Chatty log | Seychelles

Seychelles

4 April

Caro: Reading in our Indian Ocean cruising guide, we were prepared to spend a lot of time doing the paperwork clearing in and having to pay enormous sums of money just to be here in the Seychelles. The book also told us the boat will have to be sprayed and that we'll need proof of cholera vaccinations (which we don't have). So, it was a very pleasant surprise when clearing in was actually very simple. At 9 in the morning 5 guys from the various departments (immigration, health, customs, port authority) came on board and took turns doing all the paperwork. They didn't get further than the cockpit, didn't say a word about vaccinations nor about spraying the boat. Furthermore, the fees are a little less than we feared and we can stay a month without any trouble. Wonderful. We then went to anchor in the inner harbour with some difficulty because the bottom does not provide very good holding. The scenery is fabulous. Victoria is overlooked by the 'three brothers', a luscious green mountain with 3 rounded tops and sprinkled with vertical rock faces. It's quite a small town with a few colonial buildings and in which everything is within walking distance. We tie the dinghy up at the yacht club jetty and walk into town to start doing a few of the jobs on our long list of 'things we have to do in the Seychelles'. We have lunch back at the yacht club which is a little lacking in atmosphere. The kids then go back to the boat to do some schoolwork whilst John and I walk to the Port Authority to hand in our boat registration (so they can be sure we'll pay our bills before we leave!).

5 April

John: We met up with Terence Vel and Conor (on loan from the UK) of Wildlife Clubs Seychelles to talk about what we can do to contribute to their research and education programmes. We come up with some school visits and talks to wildlife folk that they'd like to see happen around 15-18 April, but we'll have to discuss with James (not here at the moment) about any work on Cousin Island, the managed reserve they have west of Praslin. They give us some useful background to the Seychelles ecology and parks. We decide to head out for a week to explore the inner islands then come back for the school events.

Caro: We got some cooking gas today. Finding and getting gas is usually quite a hassle. This time finding where to get it wasn't so difficult, but very hard work for John carrying the tank. It wasn't so far to Seychelles Petroleum, but once there we had to walk a long way to the filling station at the other end of their terrain. Poor John will have to do this again with our other tank just before we go to Chagos. It's been a little gusty today and we have dragged the anchor. We're getting a little too close to our neighbour and have to re-anchor. The bottom in this harbour is terrible and we have to set the anchor quite a few times before it holds. Now even with quite a lot of reverse power on we're not dragging.

6 April

John: Today the kids get to do a project at the Natural History museum here; a small but friendly place with stone crocodiles and manatees outside to entice visitors... We prepare some questions for them to answer and give them some drawing tasks. Meanwhile Caro and I do some shopping chores and look into how to get duty-free fuel and the usual boring logistics. Later we meet with David Rowat (chairman of the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles) to talk about what we can do with his people; looks like turtle foraging grounds may be the thing; we need to talk to Jeanne Mortimer. At the end of the day I get to zoom over to the 'marina' where I'm hoping we might get fuel and/or water. Turns out to be a pretty exclusive and small development, no room for us, with some very, very expensive toys bobbing about at the docks.

Caro: Just when we're satisfied with the anchor not dragging we're told by the port authority that we've got to move. We're somehow in the way, though we cannot see how. We look around the small harbour and cannot find a good spot with enough room. We put the hook down where we think we have the most swinging room, but the anchor won't hold. Whilst we're looking around again a man on a local boat shouts that we can take a mooring next to him. We're in two minds about doing that but do tie up to this mooring. It's very close to a little boat also on a mooring. With this wind angle we're fine, but if the wind changes direction and we turn we're not at all sure there will be enough room to swing around without bumping into this little tub. But it's better than a dragging anchor. I had hoped there would be a washing machine at the yacht club, but no such luck. So, I will have to wash the mountain of dirty clothes by hand, bit by bit. I take 2 big buckets and some laundry to shore. At least there's plenty of water and I can do the washing in the shade.

7 April

John: I spent from 07:30 to 13:30 sweating buckets over the battery compartment, rewiring the battery banks and reconfiguring to move the inverter into the compartment to shorten the DC supply cables as instructed by Xantrex to solve the mysterious inverter failure problem. I have to work as fast as I can, knowing we are to meet James for lunch to discuss Cousin island. Caro goes off to do her online taxes and meet the guys for lunch, calling me on the radio when they're at the yacht club. I sluice down the sweat and grime and pack myself and the kids off in the dinghy to meet them. It turns out that there's probably not much we can do with cousin island, they don't really have an ongoing research programme we can add to. There is a group from Newcastle coming on 18th to survey the reefs, maybe we can help them somehow, but it's not for sure. We knew this already from Terence. I'm left wondering what we had the meeting for, but I'm probably just feeling sore at having slaved all morning to be in time for this meeting and feeling under-appreciated, again. When I get back to the boat I realise that the inverter is not ignition-protected and I'm therefore not supposed to mount it in a battery compartment! Groan! I can't face undoing all the work and putting it back. What now? Just have to leave the battery covers off when charging to vent the hydrogen until I think of something... Try not to blow the boat out of the water, John...

8 April

John: Jeanne Mortimer turns up at 08:30 and we talk about turtles. She has an interesting project for us; to go and check out a particularly-compact turtle foraging ground that one of her tagged turtles (Argos satellite) occupied for over a year between nestings. she puts the Argos data on a USB stick and gets it back to us by 11:00 for us to work on. Clearing out with the Port Authorities is a breeze, and we're off by midday for Praslin, sailing part of the way in a light, fair breeze. We anchor at last light inside a broad bay that turns out to be a rolling nightmare for us; Jocara does like to rock and roll when the swell is just right for her.

