Just before leaving Darwin, with the boat still in the marina, I had a diver attempt to clean growth off the hull so I’d have a more efficient sail across the Indian Ocean. He was only partly successful. He said fresh water rains and hot temperatures in Darwin during the months it was there had stimulated a lot growth on hulls, especially small barnacles which he wasn’t able to remove.

Wanting to get the Indian Ocean crossing done when the winds were favorable, I didn’t have time, or a place, to get the boat hauled out of the water and the hull properly cleaned before arriving in Richards Bay. The facilities for doing this at Reunion Island were fully booked for months so I made arrangements ahead of time to get this done here.

September 5 was the day. I came to realize the facilities they have here, although very commonly utilized by cruisers sailing this route, are pretty primitive compared to others I’ve seen and used. First, the travel lift itself is pretty small with a low crossbar. The slope of the bottom of the takeout ramp is such that you have to go into the lift bow first. As a result of these two factors, the forestays on boats have to be loosened, disconnected at the deck end, and pulled to the side. Their tension holding the mast is replaced with running rigging; in my case, the spinnaker and genoa halyards. Getting enough slack on the forestay to disconnect it at the deck end required loosening the backstays and the shrouds. The backstays have been dropped entirely before when loading the boat on the transport ship which brought it to the US. I also dropped them to get the boat on the travel lift in Puerto Montt. I’ve never loosened the shrouds or taken off the forestay before. These are all fundamental things that hold the mast upright. For any sailor, loosening these supporting steel cables is an uncomfortable thing to do. In this case there was no choice if I wanted to get the boat hauled out of the water in Richards Bay.

After the boat is out of the water and positioned where it will sit while work on the hull is completed, it needs to be supported upright above the ground. Every other boatyard I know used heavy telescoping metal support posts designed for this purpose. At Richards Bay they cut lengths of wooden posts to support the boat. One end of the post is dug into the ground while the other end has a flat piece of wood propped against the hull. I’m fortunate with Phywave because it’s capable of sitting upright on it’s own when the centerboard is retracted. If fact, it’s possible to beach it. Fixed keel boats can’t do this and need to sit higher in the air. Of course, if Phywave sat flat on the ground there would be no room to clean the hull and renew the anti-fouling paint. That work will begin on Monday and hopefully be completed so I can get the boat back in the water on Friday.

Overall, the process to finally get the lift cleared to handle another boat takes several hours. Considering that there are 2 meter tides in Richards Bay, and they need high tide to haul or launch boats, realistically they can only handle one boat a day.

After a 12 day passage from Reunion Island through some rapidly changing weather conditions and unexpected counter-currents, I arrived in Richards Bay, South Africa, at 1300z on August 20. I was able to make use of easterly winds blowing west on the north side of a string of high pressure systems (counterclockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere). I’m very glad to have completed this passage without having to contend with any southwest gales which were, in effect, blocked for a while by the high pressure systems. That changes tonight when a southwest gale will blow in over Richards Bay.

As I left Reunion Island I was treated to a pretty amazing concentration of humpback whales actively playing off the point of land at St-Gilles-les-Bains.   As I approached heading southwest I saw clusters of boats out there and wondered what was going on. I soon found out.  A parting gift as I left Reunion.

I’m currently tied to the concrete wall of the jetty where you must go first for Immigration procedures. The Custom building is a few miles away so a taxi ride was required this morning. There were strong crosswinds yesterday when I approached the jetty and unfortunately a big gust slammed Phywave into the wall and nicked up the aluminum hull a bit. I’ll see if I can get that cosmetic damage repaired while I’m here. I should have had all my fenders on that side of the boat.

This afternoon I’ll move across to a berth in the Zululand Yacht Club where all the visiting foreign boats go. The club seems more like a local social club, not just for boaters.

