cocospass

Waved goodbye to Rejoice and left King George River for Butterfly Bay to wait for more wind to start the 1590Nm passage to the Cocos [Keeling] Islands, still part of Australia though 2768K NW of Perth.
By lunchtime the wind had picked up, and we decided to keep going, so at 1.30pm on Sat 4th Aug, 2001, we pointed Destiny out into the Indian Ocean. Or rather Alistair [the autohelm] did, while we celebrated by unfurling the Australian flag at a rakish angle from the pergola, and sank and early sundowner!
We figured the passage would take about 14 days, the first 10 were idyllic for anything but sailing, and we used all our sail-trimming skills to keep Destiny moving.

We were impressed how Desting slid along in light breeze with the spinnaker up for several days, while we amused ourselves having baked dinners and barbaques. Wonderful sunsets preceded glorious moonlit nights, where we glided down a smooth ribbon of moonlight heading due West. Night watches were a pleasure, sitting under the pergola in T shirts The Three Tenors singing at the top of their voices to all the fishes in the Indian Ocean.
The marine life entertained us with terns fighting for the limited parking on the backs of basking turtles like Warringah Mall on a Sat. morning!
The first week's night watches were marred by a couple of unsettling incidents involving 80ft motorised Indonesian fishing boats just outside Australian's 200 mile limit. Two tried to hem us in and we had to duck behind them to escape, putting peddle to the metal to get away! This happened on consecutive nights and was pretty dis-concerting, on the second occassion we were tuned in to the BBC World Service announcing English Soccer results for that Sat..
Brighton & Hove Albion 1: Hull Kingston Rovers 2
Watford 0 : West Bromwich Albion 4.. in plummy tones! We thought it hilarious, afterwards!

Later we were told they can be very superstitious, and try to dump their evil spirits on other boats before dropping their fish traps. Hopefully that's all it was, but it was pretty disconcerting at the time.
Of course when the wind arrived it came in spades, and we were chased again, this time by water spouts and rain squalls, but we enjoyed the sensation of getting a good "boat lovers" wash, and sailing fast.
Made great progress, sailing into the lagoon at Cocos early on 19th August with 30Kts of wind and two reefs in the main, and were delighted with what we saw.