Caro: Before we left for Praslin I had just time enough for a bit more laundry and a quick trip to the market and bakery. They have nice rolls here and the more we put in the freezer the less we have to bake bread ourselves. I'm excited about going to explore the other islands, they should be very beautiful. And I love doing little research projects, turtles should be fun.

9 April

John: Enough of this anchorage! Full of ultra-expensive yachts and rich people anyway. There are some seriously ugly cats around, and some very slick-looking ones. Obviously much favoured in these waters. At least they don't roll like Jocara! We move off and explore the sisters and end up at the north of Praslin island in a much smoother anchorage, still for free. Many anchorages cost 50 Rp (about US$10 at the official exchange rate) a night, with charges of US10-US$35/person to go ashore on the islands. This is too rich for us, of course. Many of the islands are privately-owned and have delux resorts for the play-boys and -girls of the world to frolick in. There are some awesome yachts around, too. I work up the Argos turtle position data and get some good results about the likely size and shape of the foraging grounds. It looks like we could do a limited survey over a sq km or so and capture the core of the grounds. We're keen to see what's down there!

Caro: I'm enjoying the scenery when we're touring around the islands. La Digue has a lot of beaches with big piles of rocks, the sort of view well known from postcards from the Seychelles. We anchor for a while in turqoise water by little Sister island to go for a snorkel. The rocks make for interesting underwater scenery. There are lots and lots of fish and a few rays. After snorkeling Cas and Alex take their casting rod and troll the waters in the dinghy. In no time they've caught 5 pompano's and are very happy. These fish turn out to be delicious when barbequed.

10 April

John: The day dawns calm and settled, so Caro and I decide to go for the turtle survey run. Casper and Alex get shanghai'd into being research assistants by keeping time, watching depths and calling out numbers for Caro to write down while I attempt to steer a good course through a set of waypoints that give us 8 lines spaced about 100m apart. It's intense work, but after an hour or two it's done and we break and drift about for lunch. Then it's off to set the hook in the middle of the area and take a dive to see what's really down there. Caro and I set off with video and still cameras for the depths. Viz is around 15-20m, the bottom is scrubby sand/silt with scattered little outcrops of sponges and misc. stuff, not very exciting. No ledges for turtles to hide or sleep. No turtles. Actually, not even fish. Pretty boring. We head off on 310M towards the gulley we have seen that runs down to 54m depth. Suddenly we start seeing a lot of shallow circular depressions, like dug holes caved in. Some have a piece of sponge or something in the bottom, probably fell in somehow. At 50m our computer alarms go off and I'm feeling tense and my heart is racing. I know I'm sucking down the air and feel light-headed. Swimming too hard to get things done before our bottom-time runs out, maybe. We take some pictures and video. Time has run out. I see my no-decomp time has run to zero. Caro and I head back, Caro rising to gain some altitude off the bottom to reduce the decompression obligation. I follow. When we get to 30m my ceiling is 7.5m and I have 12 minutes of decompression time accrued. That's not so bad, but my computer also tells me that I only have 5 minutes of air time left... Caro is in the same situation (with slightly less air, which is a new variation), and obviously not happy about it. I check again. I have 65 bar left, so I must have more than 5 minutes, especially since we're rising to decomp depth. Still, unnerving! We end up spending 15 minutes decompresing, drifting along in open blue water (we couldn't find the anchor line) and the remaining air time never increases as we expected it to. Pretty tense, actually. Caro calls the kids to come and get us in the dinghy once we surface. A tough dive and pretty disappointing. Now I don't feel so keen on working up the bathymetric data, which will be a chore and might be a waste of effort anyway. We head back to our quiet little anchorage by a small island, picking up a borrowed DVD from 'Sometime...' on the way.

Caro: That was a deep dive and a bit scary. My computer was saying I only had 5 minutes of air left whilst I still had to do a 12 minutes decompression stop! I didn't like that one bit, though it did not make sense and I knew my air would last a lot longer than that. I was also unhappy about drifting further from the boat during the 12 minutes stop, but as soon as I reached the surface I saw Alex was watching for us and spotted me easily.

11 April

John: Well, my enthusiasm returned, driven by my curiosity to see what the bathymetry data look like. Caro, Casper and Alex take turns dictating the time and depth pairs while I type the data into the Bohemian Rhapsody for crunching in Matlab. I write the code to massage the data and suck in the NMEA time and GPS positions, then set about merging the data, gridding it into a regular spacing and meshing to give a contour plot. The result is pretty neat! A clear gully runs ENE through the region, our dive starting on the S side and penetrating into the gulley as we expected. The bathymetry is smooth, like the whole area is probably sand and silt. In the evening we struggle to get an email through from Jeanne that says that Loggerheads have been observed digging for molluscs in Australia, but Hawksbills have not yet been seen to do anything similar. That looks like it clinches it! Surely these must be digging pits where the turtles are digging up shellfish to eat. What else could have dug the holes? What else could they be eating for over a year? Why shouldn't they dig for shellfish like other turtle species?

Caro: A pretty relaxed day. I snorkeled around the tiny island whilst the kids were clambering all over the rocks. On the seaward side were a lot of good sized fish, a shark, a ray and a turtle. At the end of the afternoon the kids are into fishing again, from the dinghy and the boat. They specifically want pompano's and catch a few.

12 April

John: I'm up soon after first light to enjoy my peace and a cup of Spinelli's coffee before the rest of the family rouse themselves. I fiddle with the bathymetry data some more, feeding in positions and plotting our next dive. Now I feel more convinced than ever that what we saw were the remains of turtles digging up food. Once Caro and the kids are up I get to charging the tanks so we can take a leisurely dive on the pretty little island right next door. Alex is to do a confined water dive as part of his Open Water training, Casper the videography adventure dive as part of his Advanced. Casper does really well, apart from when we lost each other and he forgot to surface after 1 minute so I was left panic-striken for about 10 minutes searching for him both above and below the water. He videoed a good bit of resting sharks under a ledge, even squeezed in the gap to get closer, terrorising them into nervously circling about the constricted space. A 12-year old terrorizing five sharks!