From here, the procedure to get around the coast of South Africa to Capetown in the face of periodic SW gales is well-known.  Wait for a weather window 3 or more days long and incrementally move the boat to the next port along the coast. Typical stops are East London, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay, Kynsna, and others.  I’ll be thinking of that in more detail when I embark on this passage in October.

I’ve mentioned to the few people I’ve met so far that this is not my first time in South Africa. They’re a bit astonished when I tell them I hitchhiked from Nairobi to Capetown and back again in 1975. Apartheid was still in place and Rhodesia hadn’t yet become Zimbabwe though it was under enormous economic and political pressure with international monetary sanctions in place. I have many stories from those days that I expect will come up as I hang out in the yacht club bar.

The passage from Reunion Island to Richards Bay in South Africa around the southern tip of Madagascar (Mada for short) is renown for being difficult, mainly because there are strong gales spinning out of the South Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica that periodically cross the route.  The best time to make this passage is in October when the gales become less frequent during the Austral Spring and before tropical storm season begins later in November.

Which led to a dilemma for me. I was comfotable in the marina at Reunion Island.  When I arrived I told them I’d like to stay until October which they seemed OK with then.  Meanwhile, I’d been watching the weather forecasts daily, as I always do when flying or sailing. I spotted a weather window I thought could work leaving Reunion on August 8.  Considering that option against staying until October, I went to the marina office to confirm I could stay until October. To my surprise they told me I had to be out by September 30 because the marina was fully booked with sailing rallys that would start arriving October 1. 

Rallys are potentially large organized groups of boats sailing to the same destinations, like across the Atlantic or even around the world.  Boats pay to be part of the rally.  Depending on the rally, the organizers may arrange all logistical support for participating boats – fuel, marina berth space, clearing in and out formalities, weather forecasting,  tours of the places they stop, etc. Because of all that support, I call them nanny cruises.  Like other independent cruisers, I have to do all those things myself.

I have to be Seattle to participate in the First World Flight Centennial from September 26-29. There’s no way I could be back in Reunion to leave on September 30.  Moreover, I hate to be forced to leave into weather circustances that were not my choice and could be terrible. I planned to return to the US early in September. If I waited in Reunion longer, there’s no way to know if I’d find a better weather setup than the August 8 setup I had already identified.

So, as I write this August 9 I’m 24 hours and 130 nm into my passge to Richards Bay. You can never trust long range forecasts out 10 days to hold, especially in this part of the world. What’s important is that it holds at least until I can get passed (“weather” in sailor lingo) the southern tip of Mada. Once I’m passed that I can retreat north up the Mozambique (Moz) channel if necessary for bad weather, either by heaving-to or heading for two well-known weather anchorages at St. Augustine Bay on the west coast of Mada or the north side of Ilha Inhaca just outside Maputo in Mozambique. Generally, if a yacht is taking shelter from bad weather and nobody on board goes ashore, you can anchor in a country’s waters without going through the often arduous process of formally clearing-in to the country. 

That’s where things stand. I’ll see how it all works out.

Over the past few weeks I’ve made a number of excursions into the interior of Reunion Island where its spectacular volcanic history is found. I’ve included a map of Reunion which shows the three calderas(cirques) near the island center – Cirque de Mafate, Cirque de Cilaos and Cirque de Salazie, all dormant. At the conjunction of these cirques is Piton des Neiges, at 3071 meters the highest point in the Indian Ocean. In the lower right hand (SE) corner of the map is Piton de la Fournaise, the only active volcano on Reunion which last erupted in April, 2021.

To access these places, I had to drive up incredibly winding, narrow mountain roads, some with one-way tunnels blasted from solid rock (look for on-coming headlights before entering). The French certainly excel at building roads like this – there all over this island and France as well.

