Port Blair and the Andaman Island yesterday. A wee bit of departure delay because of bureaucracy. Finally heading out around 14:00. We are now in open waters and on 2 hour shifts that rotate every 6 hours. Shawn does one  2 hour shift a day because he sleeps in the salon in case we need him right away so his sleep pattern sucks. Because he’s up almost every hour making sure all is well. So his 2 hour shift allows our shifts to change times each day. For example I started at midnight last night and will be starting at 2am t...

 Back and Forth Our travels over the last few days have included Rutland Island and Little Andaman. Our first stop on Rutland was a fabulous discovery of a sandy beach as far as the eye could see. No footprints or signs of humans on the sand except ours after we arrived. There were tracks, but for me I had no idea what they were. It was determined they were made by a monitor lizard. I have never seen one in real life and looking at the size of the tracks that were made I’m happy to keep that on my “not” bucket list. Walking along the beach we happened upon turtle nests that had been ravaged by these monsters. Spent two nights there and enjoyed fun moments just bobbing in the surf drinking cold beers. Oh yeah I found a few.  From Rutland we headed to Little Andaman which is the furthest island in the chain. Another dolphin siting on the way. This time about ten dolphins larger than any I’ve seen before. We weren’t travelling very fast so I don’t think we were interesting enough...

  February Our new crew arrived! Caroline and Roberto. Caroline from all over really. Born in South Africa, lived in England, the USA and now has a home in Spain. A widow whose husband died due to covid vaccine complications. Roberto an artist and B&B owner in Italy. They met in France, during their twenties while on ski holidays. They had long distance relationship with Caroline back in South Africa finishing off her degree and Roberto in Italy. She was going to come to Italy after “Uni” but Roberto couldn’t wait so he flew down to be with her while she finished school. They were together for a few years and then, in Caroline’s words, she vanished. Roberto in his broken English said he was suicidal because he knew of no reasons why this would happen. Fast forward to 2020 after 30 or so years three children and the death of her husband Caroline searched for Roberto and low and behold a real life Hallmark movie happened. They’ve been together ever since. She still has her home...

 Port Blair. BYOB It’s been a few days since my last post. I believe the maps were the last posting. I am in Port Blair on the hard as Shawn and Ally ask to have time between legs to sort the boat out and lay in provisions for the next leg of the journey which will begin Feb. 1st or 2nd. We have said goodbye to Edgar,Alex and Larissa who’ve all continued their journeys. E&A are off to Vietnam and Larissa went to Indonesia. Poor Edgar found out the night before they were leaving for Vietnam that he needed a visa. He had been under the impression that EU passport holders didn’t. A mistake that cost close to 400 Euros because it was so last minute. Then we heard from our agent, whose sole job was to streamline our arrival and departure,  he had forgotten to inform us that more documents had to be signed by the three that were leaving. So once those were filled out they were sent. Then our agent apologizes because he sent the wrong ones over and the three had to fill out anoth...

 I have been asked to add maps to give you an idea as to where I am. Below are a few. Here is tonight’s sunset shot!