Caro: Alex did his confined water dive 2. We swam at the surface to a shallow area to do the exercises. He's doing really well. The only small problem he has is sitting on the bottom without his mask on for a minute. But he has no trouble with taking his mask off and replacing it, so maybe next time he'll manage it. We then went for a little fun dive around the rocks. We also saw the 5 sharks sleeping under a ledge that Casper filmed and lots of fish.

13 April

John: So now Jeanne Mortimer thinks these pits maybe sleeping holes dug by the turtles, so the idea is we have to be there at 06:00 to look for surfacing turtles after they wake up. Seeing as it's Caro's b'day I volunteer to get up at 04:30 and get the engine going. It's weird romping about the boat, starting the engine, raising the anchor, piloting out of the anchorage by radar, all in the pitch dark and alone. I find I've very little time to get going, make coffee, brew up a batch of Jocara's Killer Koffee ice cream (with a splash of Drambuie) as a birthday present and then get a fresh cuppa of Spinelli's brewed up to take to Caro in bed just as we get there at 06:00. Dawn is beautiful, calm and rosy. Caro and I scan the water in the early morning light. No turtles. Never mind, we get some breakfast and check out the area Alex noticed the wreckfinder got excited about on our survey. Nothing of interest there, either. So we drop the hook just short of the gulley, actually 20m further off than I wanted, and prepare to do a second dive. This time we're not taking any chances (yeah, right); we put a spare tank at 8m in case we need the extra air for decompression. I don't have a full one, but 100 bar should be enough (first mistake...). We get the cameras ready, plus two wreck reels, and get into the water. Tying off the spare tank I notice that my camera port is fogged up. I decide to go with it anyway, maybe it will clear and it's a lot of trouble to re-surface and get Casper to take it back. We descend to within sight of the bottom and attach the wreck reel (so we won't lose the anchor line on the way back this time). Swimming out to the gulley turns out to be quite a long way, that extra 20m counts. We get to 50m depth and begin to see the field of overlapping pits just as I run out of no decompression time. By this point we've also run out the full length of the first wreck reel and have linked it to the second, smaller one. This turns out to have the line just loosely wrapped on the reel at the bitter end so it simply spools off when we get out to the pits. I have to grab the loose line and tie it off again to avoid us losing our way back. I am aware that the nitrogen narcosis is slowing me down. My fingers are clumsy. I finally get the job done, snap a couple of pictures of Caro (foggy lens port notwithstanding) and take some sample sand from a pit, stuffing it in my ziplock bag. By this time we're seriously into decompression. Time to head back. I start reeling in the first, smaller reel. It's hard work. I don't realise how hard Caro is having to swim to keep up; she doesn't have the advantage of being pulled in by the reel. When we get to the join with the first (larger) reel, Caro takes over and wants to reel in the second one. She starts reeling in like a mad thing, and I suddenly find I can barely keep up. This is dodgy; if I lose sight of her I'll never find the anchor chain and I don't have enough air without that spare tank on the chain at 8m depth. I can't go directly to the surface because I'm have a decompression ceiling of 7m. I keep signalling her to slow down. She seems to see me but doesn't slow. I'm gasping by this point, and sucking my remaining air down at an alarming rate. What I don't know is that Caro was so worn out trying to keep up with me on the first reel that's why she wanted the second, and is now doing the same to me! The second reel seems to take forever. Suddenly, Caro abandons the reel and simply drags herself in hand-overhand to the anchor chain. I find out later that she'd just seen her dive computer tell her she was on 0 bar air pressure (though she was still breathing from it). I am finally, belatedly, alerted to the fact that this is developing into an emergency. Just about that point I feel my regulator dry up and it gives me only the most tenuous last breath of air. That's it. That was my last breath, I'm out of air. Sh1t! I dump my camera, spinning a few turns of the now-slack wreck reel line around the light arm as I do so, then scrabble to follow Caro to the anchor chain. This is when I feel my right fin getting tangled in the loose line (which is now towing the camera housing, of course). Without a second thought I reach back and flip open the catch to release and dump the fin. I am now feeling the urge to breathe, but there's no air. I can finally see the chain, but it looks so far away. It occurs to me that I might just not make it. What a stupid way to die! From somewhere, deep inside, where the drive to live, to survive, lies buried and un-called upon for 99.99% of our lives, a huge shot of adrenaline came surging through me and I simply flew those last 10m to the chain and then up to the waiting spare tank at 8m depth. When I got there, the tank was off, of course. A frantic scrabble to get the correct knob turned to get the air flowing, and I gulped down my first lungful of sweet air, a breath I thought I might not get to take. I spun around to see where Caro was, still coming up... I held the second regulator out to her as she rose to join me. We were both shocked and gasping. It took a while for our breathing to settle, and for us to carefully assess whether there was enough air in this spare tank to last the both of us for the duration of our decompression. It seemed not. One of us was going to have to break the decompression ceiling to get another tank. It's Caro's birthday, so I'll go. But how long should I wait before going? As long as possible, to reduce the decompression violation. How could I signal the kids above to send one down? Then I remembered that our own tanks would, at 3m depth, give us a few extra breaths and using this, being very calm, placing ourselves at the limit of our continuously lifting ceiling to maximise off-gassing and minimise air consumption, we just made it. Phew! OK, so if I had really, truly run out of air and had to do an emergency ascent to the surface I could have done that. But I would have almost certainly given myself decompression sickness and would have had to get on oxygen and arrange for a decompression chamber, with no guarantee that this would totally solve the problem. But I probably wouldn't have actually died. Still, it felt close, too close by half!