“Ah oui, les espions, on trouve partout”. It’s 2 am. I’m standing in the deep shadows in an alley off Rue Sadi Carnot, my hat pulled low across my face, a Gauloises hanging from my lips, staring at my phone. My contact is late, not like her. There’s a full moon somewhere above a solid overcast that threaten to rain all day. Walking here I could feel the cool breeze blowing in from the nearby harbor carrying the salty smell of the ocean. The intense green and red lights marking the harbor entrance reflected off the walls of the buildings lining the street at the water’s edge. As I walked I would sometimes quickly duck into a doorway alcove to check for a tail.   I saw nothing; if they were back there, they’re good.

We set the meeting at a spot behind a defunct Chinese restaurant with a broken down bamboo fence in front of its forlorn entrance. As I waited the scratching of a restless rat in an empty cardboard box was the only thing disturbing the quiet night. No kung pao chicken tonight, pal.

Everyone knows the next moment, when the world seems to holds its breath, the clock fails to tick forward, a beating heart pauses, and your brain involuntarily skids down a slope of anticipation. Far down the alley, the sound of a scuffle, a panicked shout, and the crack of a gunshot shattered the night. . .

Once an important stop for ships on trade routes to Asia until the Suez Canal opened in 1870, La Reunion is a spy novel of an island that collected more than its share of misfits, miscreants, foreign legion rejects, and con artists, a place Rick and Louis might have headed for instead of Brazzaville. Now it’s a popular French holiday home location (direct flights to Paris!). With my arrival by sailboat yesterday, I’m the latest miscreant to sully its shores.

My passage here from Cocos (Keeling) was pretty fast, total elapsed time about 18 days but it could have been faster.  I originally notified Reunion from Cocos I would arrive on July 12 but soon realized I would arrive earlier but not sure when.  I finally told them July 10.  I stooged around sailing slow the last couple of days so I would arrive at the harbor entrance during daylight on that day. I also slowed down during the passage when the winds were running 25-35 kts and 3.5 – 4 meter confused seas were hitting the boat broadside.  When a big wave slams into the side of the boat its like it was hit by a truck. Other waves would break over the deck, briefly inundating it, the seawater cascading down the opposite side.  The boat would roll into the deep wave troughs to the point where the edge of the deck was in the water. That roll would also turn the heading of the boat in the direction of the trough forcing the autopilot to throw the rudder hard over to correct the course.  This often resulted in an alarm when the rudder was all the way over against its limits.  I usually try to trim the sails so the boat is reasonably balanced, not inclined to turn one way or the other, with a bit a weather helm left in.  The autopilot doesn’t have to work so hard when the boat is balanced, saving electrical power. In these very rolling conditions such balancing efforts are futile.  The best I could do was to reduce sail to slow down so the ride isn’t so rough, like driving slow instead of fast over a rutted road is a bit more comfortable. Otherwise, I stayed below deck in the cabin getting rattled around like a marble in a jar.

The Clearing In process (Entry Formalities) at Reunion was incredibly efficient.  Angelique, the marina manager, had prepared all the entry documents and handed them to me as I arrived after helping with the mooring lines at my berth. Fifteen minutes later the Immigration and Customs people showed up.  They didn’t need to come aboard, no need to confiscate my eggs, meat, etc. like the morons in Australia.  They stood on the dock, I handed them my passport and prepared entry documents, they stamped everything, bid me a pleasant stay and left. It took minutes!  I’ve been stuck at red lights that took longer. This was amazing compared to other places I’ve been where I had to take a car to multiple offices all over town to clear in and clear out.

The entry stamp in my passport is important. Reunion, like France and other Schengen countries, limits a stay to 90 days in a 180 day window for non-residents of the Schengen Area. The 90 days started when I arrived on July 10.  I need to return home to the US in September to participate in the First World Flight Centennial. Initially I thought I would take the boat across to Richards Bay in South Africa in August and leave it there while I returned home. However, the best month weather-wise to make the tricky passage to Richards Bay is October. I also have security concerns about leaving the boat in Richards Bay where on-board thefts have been a problem in the past.  The marina in Reunion is very secure.  So I am now thinking I’ll leave the boat here while I return to the US in September, then back again to Reunion in October to make the passage to Richards Bay. From there I’ll make short hops around the South Africa coast to Cape Town where I’ll be positioned to make the homestretch run northwest across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the US (North America, my 7^th and last continent).  The days I spend traveling back to the US in September do not count against the 90 day limit, so looking at the numbers, this plan should work out alright.

