Addu to Chagos

Addu Atoll

22nd May

📍 Addu Atoll · 000°40.373′S, 073°07.869′E · Seenu Atoll

The wind and waves continued to batter us throughout the night, and to add insult to injury, the chart plotter decided to restart halfway through the pass on the way into the atoll. Fortunately, we always have backups ready: an iPhone, an iPad, and a computer, and equally fortunately, the plotter always restarts itself after a long minute.

We made it safely to the anchorage by mid-afternoon and created the meat in the sandwich by anchoring between Allora and Meikyo. Then we went to sleep.

Feydhoo

From here we were mostly going separate ways. Us and the Allorians to Chagos, the Tadds and the Eternauts directly to the Seychelles. So, to celebrate (or commiserate) our last time together for a while, the group of laggards went out for dinner at the Elly Bistro.

Addu Atoll is the southernmost point of the Maldives, just below the equator and well outside what most people imagine when they think of the Maldives. It is also structurally unusual: seven inhabited islands connected by causeways.

Back in 1941, the British built a secret naval base here called Port T and stocked it with flying boats. It became RAF Gan in 1957, a staging post on the reinforcement run to Singapore, before closing in 1976. The runway is still there and is now Gan International Airport. Like Thinadhoo to the north, Addu was part of the short-lived United Suvadive Republic of 1959, and like Thinadhoo, it was brought back into line by Ibrahim Nasir and a gunboat.

Importantly for us, it is a clearance port,  so we could clear out of the country.

My Birthday Celebrations

What better way to celebrate a birthday than eating cake and cleaning the hull. We ate cake  on board Jamala with the rest of the Tail Enders in the anchorage. And later we did some last-minute provisioning before picking up our papers and passports from Mathi (Masud). It’s a pity we didn’t have more time here. It’s a surprisingly nice place to hang around. The vibe is relaxed, there are plenty of shops and restaurants, and it’s one of the few places that sell beer in a restaurant with no entry fee. We might be back. Mathi told us that there are regular flights to and from Colombo.

And with a long journey ahead, I wanted to make sure that the hull was clean and the prop was clear.

On the 25th May at 0900, we lifted the anchor and sailed out of Addu’s south pass on our way to Chagos via a slightly circuitous route.

The currents here run faster than an airport travelator, so we had to head east to make sure the current didn’t push us past the Salomon Islands — our destination in the Chagos archipelago.

On the way to Chagos

After heading towards Western Australia for 24 hours at a healthy average of 6.5 knots, we tacked west and headed directly for Chagos – give or take 100 miles.

The Windy current map shows what we were up against. The dark red areas represent 1.2 knots of current, the orange around 0.7 knots, and the green around 0.4 knots. We would rather have been in the blue, where there is not much current at all.

The reason we headed east towards Australia was to get a better angle on the wind so that we could sail all the way from Addu to Chagos. That approach proved to be the right one. If we hadn’t turned left towards the Antipodes, we would have struggled to make it to Chagos purely under sail.

Indian Ocean

27th May

📍 Indian Ocean · 003°12.079′S, 073°25.545′E

The highlight of the day – seeing a large pod of dolphins in near-perfect sunny blue water sailing conditions – morphed into a bouncing bucking nightmare in the pitch black of night. Rain arrived, bringing with him his mates, heavy seas and strong wind.

But the real frustration was the frequent passing of squalls that, each time after dumping an unholy cascade of water over Jamala, buggered off into the distance, dragging the wind behind them. Being left windless in a lumpy rolling sea is not pleasant. The wind didn’t come back again for an age; each time a squall passed, we had to suffer the after effects for an hour at a time. Even I, not usually prone to the green gills of seasickness, felt a bit rough around the fringes.

Île Salomon, Chagos

29th May

📍 Île Salomon · 005°19.951′S, 072°15.859′E · Salomon Islands, Chagos (BIOT)

After a few days of bonkersness, we made it to Chagos – one of the most remote, almost uninhabited places on earth. It was a bit feisty coming in though: 28-knot winds and breaking seas, but the reward was a flat anchorage and being greeted by the sound of welcome horns blowing from Allora and Ocelot.

A long-held ambition achieved.