Caro: My 40th birthday. For a while there I thought it might be my last. When I saw I had 0 bar air in my tank I seriously thought I might not make it to the anchor chain in time. Very soon after we started swimming back I realised there might be a problem. I had a hard time keeping up with John and by the time we got to the second wreck wheel I was already exhausted. I was breathing very hard and was already worried about the amount of air left in my tank. I was very much in a hurry and needed to reel the next wreck wheel in to help me along. John, being bigger and stronger could swim faster than me I thought. When he was telling me to slow down I thought he said it for me, because he was worried about me. I wasn't going to slow down, because I had been watching my computer and the air was running out fast and I couldn't even see the chain yet. With an 18 minute decompression stop going to the surface wasn't much of an option. This is when I started to think how stupid this was and what would the kids do if we didn't come up! Awful! I was so exhausted I could hardly get any power out of my fins anymore. I dropped the wreck wheel and started to pull myself in. Finally I could see the anchor chain and now my computer said zero air. I swam as hard as I could for the chain. I think it was at this point that John shot past me. It was really amazing the speed with which he flew past me. At the time I was only vaguely aware about this because I was rather concerned with my own survival. There was some relief when I made it to the chain and the spare tank, but I quickly worked out that it did not look like we had enough air for the both of us to do our decompression stop. After the exertion it took a while for my breathing to slow down. But then it did and I concentrated on using as little air as possible. Finally it was clear there would be enough air. Those 18 minutes seemed to take very long and I had plenty of time to think about what had just happened. What a shocking experience. How close it had been. It was only when we got to the surface after completing the safety stop that I found out that John had run out of air and had dumped the camera and one fin. We made it. It's so GOOD to be ALIVE! Back on board we took it very easy. We were physically and mentally exhausted. After resting a couple of hours we went back down to look for the camera and fin. The fin was gone but the camera was still tangled in the wreck reel line. A few minutes later we were back at the chain going up when I noticed a circular shape on the bottom in the distance. It got my attention because it looked unnatural. Then I thought no more of it until John climbed out of the water and a saw his tank was missing its boot. Ah! Well, I knew exactly where it was, so I went back down again. Of course, when I get down I don't see it. I know it isn't far! I don't want to spend much time on the bottom or I'll go into decompression again. I quickly attach the wreck wheel to the chain and swim out a bit. There it is! I quickly collect it and go up the chain and do a nice long safety stop. Exhausted, but on a high because we're alive we head back to the little island off Praslin to anchor for the night.

14 April

Caro: It's time to return to Victoria already. The kids go on a last fishing attempt with the dinghy during which they get the fishing line tangled with the outboard and end up screaming and fighting. It's rather embarassing as there are other boats anchored nearby. Instead of solving the problem together and getting back to fishing they get mad at each other. Casper even ends up throwing the anchor back in the dinghy not caring wether it hits Alex or not. Grr! This little incident is costing them 5 hours computer playing time. On the way back to Mahe we have time to stop for a dive on the Ennerdale wreck. We can see it clearly show up on the Echopilot Wreckfinder and it's easily visible from the surface. For Casper this is his second Adventure dive. When we follow the anchor chain down we end up at the propellor of the wreck which is huge. The wreck is a refueling tanker and rather large. Lots of fish hang around the wreck and huge batfish come very close. It's a fun dive and rather relaxed after yesterday's near death experience. Casper is clearly taking diving a little too easily. He forgets to keep an eye on his tank pressure and depth. Near the end of the dive he goes down to the bottom again and picks up a ceiling. Only just, but it also means he now hasn't enough air for his safety stop and has to breath off John's spare regulator. With us looking after him he can make these mistakes and learn from them. We reach Victoria harbour just as it starts getting dark and anchor.

15 April

Caro: After lunch ashore at the club we get a lift from Conor to Nature Seychelles where John gives a presentation to the leaders of Wildlife Clubs Seychelles. Wildlife Clubs Seychelles is a local organisation which aim is to increase kids' knowledge of the local biodiversity and to mobilise action for conservation (check out http://www.natureseychelles.org). John tells them a little about JIOQ and the work we're doing here on turtle foraging grounds with Jeanne Mortimer. Afterwards we get presented with a lot of excellent material the Wildlife Clubs use for their programmes. We were also supposed to have school kids visit Jocara and for us to visit a school, but unfortunately it is exam time, so the timing doesn't work.

16 April

Caro: We would like to get back to Praslin and surrounding islands as soon as possible after our meeting with Jeanne and David on Sunday (tomorrow). The rotting fish smells from the tuna factory that often pervade the harbour are pretty horrible. It would be great if we could find out more about turtle foraging and sleeping areas. We would also like to find Sperm whales if possible. John has already got the clearance from the Port authorities and we get fresh food on board for another week. I'm also working on decreasing the mountain of laundry whilst we're here and working on the website. Late afternoon John helps Casper up the mast in an effort to repair various items that have stopped working properly (anchor light, steaming light, wind instrument, anti-lightning brush). He clearly enjoys it and does a great job unscrewing the items and getting them down for repair.

17 April

Caro: We had hoped to meet Jeanne and David in the morning and be able to leave for Praslin in the afternoon. However, they are only returning from travel today and we still don't know when the meeting will be. We cannot get hold of them and they cannot get in touch with us. Nothing for it but to get on with some jobs. John gets Casper up the mast again to re-install the various repaired items. It's a little tricky and after a while Casper comes down and John goes up the mast. This is when Jeanne comes by, she's hitched a ride in a dinghy. We'll meet tonight. On the way down from the mast John notices a lot of rivets in the main track are missing. This means the whole track might rip out if we don't fix it. Casper sends up the rivet gun and about 40 rivets and John slowly comes down replacing rivets as he goes. We meet Jeanne and David at the club and exchange files. They get the stuff John wrote up and the video of the hollows and we get more data for other turtles. Then David asks if we would like to see a turtle hatchling release tomorrow. YES!