I’m renting a car on Friday for a week so I’ll have time to explore this amazing volcanic island.  

The wind finally calmed down enough so I could launch my drone.

This is probably the most remote place I’ve stopped so far on my solo voyage to 7 continents (6 now done), as least in terms of being far from other populated places. Deception Island in Antarctica is another candidate but there were cruise ships coming and going nearly every day during the week I was there so it didn’t feel so remote.

While anchored here I was reminded of what I wrote in the Epilogue of my 2015 book “Flying 7 Continents Solo”:

“There is always the appeal of a faraway place, the rarely-visited, remote, little-known mystery circumstance.  I was recently in Barrow, Alaska, where a small community college had been built catering to “outlying” villages.  Outlying? I thought Barrow was outlying. The lines of civilization, of human activity, get increasingly stretched, ultimately broken, moving beyond the last signpost, the end of the road, the hesitant smile, the final conversation. Further. Passed the last trail, the disappearing footprints, the lonely, windy mountaintop where recognition is a memory. Further still. Beyond process and reason, merging here and there, blurring yesterday and tomorrow, until finally arriving at a last thin space between the shadow and the silence.”

I probably shouldn’t be sitting under a tree with hanging coconuts.  Someone told me more people are killed each year by coconuts falling on their heads than by shark attacks. It would be really ironic to have sailed this far only to be clunked on the head by a coconut but, as Paul Gauguin once said, “Irony is only a coconut away”

I arrived here on Thursday morning, June 13, exactly 9 days after leaving Medana Bay on Lombok, a reasonably quick trip of 1200 nm.

The weather here was nice the day I arrived but soon turned cloudy, windy and rainy and has pretty much stayed that way.  Like the lagoon inside any atoll, it’s protected from the sea but with only a string of low-lying islands (motus) around the perimeter, some with palm trees, it offers essentially no shelter from the SE tradewinds or storm fronts that blow across the Indian Ocean. 

The formal Clearing In process is streamlined here because the Australian officials come to your boat after you notify them on Channel 20 (the common channel used here) that you have anchored.  The hassle comes because there is AU$10/day or AU$50/week anchoring fee which must be paid at the Shire office on Home Island, about 1.4 nm away from the anchorage at Direction Island.  You can’t officially Clear Out of Cocos without a receipt showing the fee has been paid. 1.4 nm can be a pretty long ride in dinghy across shallow waters with numerous coral heads (bommies) in the relentless 20 kt winds that blow through here.  There is a great, fairly new, inter-island ferry (air-conditioned!) but it only connects Direction Island with Home Island on Thursdays and Saturdays and the Shire office is closed on Saturdays along with everything else on Home Island except the grocery store Shamrocks. So as I write this I expect to take the Thursday ferry to Home Island to pay my fees and be on my way to Reunion Island Friday morning. Given the poor weather I would have left sooner except for having to pay the anchoring fee and get an official Outbound Clearance. Not having an Outbound Clearance from the last port can be a problem when trying to Clear In at the next port.

Direction Island itself is uninhabited but with a white sand beach and park facilities (shelters, BBQ grills, toilets, a historical trail with interpretive displays), it’s a popular day trip getaway for people on West Island where most of the local Aussie population lives. West Island also has a few small hotels and the airport.  I really can’t see a big tourist appeal to Cocos when there are so many other places to go if you want a beach holiday. Maybe that it’s remote and rare is the appeal.

