February 2/ Day 26/ New Mangalore:

 

We had consumed 50 liters of petrol from Mangalore to Mangalore during our 2-week five-island tour which works out to be 12.5 liters per person or slightly less than 1 liter per person per day. Most of us living in cities would use much more than that doing our normal activities like going to work, buying groceries, and visiting people.In the afternoon we got our fuel cans refilled, went for lunch in a five star hotel and had a quick city tour. I couldn’t remember when I last had a meal in a fancy restaurant - it was a good change but our meals on those islands were an unforgettable experience. This was our last meal with Ashutosh as his train to Chennai was at 16:00. We went to the railway station to see him off and kept talking about our good memories of the trip until the train arrived.Anand and I went to the best seafood restaurant in the town in the evening suggested by our taxi driver. This restaurant was on a hill overlooking the night lights of the city. We shared a giant crab of about 1 kilo which was well cooked and delicious.

 

February 3/ DAY 27/ 8 nm :Today morning we went to a small nearby market to buy rations for our onward journey. Buying vegetables is a duty of my cook or chauffer as per a list given by Mita at home; therefore for me it was a new experience. I used to buy groceries when I was studying in the USA from a department store, but it was easy there as I picked up packets. I never bought fresh vegetables as it was too much hassle to cut them and cook. Burger King and McDonald hamburgers were our staple diet. Deciding on quantities was complicated for me as I had to judge our daily consumption and the number of days before they would perish. We didn’t want to buy too much so that it would rot before we could eat and not too little either. We had to decide on which vegetables might have to be stored in the refrigerator and which ones would stay out. Would the vegetables to be refrigerated fit into our tiny 50 liter fridge? The fridge opened from the top unlike our home one so that the heavy cold air would not escape, therefore preserving valuable battery power. Anand was a great help in deciding the quantities we needed.I decided to get my hair cut in a local hair cutting saloon across from the vegetable market, as my hair had grown quite long after two months. I wanted to get a haircut in the beginning of the trip but could not find time due to the hectic preparation.We had lunch at the guest house and sent our taxi to thje airport to pick up Bhisma and Nidhi Desai. Bhisma had accepted my invitation to join us from Mangalore as we would be short of hands when Ashutosh departed. Three would be a minimum number of crew if we were sailing long distances.Both of them were young - in their mid 20`s - and had married a year ago. I knew Bhisma when he was a child as his father, Dilip, would bring him to the tennis court to play with us. I played quite a bit of tennis with him as he grew older, stronger and better. Eventually he became a top player in Surat and started playing state and national level tournaments. He went to study at a university in Pune so that he could train himself under a tennis coach of his choice to become a professional. Once he was ranked in the top 50 at national level, but left tennis a few years ago to join his father’s business in Surat. He married Nidhi – a Maharashtrian - in 2012 whom he had met in Pune. I had mentioned sailing to him once, and his face lit up with excitement. Immediately, I knew that he was a right candidate as my future crew member. Most people would be afraid of open water and sailing, which made my task to find right people as my crew very difficult. Sailing was considered a men’s sport all over the world; therefore it would be next to impossible to find a woman interested in sailing in India. I wondered whether Bhisma would come for sailing without Nidhi as they were recently married, but Nidhi decided to come without hesitation. I had identified both of them as potential young crew members for my boat. Bhisma helped me with sailing and Nidhi cooked delicious Maharastrian style curry and pasta. She was also interested in learning sailing therefore they both started reading the sailing books and were learning the ropes quickly and with passion. I patted my own back for finding both of them as perfect crew members.The previous day we had tried to get a New Mangalore port entry permit for both of them. We spent a lot of time trying to download their photos for the permit in an internet center but in we couldn’t get a print out of the right size and quality. Next we were to go to a photographer to get a good quality print and then to the port office to get the permit issued. All this took a long time and the office had already closed. The next two days were the weekend therefore the offices would remain close. We were all wondering, “How would we take them inside the port.” Ashutosh was worried about us getting caught if we tried to smuggle them illegally.I suddenly had an idea, “Anand and I could sail out of the port and pick them up from a beach.” Ashutosh told me, “I couldn’t have thought of such a simple solution.” We sent our taxi to pick them up from the airport. They were holed up in a procession on the way as Anand and I impatiently waited in the guest house. This was the first time we felt that we had nothing to do and were getting bored.As soon as they arrived, we took their luggage to the port and asked them to wait at nearby tourist beach. I hold them to hire a boat from the beach as soon as they saw us near the beach.We had trouble again trying to enter the port. The port authority would not allow our taxi to enter the port limit as she didn’t have a permit. We hired another taxi with a permit to drop us at our boat, but this one couldn’t enter the area of the Indian Coast Guard as it required another permit. We had too much luggage to walk with all the way to the boat, but we had no option but to walk over 200 meters with each one of us carrying 25 kilos. Our boat was covered with black soot flying from the next ship which was unloading magnesium ore. We tried to quickly wash it off and depart.Bhisma and Nidhi were dropped by a power boat accompanied by two coast guard boys. We sailed close to the shore in light wind and dropped the anchor as soon as it was dark. I didn’t want to sail at night with inexperience crew on the first day. I spent sometime to brief them about safety and the boat, which mainly included wearing life jacket, transferring to the life raft, man over board (MOB), flares, and the use of the gas stove and manual toilets. They were given the port side cabin with attached toilet and a double bunk having a width of 1.4 meter originally reserved for Bipin and Gita. They looked very happy and excited with the arrangements.