18 April

Caro: Elke, who works for the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles and is in charge of releasing the hatchlings, picks us up at 20 past 8. We drive to the southern part of Mahe where the beaches are that she monitors for turtle nests. The hatchlings (147 of them) are in a bucket on Casper's lap. We are releasing the hatchlings on a beautiful deserted beach. First she marks out a corridor by pulling a stick through the sand. This is the runway to the sea for the hatchlings where nobody is allowed to walk and this is to avoid the hatchlings falling into footsteps they cannot get out of. The hatchlings have to go down the beach for at least 10 meters to give them the time to imprint. Imprinting will enable them to find this same beach when they come back to nest in 40 years time. Of course, most won't survive, only about 1 in 10.000 eggs makes it to reproduction age. The hatchlings are taken out of the bucket in batches of 5. Some hatchlings start running right away, other seem asleep. Pretty soon they're all in the sand and the first ones are reaching the water. The waves are quite high and crashing pretty hard onto the beach. It looks like it would be quite a challenge for a little turtle. But actually, watching them, it seems the undertow does a great job of quickly carrying them out to sea. All hatchlings, except 1 dead one, have started their way down the beach now. A lot of them leave the corridor and Casper and Alex end up helping the hatchlings out of the footsteps and back on their way. It's surprising how quickly all the hatchlings have made it to the water edge and disappear into the sea. I don snorkel gear and try taking some movies of hatchlings in the water. It's nearly impossible with all this surf and the hatchlings disappearing at great speed. Soon there isn't a hatchling in sight anymore. They're actually quite tough these baby turtles. Their biggest danger is ending up as somebody's dinner. After the release we go to 3 more beaches to check on nests. Elke does this a couple of times a week to monitor the number of eggs hatched and make sure no nests are disturbed. She had the hatchlings we just released at home because she found their nest had been disturbed by dogs. So she dug up the hatching eggs to keep them safe. On another beach she finds one nest that hatched last night and now she needs to count how many eggs hatched. She digs up the nest and then counts the number of empty egg shells with Casper and Alex. There were 174 successfull eggs. She also finds 2 undeveloped eggs, 1 dead hatchling and 1 still alive which we released on the beach. It was a little slow but the little hatchling made it to the sea all by itself. All the other nests were fine and not hatched yet. We headed back to Victoria where we had a late lunch at the club. What a fabulous experience. We meet one more time with David and Jeanne, who gives us more turtle satellite data. Then we want to be off, but the anchor is badly entangled with a mooring. We spend hours trying to untangle the mess. The water looks horrible, diesely and soupy with great mats of seaweed and we don't want to dive in this. Bit by bit we manage. It's already after dark when finally we get the anchor on board. Too late to leave now, we tie up to the mooring for another night. Whilst messing with the anchor we found 3 little hatchlings floating in the seaweed which the kids rescue. We'll keep them in a bucket with clean water and release them later.

19 April

Caro: We get up early and get on our way. We need to be at Cousin island before 1 o'clock to be in time for the afternoon tour which has been arranged for us by Terence from Nature Seychelles. We have to motor all the way because there's hardly any wind. When we arrive we find that all the moorings are taken, the people on the morning tour haven't left yet. We don't have to wait long. Soon everybody leaves and all the moorings are available. It turns out we are the only ones here for the afternoon tour, we'll have the island to ourselves. Cousin island is a special reserve run by Nature Seychelles and established in 1968 to save the last few warblers (a small bird) from extinction. The island had been used as a coconut plantation and it was completely restored with natural vegetation. The island boasts some rare endemic species and is a haven for seabirds who come to nest in great numbers. Seven wardens live on the island who give guided tours, monitor the animals and protect the island. At 2 we get picked up by a warden in a small boat with powerful engine. Arrival on the island is quite exciting. He heads straight for the beach at great speed. At the last moment he lifts the outboard and the boat shoot right up on the beach. The kids love it. On the beach we meet Katrina, who is a warden and will be our guide. We haven't even left the arrival shack or Casper spots the famous warbler in the bushes. It's a small brown sparrow-looking bird. Then we spot a tiny fairy tern chick in a tree. When we turn around we see an enormous tortoise we must have just walked past without seeing it! It does look like a rock when it doesn't move. This tortoise is an 80 year old male and he loves being stroked, especially under his long neck. We've hardly started the tour and already we've seen so much, we're defenitively impressed with this island. Katrina took us around the island and told us loads about the different animals we saw. One interesting fact we learned is that Tropicbird parents fatten up their chicks and when they're bigger than themselves just abandon them. The poor things are forced to go find their own food when they're starting to starve! Makes me feel I'm not such a bad parent! We had a wonderful time, ignoring being eaten alive by the mosquitos and concentrating on the wildlife which was everywhere. We saw the endemic magpie-robin which is recovering nicely on Cousin, more tortoises, nesting noddies and fairy terns, so many skinks we almost stepped on them, and many fluffy chubby Tropicbird chicks. Cousin is clearly a conservation success story. It's lovely to see what you get when you take away all the introduced predators like rats and cats and provide native vegetation. Endemic and native species start to flourish, the tourists provide the funds and the wardens protect the reserve. Back on the boat we decide to stay the night since it's so calm.

20 April

John: Motoring round the corner of Praslin I spot 'Sometime' manoevering into a little bay at the northern point; we've been calling her on the VHF for a week, trying to get back in touch to reclaim our DVDs. I turn and follow her in. It turns out to be a stunning bay, so why not stop for lunch? Alex wants to play with their kids and guests, so why not stop for the night? I do some programming, working in the Argos data for more turtle foraging grounds we might want to check out. Casper comes back from the beach alone; it looks like he's just too old for the kind of kids' play the others are into. He is growing up, indeed. He reels in four good squid; enough for a pasta sauce for dinner. When Alex finally gets back it turns out he didn't have such a great time, being teased, but nothing too bad it seems. We borrow the entire zipper folder of 'Somertime's DVD collection, maybe they won't run off so fast this time!

