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 in Spain and they travel the world together. Living half of the year at Roberto’s B&B in Italy. Oh Roberto also is an artist, has 300 olive trees and makes his own olive oil. Of course he does. 

Prior to their arrival, Ally, Shawn and I laid in most of the provisions for the coming leg of our trip. If you remember Port Blair’s government run liquor stores had run out of beer and weren’t expecting anymore until the end of the first week of February. Whilst shopping one day we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we had been to before. There I jokingly asked if I could have a beer with lunch, not expecting a positive response. The owner said no that he can only sell beer with dinner?  I asked do you have beer? He said yes. Then during the conversation he told us to come back this afternoon after three and he would get beer for us. You see the liquor stores close from noon to three. Don’t ask me why. We never took him up on the offer. Why? I’ll never know! Anyway thinking that the beer supply would be around for a few days I waited until the 1st to head to the “wine shop” as they are called. There are four of them on the entire island. Four. One of them is three hours away. Of the three shops closest to me one, the “self serve shop” had 11 cans of beer left and the other stores had nothing. No selection of brands. Just one local brand. Turns out it’s 8% ABV. Woo Hoo! So being the ever resourceful one, I contacted my hotel and it turns out that they had purchased beer for me while I stayed there. So I asked the owner if he would sell me some of his stock and voila we now have 12 more cans of beer that was spilt between the other couples. My god I could change this story to the never ending beer search in the Andaman Islands. 

The decision to up anchor and sail out the next day was made. 09:30 departure time.  Ally reminds Shawn he needs to call Port Control (PC) to announce our departure. When he did that we were told we couldn’t leave. As this was happening a naval vessel was pulling up along side to check our documents one more time. The navy being satisfied we weren’t going to sink one of their vessels drifted away, but we had to drop anchor and wait for our “agent” to smooth things over with Port Control. (This checking documents thing is getting a little out of hand. In one instance late January a coast guard vessel came along side while we were anchored in Port Blair. They hailed us on the radio “ SY Imagination, SY Imagination please tell us the name of your vessel”! Then the next morning 07:00ish a naval vessel came alongside blasted their siren at us and asked us who we were and what were we doing there?)  The reason we were told to remain? Our decision to leave Port Blair put us a day ahead of the itinerary we had submitted to “PC”. Finally up goes the anchor and off we go. Once in the open water the winds were favourable for a spinnaker run. Making our destination by mid afternoon we dropped anchor, swam and snorkelled for bit and then dinner. Being so close to the equator it’s taking a bit to getting use to the sun going down between 17:00 and 18:00 everyday. So darkness comes early. A game of BLOG after dinner and then off to bed for the rest. I chose to remain up as the stars were spectacular. For anyone who has ever been the last one up to marvel at the sky above while all around you is pitch black you know what I mean. Stars so bright they created light trails on the water. The light show wasn’t just above me. Luminescent fish lit up the water in soft blue flashes I can only compare to lightning bugs on a hot summers night. Today the plan is a hike (oh boy!) to a look out point and then more snorkelling. 

I have to tell you that at home I suffer from tinnitus. At times, a very loud high pitched ringing in my ears. I am happy to say that while on this journey the ringing has almost subsided. If it  returns when I get home, I’m going to ask my doctor for a prescription for another sailing trip. Maybe I could get OHIP to pay for it…Thanks for reading. If you would like to track the rest of our trip live go to noforeignland.com and search for SY Imagination Ally and Shawn.

Be nice to each other.

    

There is more to sailing than ropes and winches, cleats and bulging sails. There are faraway places and the ever changing light, and the silence, and a great peace at the bottom of your soul

Ferenc Maté