 

February 4/ Day 28 / 68 nm / New Mangalore to Netrani Island:Early in the morning, we felt the land breeze coming from west. In order to take advantage, we left at 03:30 and maintained 3 to 4 knots boat speed. Anand was chatting with his friend in Dehra Dun, when he mentioned, “There is an island known as Netrani (pigeon) in the region, which is famous for scuba”. I started searching the marine chart for some time than suddenly found it. It was only 50 nm from our location and it was feasible to reach there by evening. We had seen this island on 15th January while sailing to N. Mangalore, but never had thought that we would visit it during this return trip.Anand got the telephone number of the scuba diving company and fixed up an appointment for 10:00 next morning. We changed our bearing towards the island, but the wind was close haul and the speed too slow to reach the islands before dark. I decided to motor sail, which means you use combined power from the motor as well as the sail. We sighted the island at about 17:30. Near the island we encountered the longest fishing net I had ever seen. We motored for quite some time to eventually find a gap to get through the net and close to the island for anchoring. The scuba company had told us to anchor where there would be other boats, but we saw none at that time. The sea was slightly rough due to a NE wind; therefore we decided to anchor on the western side to get good wind protection. We approached very carefully at idle speed as we were afraid of hitting a rock. There were many rocks near the shore on which the waves were breaking violently. The chart showed 3.2 m depth in the area, but we still had about 20m depth which put me in a dilemma. Should I go closer to the island to find shallower water for anchoring and face the risk of hitting a rock? At this moment a fishing boat approached us, as they wanted to anchor for the night too. With their guidance, we anchored in 20 m depth. Our anchor rod is 60 m, which was short for the depth as we needed 80 m - four times the depth. A longer rod would be risky if the boat circled around the anchor at night going towards the island which was about 100 meters from us. The fishermen came aboard to see our boat. We were worried because they were under heavy influence of alcohol. I told Nidhi to stay inside her cabin. After sometime they left and Nidhi cooked a nice dinner.

 