21 April

John: Waking up to a beautiful bright morning in this lovely bay, it strikes me that we can actually do whatever we want today; there's no urgent agenda to get something taken care of, fixed, purchased, whatever. 'Sometime' has already left, off to do some fishing it turns out. We decide to motor out to the Sisters to find a good spot to release our three hatchlings, then maybe move on to Mariannne for a dive. We pick up a Bonito Tuna on the way in 35m of water depth, but the flesh looks too rich and red for our taste; catfood. By the time we get to anchor at the Sisters, it's lunchtime and Caro cooks up a batch of Jocara JuicyBurgers. We are kind of sorry to see the hatchlings go. They've already become perilously close to pets. Time to leave them to their own devices. Even free-swimming in the big blue, we follow them for a while, filming, wondering how they'll cope in the big scary ocean. They seem so small and helpless. The kids try fishing for Pompano, without luck. By this time it's too late for a dive so we move on to the big sister to see if we can find juvenile turtles on the reef. Once anchored, it turns out the water is full of stinging jellyfish, so that's out. The kids try for Pompano again, but get the lure bitten off by a houndfish. Our last shiny spoon! Oh well, it will just have to be fried spicy sausage for dinner tonight.

Caro: I have really enjoyed having those 3 little turtle hatchlings on board, observing them and learning a few things. When we just got them we had them in a yellow bucket with lots of seaweed and they didn't move very much. We then prepared a bigger blue bucket for them with fresh seaweed. They looked much better in the blue, the right colour for them. They seemed to be struggling and having a hard time moving about. Casper added more water to the bucket and suddenly they were starting to swim down. They needed room. I took out some of the seaweed to give them even more space. Now we had 3 very active hatchlings. A hatchling is very buoyant and the tiniest one would swim underneath the seaweed and stay there for a while before returning to the surface to breath. The other two hatchlings looked to come from the same nest and both had already algae growing on them. They had 3 different types of seaweed in the bucket and tried to eat that, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. A hatchling would take chomp down on a leaf and start trying to tear a piece off, pulling with its beak and pushing the rest of the leaf with its two front fins. It was very cute. They sure seemed healthy and energetic. But they belonged in the sea and we'd had them on board long enough. The tiny hatchling started swimming very purposefully the moment it was released. The two siblings were not entirely sure what to do. They'd swim a bit and then return to a piece of seaweed. One of them even swam right for me. Time to leave it up to nature now.

22 April

Caro: Fortunately this morning the stinging jellies are mostly gone and it's possible to snorkel. The reef is all rubble, but there are plenty of fish. I'm looking for juvenile turtles that are supposed to be unafraid of people and will let you approach them. Soon I spot a small turtle and swim slowly towards it. Then another turtle sitting on the bottom sees us and comes up to the surface to check out what's going on. The two turtles seem to acknowlegde each other and hang out for a while. This is lovely and I wish I had brought the little underwater camera. I swim back to the boat and tell the rest of the crew there are juvenile turtles about, grab the camera and head back to the turtles. They're not together anymore, but one is at the surface and I take a bunch of pictures. It's not often a turtle will let you get this close. Then boats are starting to turn up. It's time to leave. We head to the other side of big Sister, to a bay with good snorkeling. Alex and I have a snorkel around the rocks at the edge of the bay and see turtles, a ray and a school of barracuda. Then we call out to Casper to come pick us up with the dinghy to go check out the rocks at the other side of the bay. Here the rocks are a little of the coast and we see even more: a white-tip shark,an eagle ray, a Napoleon wrasse, big bumphead parrot fish. The rocks provide such interesting underwater scenery and great ledges for big fish to hide under. Late afternoon we head to a better protected anchorage for the night at the northwest corner of Felicite, another beautiful spot.

23 April

Caro: Definitively time for a dive. We motor to the southern tip of Marianne island, where 'Sometime' said is the best dive site in the Seychelles. We don't know why they think that, but we'll go check it out. Alex stays on board, this dive is a bit too advanced for him. Casper, John and I descend down the anchor chain and head for the corner of the island underwater. Soon the rocks become visible and we start seeing lots of fish, including one with huge lips we've never seen before. Moving along we suddenly come upon a fabulous sight: pillars of rocks towering up to the surface with great cracks and swimways between them. It reminds me of the ruins of some great cathedral. Stunning to swim through. Now I'm really sorry I haven't brought the underwater video. After the dive I take Alex in the dinghy to the corner so he can see the 'cathedral' from the surface. It was actually a pretty shallow dive. Maybe we can come back and do another dive. It's a little rolly here so we move to the other side of the island to find a calmer anchorage for lunch. We're out of bread, so it's time we start to do our own baking again. It's a while since we had focaccia. We hang out for most of the afternoon, the kids climbing the rocks and fishing, I doing more snorkeling. I spend a lot of time in the water these days, there's always something interesting to see. This anchorage isn't good enough to spend the night, so up comes the anchor again and we motor to our old spot off Big Sister island.

John: The motor out to the southern point was rolly and we were reminded that we've lost our sealegs, Alex in particular feeling a bit green about the gills for an hour or two, but the site was worth it! The tip of the island has granite rocks carved into vertical buttresses, 'Sometime' called it 'organ pipes', and below water the cathedral parallels continue. The rock forms vertical walls and smooth buttresses, in many places providing tunnels and ledges for big groupers and other large fish to shelter. The crashing swell above injects air in clouds of brilliant bubbles, lit by the sun, so that looking up is like seeing the light from stained glass windows sparkling in dust motes high above. The feeling of flying weightlessly through a huge gothic cathedral is exhilarating, surreal.

