After a fairly uneventful trip from Port Blair we sailed past Galle in Sri Lanka on our way to Cochin only to be hit by a gale in the gulf of Mannar 24 hours later. It all got very ugly and stopped being fun. During our turn to run for Galle we sustained a little damage to our main sail, but that apart we escaped completely unharmed.
We finally arrived in Galle harbour at 02.00 Hrs local time on Saturday 16 Feb after 8 Days 18 Hours and 45 minutes and a total distance of 933 miles.
We will now stay here and lick our wounds for two weeks before attempting to cross to Cochin again!
We are now at the end of our very enjoyable stay here in the Andaman Islands. We feel very privileged to have been here. Although we only gave ourselves a short time due to our further plans and we have not seen nearly as much as we would have liked, it has certainly been a worthwhile diversion to come here.
The main town on South Andaman is Aberdeen and this is close to the sea port. It is a very simple place which looks like time has stood still for the last forty or fifty years. As an example all of the vehicles are vintage 1950's and most are in remarkably good condition. It would be a collectors paradise.
Althouhg the diving here is reported as being the best in Asia, we have not been able to do any. This is mainly due to the weather which has given us fairly strong winds every day. This has led to a big swell and lots of breaking surf, which has made anchoring difficult and at times uncomfortable. It seems that a bit later in the year would have been better from this point of view.
Fruit and vegetables are in good supply and the local food is very nice. It is not as spicy as a lot of Indian food. Other supplies are in short supply and we are having to get used to new packaging which we do not recognise. We are pleased to have arrived with a well stocked boat.
So now it is time for us to move on and as I write we have just completed our formalities and are headed back to the boat. We plan to be underway at first light in the morning. The local time is GMT + 5.5 hours and this means we will be underway at 06.00 Hrs. We will head south to the southern tip of South Andaman and then pass through Manners strait. That will put us into the bay of Bengal with 685 Nm of open sea to cross to the south east corner of Sri Lanka. From there we will head for Dondra head and that will put us a few miles from Gale Harbour which we will call into if we need a stop. Our plan however is to head NW from there to Cape Comorin the most southerly tip of the Indian sub-continent. From there we will pass along the west coast of India to Cochin Harbour, from where we hope our next news will be sent! The total distance is around 1,300 miles and we expect to be there by the end of February.
More news then. In the mean time thank you for taking the time to be with us and follow our journey.