We sat on our deck last evening and saw Orion rise in the eastern sky a sure sign that the end of the year is nearly with us. 2002 has been a great year for Ines and I. We have had some great adventures which have been reported to you on these pages as the year has gone by. For those of you who have short memories or who have not managed to follow us in our journey the abridged version follows.
Last January we departed Langkawi in Malaysia and headed for Phuket in Thailand. We spent a few days exploring the west coast which we had not done before. We then headed out to the Similan Islands, which also belong to Thailand. These islands are a nature reserve and are very well managed by the local authority. We enjoyed a break of a few days with plenty of swimming and good weather. From the Similan's we headed across the Andaman sea for our first offshore passage of the year. After four days we arrived at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. The Andaman's are administered by India and we had a stay of two weeks. The weather was less than kind to us, with no snorkelling possible. We did however enjoy a lot of walking on the islands and the town of Aberdeen, which is full of history from it's colonial past.
We departed from Port Blair on 7 February on our way to Cochin in South west India. We had a very mixed bag of sailing and on Valentines day we were in sight of Galle Sri Lanka. The following morning we were just south of Colombo and got caught in the worst weather that we encountered in all of our sailing this year. We were forced to turn and run off to look for cover. This left us arriving off Galle for a second time at 02.00 hrs on 16 February.
We spent the next two weeks traveling around Sri Lanka and we had an enjoyable time. The ancient history in the center of the country proved to be spectacular. With the ancient hill fortress of Sigirya being claimed by UNESCO as the eight great wonder of the world.
Our second attempt to cross the Gulf of Manar to India was a complete success and we arrived in Cochin on 6 March. Almost exactly 500 years after the great Portuguese explorer and navigator Vasco De Gama. We remained in India until 23 April and traveled by land as far north as Goa. We would have liked to stay a lot longer ans six weeks was enough only to get the general flavour of a small part of this very interesting country. We however expected the weather to change around the full moon on April 27, which would have left us stuck in Cochin for several months. So it was that we headed South to Male the capital of the Maldives. We arrived there as planned on the 27 April just 3 days before the first arrival of the southwest monsoon.
Our three weeks in the Maldives were a mixture from complete relaxation and ejoyment to near terror. This was the first time that we came close to loosing the boat during a night time storm on 6 May. It was nothing more than luck saved us from a nasty end on a reef, our anchor which was dragging around in the sand found a rock to hang onto moments after we got a rope wraped around the propeller.
The following night at a different location was also busy, but not as threatening. The southwest monsoon settled down and we departed from Male on May 19 on what was to be our longest ever, nonstop trip of 13 days and five hours. Covering a total distance of 1,500 Nautical miles. During the trip we also completed our first 10,000 miles at sea. Finally we arrived back in Phuket Thailand on June 1.
Since then the boat has spent one month on the hardstand in Langkawi and has undergone considerable maintnance. We spent two weeks in South Africa looking for a new boat, an exercise, which eventually proved fruitless. We did however enjoy our time in Cape Town and hope to return there again someday soon.
We have of course watched the general situation in the world. The depression which we are now clearly into is a worry, but is an inevitable correction after the growth years, which most people reading this have enjoyed for all of their lives. Events in the Middle East are a continuing worry and it is sad that the US administration seems determined for what ever reason to have it's war. This of course is a very usual reaction to a government with extreme problems at home. By focusing the public attention elsewhere, they are supposed not to notice that they have no work or pension fund! I think that the Germans were similarly mislead during the late 1930's.
I would like to close this year by Paraphrasing some words of wisdom written by William Shakespear.
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip up the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for partiotism is indeed a double edged sword. It voth emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will have no need of siezing the rights of the citizenry. Rather the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know this? Because this is what I have done! And my name is George W Bush" (Caesar)
Ines and I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Special Happy New Year. May your God be with you throughout 2003.