On a more positive front, I submitted all the required paperwork for arrival at Reunion Island.  They responded that the documents were OK and they would have a berth for me at Titan marina when I arrived.  It will be a refreshing break to get back to a well-developed place (fresh croissants!).  I’m already creating a list of things I need to get in Reunion before moving on. I expect maybe 2 weeks there or longer depending on when a suitable weather window opens for making the passage around the southern end of Madagascar to Richards Bay in South Africa.

I managed to get the engine on Phywave started last Monday. I fixed the starter by “exercising” the solenoid (turning it on and off multiple times) and liberally lubricating it with T9 (much better than WD40). With the solenoid operating smoothly, I bolted the starter motor back in place.

However, as is sometimes the case, that was not the only problem. To minimize electrical leakage currents, my engine is equipped with a “grounding relay” that only connects the start battery negative to the engine block when the starter is engaged. If that relay doesn’t close, there won’t be any battery voltage across the starter and it won’t run. After a few tests I concluded the relay had failed. I got around that by using my battery jumper cables to bypass the relay and connect the battery negative directly to the engine block for startup. With that in place I was able to start the engine. Once the engine was running, I could remove the jumper cable; in effect, replicating the action of the relay.

While I was doing all this I also wired a switch across the terminals of the starter so if the Volvo Penta MDI control box should fail for startup (they have a reputation for failure on boat engines), I can still directly start the engine with the switch (and the jumper).

Getting the boat operational again is only one takeaway from this episode. There are also the lessons learned, that I was under-equipped with engine spare parts for this voyage. Recognizing that lesson, and acting on it, I flew to Perth, Australia, to pick up a new starter, a few more spare parts and tools I wish I’d had, like a set of metric ratchet wrenches (gear spanners). Getting the starter in out of its tight space was a pain – very little room to move a standard wrench to tighten the bolts.

I was not particularly happy with having to use jumper to start the engine so one part I picked up in Perth was a “maybe” replacement for the failed relay. The part number of that relay was not in the Volvo Penta system so I sent them a photo and they came up with a relay with the same size, shape and connection terminals as the failed one. No promises it would work but I wired in place of the old one and, amazingly, the engine started perfectly. No more need for the jumper cable and the engine is back to its normal configuration.

All this reminded me of when I was in my 20’s and used to work on my cars before they became computers on wheels. I can continue my voyage a little better equipped with spares and little more knowledgeable about my engine.

Barring any new issues, I plan to complete Exit Formalities to leave Indonesia on Monday, June 3, and head back south through the Lombok Strait at first light the next day. Once through the Strait I’ll turn west across the Indian Ocean toward Cocos (Keeling) atoll, one of the few places in the world where parentheses are an official part of the name.

As I prepare to leave, I’ve included a few more photos of life around Lombok.

The failed exhaust elbow replacement went well, completed last Tuesday, but a new problem arose when I tried to start the engine – it wouldn’t start. Having seawater sprayed on the starter motor for several hours from the exhaust elbow leak likely caused some other problems. I pulled the starter off and bench (galley counter top) tested it. The motor spins but the solenoid is not kicking the starter gear into place to engage the flywheel; it’s possibly rusted stuck.  It might be fixable but I may need a new starter motor. There may be collateral electrical problems I’m just now beginning to understand.

While in Medana Bay considering the best course to fixing my boat, I am immersed in a new book by Paul Theroux entitled “Burma Sahib”.  Well known for his many novels like “Mosquito Coast” and engaging non-fiction travel books like “Dark Star Safari”, Theroux turned to historical fiction this time to describe the life of a young Eton graduate Eric Blair who, in real life and for reasons never clear to himself, signed up to be a British policeman in Burma in the early 1920’s.  The book describes the imagined twists and turns of maturing Blair’s life as he navigates the brutal, racist, exploitative hegemony of the British Raj and deals with the society and bureaucrats that ran it, their sparsely-furnished minds hypocritically justifying the coercive control of the India subcontinent. Several years later Eric Blair became famous for his jarring, yet no longer very far-fetched, projection of humanity’s dystopian future under his pen name George Orwell.