24 April

Caro: What shall we go explore today? This is the life! So many beautiful spots just a few miles away. We head for a tiny rocky island called Ave Maria, between Praslin and la Digue which looks very picturesque. Snorkeling around the island we discover that especially the east side of the rock island holds some big interesting sea creature: 2 huge groupers, a shark, turtles, eagle rays. The bottom is covered with big rocks with overhangs, ideal for sea life. This would be a good dive site. Too late, maybe tomorrow? For the night we head to La Passe on La Digue where there's a little harbour we want to check out. We head straight for the entrance that we see ahead of us and nearly run onto a reef. It looked like the entrance but it's not. That forward looking sonar has saved us. We find the right entrance and carefully go in. Boats inside are tied stern to a wall and there isn't much room. I don't like it at all. Jocara is very hard to manouver in reverse. Out we go again and anchor not far off. Easy enough to take the dinghy in. It's pretty here, but not a real place. Still, it's such a luxury to have dinner ashore in a restaurant.

John: I'd like to be able to tie up inside and take on water, but we don't see any obvious place to do that and it's pretty crowded. I find a place where I can just about get Jocara turned round to get out the way we came in, but the turning space looks pretty tight from where I am at the helm, Jocara doesn't have very good visibility from the cockpit and she's slow to respond with her long keel. I am quite pleased with myself at getting her in and out without drama, but I wouldn't want to try it in any wind.

25 April

Caro: It's back to Ave Maria rock to do a dive later in the afternoon when the fish are starting to be very active. Earlier the kids go snorkel around the island rock and decide to climb up the rocks. Alex doesn't time it quite right and gets thrown on the rocks by the surge. It's not too bad but he's got some scratches and bruised his ribs a bit. Poor thing, he decides to rest and not go on the dive. Just as well, because there's a fair current and quite a hard swim to get from the anchor to the island. But it's a great dive with swim-throughs, lots of fish including bumphead parrot fish. Casper picks up a few sea urchin spines in his knee, but they don't trouble him much. On the swim back out towards the anchor we get surrounded by hundreds of sizable white tunas. They start circling around us and we find ourselves inside this column of fish. Our vision is filled with fish all around. An amazing experience. Why do they behave like this? We head back to La Digue to anchor for the night.

John: Alex is getting the rough end of the deal these days, sometimes unable to dive because it's too challenging and today because he's resting an injury. He's doing well with the Open Water course reading material, though, and Caro is bringing him along. He's also thoroughly enjoying C.S. Lewis' books on Narnia, of which we have several. Casper is becoming an unflappable, natural diver. Overconfidence is maybe his biggest problem. Today I timed him doing a difficult 3D wooden cube puzzle. He can do it in 38 seconds in air, 42 seconds underwater while hovering motionless without a reference. He finds it easier to hover, not touching the seabed, than kneeling on the bottom and having to deal with surge. His buoyancy control is now automatic, he can concentrate completely on the cube task. Being underwater, controlling attitude and motion, is as second-nature as breathing. Next we'll take a deep dive to 30m as part of his advanced course and time him again to see if nitrogen narcosis takes a hit!

26 April

John: Another day, another bay! We anchored outside La Passe in La Digue again last night and today we're off to explore the Eastern side of the island. Casper announces that he wants pancakes today, so he and I work on brewing up a pancake mix and stirring in the mashed bananas he saved in the freezer when they were all going ripe at once. Cooking pancakes is hot work (but delicious!), so Casper and I take turns while Caro helms around the island. There's a long smooth swell coming in from the SW, someone had some wind down there a while back, maybe 1000 miles away, so we motor round to the SE corner before selecting one of the many white sand beaches to go and drop the hook for a snorkel and lunch. Alex may be up to a training dive today, his ribs are a bit easier already.

Caro: This anchorage looks like a good place for exploring. Beyond a rocky headland is a kind of hidden beach. The kids and I don our snorkeling gear and head for that beach. Rounding the corner we see the ruins of a house ashore. We put our snorkeling gear on a rock on the beach and start exploring. Soon we find a path behind the house and start following it. The path goes up and over the hill to the beach on the other side of the headland. On the way down are some beautiful views. This beach is much more exposed and Alex has fun for a while playing in the waves. Lunch time is approaching and we head back along the path to 'our' beach. Snorkeling back to Jocara we have a look at sea life around the rocks on the corner. As usual there's lots to see: rays, turtle, shark, small fish in big groups, the lot. But we're really starving now, so it's time to make lunch. Late afternoon John and I head back to snorkel at the corner whilst Casper is having a go with fishing from the dinghy. We get treated with the sight of 5 eagle rays gliding in formation. How beautiful! They look so graceful. We're glad we discovered this place and decide to stay here for the night.

27 April

Caro: This morning Alex and I take John ashore to show him the path and the beach on the other side. Casper prefers to stay on board and have some time by himself. The waves are better than yesterday and all 3 of us have fun in the crash zone. But the weather is changing a bit. When we get back to Jocara we decide it's time to move, it's getting a little rolly here. The northwest corner of Félicité is more protected.

John: The path and views are really spectacular. What a delight to be here! Alex is very keen to show me the waves and have me play in them with him, following his rules, of course.

