Category Archives: Boat Technical

Specifics about the boat.

Celebrating a Milestone – Male to Port Salalah – Days 5 & 6

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Yesterday the wind dropped a little more, down to 12 16 knots, still on the nose. Every day the ride gets a little bit better. Hopefully, this trend will last! For days we have seen no one, but now we are starting to see quite a few freighters, presumably on their way to/from the Red Sea. When we left Singapore, there was an obnoxious guy abusing channel 16. He was singing, whistling, making clicking noises and saying random things. Not only was he annoying, he was tying up the communication line so no one else could use it. When people would tell him to stop, he would attack the commenter, calling them monkeys with small bananas, as well as using obscene racial slanders. Well, guess what? He is back today. Same guy, same shenanigans. At one point someone told him to stop, and he responded by singing that Peter Gabriel “Monkey” song and improvising some of the words, then went off on a foul mouthed racial tirade. He was on the air for pretty much the whole day, so they are probably paralleling us. They would have been out of range sooner if they were going the opposite way.

Today we achieved a milestone. We are very excited to report that at 0310, we made it to the halfway point around the world! We are really proud of ourselves. Our marina in San Diego that we left from is Continue reading →

Male, Maldives to Port Salalah, Oman Day 1-4

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We left on Sunday evening. On Monday, early in the morning, winds were light and seas were pretty nice overall, despite the fact it was head winds and head seas. By mid-morning, the first of many squalls rolled through. With each squall, there has been a lot of rain and wind, with gusts as high as 38 knots. The squalls sometimes come from the forward port or forward starboard (an angle that hits us in the front right or left corner). In between squalls, winds drop to about 10 12 apparent knots on the nose. Needless to say, as the day has progressed, the seas got progressively bigger, lumpier and confused. Conditions were in the uncomfortable category and we were definitely feeling the washing machine effect. Given that it was almost as uncomfortable in the anchorage, we still think we were better off out here, making forward progress towards calmer weather, than back in the anchorage, waiting for the weather to cooperate.

On Tuesday morning, we found out that a storm has formed Continue reading →

Mast Climbing and Getting Ready to Leave The Maldives

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When we got up in the morning, the wind still hadn’t changed. We didn’t even contemplate re-anchoring in another spot for a couple of reasons. One, we wanted to check out and we needed to be here to do so, and two, if we were to move, we would probably have to pay that $500 fee. At least staying here we may be able to get out of it.

We bit the bullet and got to work on getting ready for sea, despite the rocking. We had originally planned to leave today, but it wasn’t going to happen. There was too much to do between getting the boat ready and errands. Plus, the wind was coming from wrong direction, so it would be a rough ride. The weather forecast still said nice weather with occasional localized storms, so hopefully by tomorrow this crazy “localized storm” will have cleared up and it’ll be a nicer ride.

By late morning, the winds calmed down to the low teens, but it was still rollier than we are comfortable in. Claire from Fafner came over and changed the navigation light for us. She is a brave (or maybe crazy) girl, climbing up there in less than ideal conditions. We thought changing the light bulb would be easy, but it turned out to be something of a puzzle box getting the cover off. After sitting up there in the rocking for a long time and after lot of tries with assorted tools, Claire finally located the hidden magic screw that held the cover in place. The light bulb was quickly changed and the cover replaced. Thank you Claire!

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In the afternoon, Claire and Jeff went to shore. Since Alex and Karen were staying behind, they offered to give us a ride. Even with the calmer winds, the seas were rough. Our first stop was an Internet café we heard had a fast connection, called Shell. They served food, but it was Continue reading →

More SCUBA Diving and Sight Seeing in Male

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Yesterday, we spent the day doing chores. Eric changed the engine oil on the main engine and repaired the broken bilge pump. It turned out the intake valve inside the pump was broken. Fortunately, we have a rebuild kit on board. We also heard back from American Bow Thruster, who said there wasn’t much we could do about the stabilizer squeaking. Eric also thinks he has figured out the problem with the secondary autopilot. He thinks there is a loose connection somewhere, because the computer seems to lose communication. And to round off the repairs, Eric is now 100% sure that the issue with the inverter is simply a matter of one of the lines of LCD screen going bad and that the inverter itself is fine.

In the evening we had our heroine and Johan over for dinner as a way to thank them both for their hospitality to us. The dinner conversation was once again fascinating and we had a wonderful time with our guests. We have to say that through these two people we have really gained a lot of insight into the culture. Since both of them had to work the next day, it wasn’t a late night. One thing worth mentioning is that school is taught in English, which is why most people’s English is so darn good. The native tongue of the land is called Dhivehi, a derivative of the Indian Sanskirt language. Another item of interest is that neither of them could explain to us the significance of yesterday’s holiday.

Today, Eric went diving with the same dive shop. Christi couldn’t go because her ear was still infected. Both were drift dives along a wall, on the west side of Male near Garbage Island (yes, the dump). The first dive had Continue reading →

Welcome to Male, Maldives

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This morning, Eric realized that our primary bilge pump wasn’t working. Ooops. The good news is that we would be in to shore very soon, where it would be much easier to fix. Only a small amount of water leaks from the shaft as the boat is running, so it is really not a big deal. And we are not planning to spring any leaks. Even if we did we have another automatic bilge pump and a manual pump.

We could see land at around 1100. Like the Tuomotus, the islands are small and low, barely poking out above the water. The islands appear to be randomly scattered, which is a sharp contrast to the Tuomotus, where the islands are generally are congregated together into a clear ring shape. Though scattered, the islands here are pretty close together, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see this cluster of little islands were once one big island.

Our destination was the island of Male (pronounced Mall-ay). As we got closer, we were kind of shocked by how built up Male is. We were expecting it to look like the Tuomotus, with a small village and little houses spread out beyond the village. From what we could see, it looked like most of the buildings were between three and ten stories high, and incredibly densely packed. It looks like any mid-size city center anywhere in the world, except maybe with prettier scenery surrounding it. We knew Male has an area of only 1.7 square kilometers with a population of 130,000, so we should have been expecting it to be built up. Logically speaking, to get that many people in such a small space, it would have to be.

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As was recommended from several different sources, we Continue reading →