On one of the first days at Medana Bay I decided to walk into a town a few kilometers east with another sailor here for repairs – Barry Perrins, aka Adventures of an Old SeaDog, a YouTube sailing video sensation with over 120,000 subscribers.  Just as we started down the road ,the marina owner Peter Cranfield (an Englishman who settled here long ago) drove by and offered us a lift.  That lift turned into a 3 hour tour of the north side of Lombok, passed rice paddies, Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, and the verdant countryside of Lombok with its active volcano Mt. Rinjani, at 3,786 meters high the second highest point in Indonesia. It last erupted in 2016.

Yesterday I shared a vehicle and driver with a few other cruisers on trip south to Mataram, the main city on Lombok, in search of tools, parts, provisions, liquor, etc.  It’s a bustling place including an upscale shopping mall with the usual American restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Starbucks, etc.) and boutique clothes shops, international brands you’d likely find in big malls all over the world. It was a good break from the routine of the Medana Bay Marina which has become very familiar after being here 2 weeks.

The voyage from Darwin to Lombok, Indonesia, went smoothly until the last 20 miles when my engine developed a major leak in the exhaust elbow of the seawater cooling system. On marine engines generally seawater is pumped through the engine to cool it and then is combined with the engine exhaust gases in an exhaust elbow.  The combination is then sent overboard.

After arriving in Lombok and staying one night near a marina where I thought I could complete the Clearing In process for entering Indonesia (it turns out  they lost their permit to do this) , I started out motoring the next morning to Medana Bay Marina on the northwest side of the island where I was certain I could complete Entry Formalities.  After a few hours I noticed an unusual dribble of water on the cabin floor.  Opening hatches to the bilge, I was shocked to find the bilge full of water. I immediately turned on the bilge pumps which successfully started drawing down the water level.  Investigating further, I found a substantial jet of water coming from the underside of the exhaust elbow .  The only way to stop it was to shut down the engine which I did for a while because there was enough wind to sail.  That wind eventually disappeared so I had no choice but to motor again if I wanted to make Medana Bay by nightfall. The leak returned but now the main bilge pump had failed so it was a race to see if the secondary bilge pump could hold down the water level until I reached the marina.  It did, with a little help from me and a bucket scooping water out of the bilge and dumping it down the sink.

Once at the marina with the engine stopped I had time to assess the situation.  I found that a plug normally in a port on the underside of the elbow had blown out leaving a way for water to escape. As I write this I haven’t found the missing plug in the bilge.  The elbow is made of cast iron which can be TIG welded but it’s a tricky process. I was not confident I could get it successfully welded in a place where there may only bush welders.

The right solution is replacing the elbow with a new one but shipping boat parts into a place like Indonesia is a nightmare, sometimes taking months, even if you’re willing to pay the 40% duty and taxes (which a boat in transit shouldn’t have to pay). I’m not waiting months for anything. Tracking down and ordering the parts I needed in Sydney, Australia, I jumped on the fast ferry from Lombok to Bali last Thursday, caught a red eye flight from Denpasar airport in Bali to Sydney, and spent Friday picking up the parts along with spare bilge pumps and a few other things.  I flew back to Denpasar on Saturday (yesterday) with the parts in my carry-on bag and skated through Customs with no problems.  Returning to Lombok and Medana Bay today on the fast ferry, I’m back where I started with the parts to fix the leak.  I hope to get the new elbow installed tomorrow and get going again by the end of the week.

What’s surprising about this problem is that the engine is only 2 years old with less than 1300 hours. Even with the leak it continue to run smoothly and the seawater and exhaust was still being ejected overboard. A failure like this should never have happened with such a relatively young engine.  I’m worried there is an undiscovered collateral problem that led to this failure. That might come to light when we pull the failed elbow off and examine it.