28 April

Caro: The weather looks unsettled. It's quite rolly here too now. We go in search of a better anchorage and find it at the big Sister island. We're not off the beach this time, but a little around the corner by a slight rocky bay. Casper bakes a killer coconut-cacao cake, just a few bites fills you up! After lunch it's time again for a snorkel. I never get enough of watching the underwater world. You never know what you might see, and I keep seeing stuff I've never seen before. Like today. I was just putting my fins on and gazing out when 20 meters in front of the bow an eagle ray jumped clear out of the water. Wow, I've never seen or even heard of that before. Getting in the water and following the anchor chain to check on the anchor I saw two eagle rays gliding near the bottom. I started following them and noticed that one of them was missing its tail and they both were accompanied by a remora. So, my theory is that one of these rays leaped out of the water to try and get rid of that pesky remora. But, it didn't work. Hmm. Still observing the rays I suddenly noticed that their pointy nose had become half circular. How did they do that!? They were clearly feeding and feeling (sucking?) for food in the sand with this fold-out big flat mouth. Then this flap disappeared again and all I could see was their pointy face. How does this work? I wanted a picture of this. I quickly swam back to the boat and asked for the little underwater camera. Then I swam back to where I last saw them, but they were gone. Such a pity. But one day I might see it again! The kids are more interested in exploring the shore and spent hours clambering all over the rocks even though the rain is pouring down.

John: The kids go 'native' and start using their knives and climbing skills to get coconuts and tie them together. Caro was worried about Casper high up in a coconut tree so I clambered along the shore over rocks and through jungle to get to them to see if everything was OK. It was, and I was obviously not welcome to stay too long so I said, I'm off now, about how long will you be? "Oh, hours" said Alex. They need time like this, so I left them to it.

29 April

Caro: It's Friday and time to return to Victoria to start getting ready for the passage to Chagos. We were hoping to do one last dive at the 'cathedral ruins' at Marianne island on the way. 'Sometime' is meeting us there too. But the weather is not cooperating, it's too choppy for a dive and too exposed for save anchoring. So, we exchange back our VCDs and head for Mahe. On the way the skies keep darkening and the wind increasing. We're not falling for that anymore! We put a reef in the main and reduce the genoa. With 20-26 knots of wind we're finally sailing again after all that motoring around. Just before dark we enter Victoria harbour and pick up a mooring. Then we treat ourselves to dinner ashore at the yacht club.

John: You know, these days when I see squalls developing and the wind getting up, it makes me pretty nervous. Maybe partly because we haven't been sailing for such a long time now, have got out of the habit of handling sails and managing shifting winds and choppy seas, but partly it's a psychological scar of being so beaten up the last couple of times in 40-50 knots. Also, I'm all too aware of how depleted our reserves are in terms of equipment backups and security. Lines are getting frayed, blocks weak, lifelines breaking up and stanchions loose. Everything is nominal in good conditions, but when the detritus impacts the rotating air handler we quickly start seeing the cracks in the system popping up and limiting our options. We are also not as strong as I'd like as a crew, though Casper is really good when the going gets tough. He comes into his own. Unflappable and focussed, even if his experience is on the low side. So, all-in-all, I was dog tired when we got into Mahe from the nervous tension as much as the physical efforts. That Genoa is not getting any easier to roll up!

30 April

Caro: Today the plan is to start the clearing out process and organise the fuel. But when we get to the port we find everything is closed and Monday will be a holiday and we won't be able to get anything done until Tuesday. We rush into town to buy food for 3 days. We've already been out of fruit for days now and are down to our last onion. As we're running out of fresh food we're depending more and more on our Pharmanex Lifepacks. They have carrots on the market. That's great news, because they keep well and I want lots for Chagos. Funny, how these days I can get really excited about being able to buy some carrots!

John: Time to catch up on our chores re: website and writing up stuff. Maybe it's not so bad we can't do much else until Tuesday. Still, time to leave. We've had a great time here, have done a lot of neat stuff, but it's time to move on. Those carrots are GREAT! Crisp, crunchy, sweet and full of flavour. Ever got so enthusiastic about a carrot?

1 May

Caro: We have 2 days to get the website updated with all the great new material we have for the Seychelles. There's also a never-ending mountain of laundry to wash by hand. John is writing an article of the turtle work for Jeanne Mortimer which is also a lot of work. So, we're sweating away inside the boat. It is so hot. There's hardly any breeze and the temperature goes up to about 34 degrees inside in the afternoon.

John: Today I got totally immersed in working with Matlab and writing up the turtle foraging grounds stuff. I submerged just after my first cup of Spinelli's, came up for a little air and lunch, then back into it until about 5 p.m. When I'm 'jacked-in' like this I don't notice anything else going on around me, the day flies by, then at the end I'm exhausted. Yet another film, The Terminal, which we really enjoyed.

2 May

Caro: The kids are getting pretty bored, so it's time to send them off on a mission. They are to photographically explore Victoria and find some higher ground for pictures of the harbour. They come back with a lot of pictures and dripping in sweat. The website is almost done. Amazing how much time it always costs.

John: Caro has done a great job of getting all the new material into the site, this time there's a lot from Casper and Alex, too, which is great. I make a few extra equipment pages and a sponsor page for Xantrex, since they are being so supportive and are promising to send us a charger to the Maldives, too.

3 May

John: Today is the day we swing into action to get the paperwork done, fuel organised and shopping for the next 6-weeks, right? Dream on! I'm ashore at 08:45 and hit the ground running... first stop SeyGas to see if they will take VISA for our fuel bunkering. Nope. then the Port Office. Can't do anything there until I have my Immigration clearance. Immigration; take our passports and tell me to come back tomorrow. Then off to the tourist Office to get a lead on where to find a fishing shop (we need small lures). When I get to the fishing shop place I find it closed down last month. And so it goes, the usual running around prior to leaving a place. Still and all, Caro and I get some supermarket shopping done, the LPG tank filled and some stuff set up for tomorrow. Let's hope it all works out. The kids are left on board alone for a few hours, so of course they went a bit crazy and broke a few little things. They cleared up a bit, just enough to avoid getting reamed out on our return. Their main focus seems to be on playing computer games and looking forward to the nightly film (tonight it's K Pax with creepy Kevin Spacey!) - and the never-ending saga of how to get their quota of schoolwork hours done without actually learning anything. Bitter and twisted? Who, me?