February 5/ Day 29/ Netrani (Pigeon) Island:The sea was calm, the sky was clear and the air temperature was very pleasant. Anand had already started snorkeling and shouted to us to join him. We launched our dinghy so that we could snorkel near the island and get the help of the dinghy if we tired or wanted to return to the boat. It would be risky to take the yacht near the island as there were many rocks. I saw a large school of white small fish and Anand saw an eel. The scuba boat arrived at 11:00. The scuba master was from Nepal, a country which is land locked. He also had with him three scuba clients from Kazakhstan, also a land locked country-no wonder they all loved water.After the first dive to 12m we rested for an hour and dived for a second time. The water was crystal clear. We saw numerous large eels having black color with white spots. They will camouflage under rocks and corals with their mouth open to snap on a fish when she came close, just like a snake pounding on a rat in a burrow. We saw many fish which were different to those we saw in Lakshadweep. After learning scuba diving my interest in underwater marine life had been awakened. Hopefully by the next year I will turn from a bird watcher to a fish and marine life watcher.At 16:00 hour, the scuba instructor and his clients left and it was quiet again. We were now in debate of our next action. The island had no inhabitants and was covered with dense foliage. There was a temple, where some pilgrims had gone up during the day, but after they left in the evening it was peaceful. I could get mobile signals from the mainland which was 10 nm away. I checked the weather for the next few days and found that we would encounter strong winds gusting more than 25 knots. I had sailed the Golden Cat in 20 knots wind a year ago when she got flooded due to a design problem and was about to sink. Though the design lacuna was removed subsequently, I was little nervous.The place was so beautiful that Anand and I decided that we should stay back and let the bad weather pass away. We planned to stay here for one more day and climb the steep cliff on the next day. In the evening the wind picked up and we were feeling unconformable staying in this condition for the whole night. We thought that we should anchor in the south as the wind had veered from NE to northerly. We didn’t trust the chart, but had no other options. We motored to the south in the wind shadow and found calm conditions where we could stay overnight, but it was still too deep to anchor. We had to move closer in a lesser depth, but the danger was the rocks. We anchored in 30m water and decided to survey the area for rocks with our snorkels. We were satisfied that if we moved to 20 m from 30 m near the island, we would be safe if the boat swung towards the island at night. We had a wonderful evening in this heavenly place where the sound of breaking waves was heard all night though some times it was scary.

 

February 6/ Day 30/ 31 nm/Netrani Island to Basavarajdurg Fort Island:

 

In the morning we were preparing to trek the island. My worry was to leave the boat alone without any crew on board. Beside the danger of fisherman stealing, the more serious problem would be if the anchor lost ground and the boat swept away in deep sea. While I was debating with myself a boat arrived with many pilgrims. Within some time there were at least 15 boats, each carrying about 30 pilgrims. The empty island was suddenly crowded and full of human activity. The whole charm of going on the island was lost, thus we decided to start sailing towards Goa.I checked the weather on the internet again. There was a prediction of strong wind at 17:30, which would continue for the next couple of days because of disturbances in the north. Bipin told me on the phone that there had been un-seasonally heavy rainfall in Delhi as well as in western India with strong winds, which may have also affected south India. I started searching the marine charts for shelter, in case the wind got strong.

 

After sailing for about 6 hours, the wind strengthened as predicted to 23 knots (strong breeze) and the waves got bigger. It was advisable for a small vessel of our size to remain in harbor, but we were already in the open water. I could not sail in this condition at night; therefore we needed to find shelter where we could get good protection from wind and a good sleep. We were about 10 nm from the Basavarajdurg Island where I planned to take shelter. We wanted to sail north but the wind was from 30 degrees on starboard which was too close for sailing in the direction we wanted to go. I tried to motor with our auxiliary OBM of 9.9 hp, but it was not powerful enough to negotiate 1.5 m waves and 23 knots wind from the bow. We were motoring at a snail’s speed of 1.5-2 knots, which would take us another 5 hours to reach our destination which was 10 nm away. We decided to keep sailing and tacking initially with one reef. When the boat was moving at 7 knots, there was a lot of bridge deck banging and spraying of water on us. We shortened the sail further by adding a second reef. The boat slowed down to 3-4 knots and it was smooth sailing except for when some freak breaking waves of 3 meters height hit us. We solved the problem of rough ride, but created another problem. The boat was too slow and lacked power to tack therefore we decided to do control jibing instead. There are two methods of turning a sailing craft; one is tacking and the second is jibing. Tacking means you turn the boat into the wind, while jibing is just the opposite. You must be careful while jibing as the boom swings very fast and could smash your head, injuring you seriously or throwing you over board.At 18:00, we were only 2 nm from Basavarajdurg Fort Island, but we had to sail 4 nm due to tacking in a zigzags pattern. There were numerous fishing boats anchored there for the night to protect them from northerly wind. We anchored as soon as we were at safe distance from other fishing boats ahead of us. I would have liked to go closer to have better wind protection, but it was difficult to see things in the dark. I would not like to get into a collision at night as boats would swing in circles around their anchors due to changing currents and wind.Bhisma and Nidhi were sea sick and although they didn’t throw up, they were not feeling well. Both went to sleep without taking any food. I was also not feeling too good either, but I felt better as the sea was calm where we anchored. Today I was more tired than any other day, as we had to work our way upwind and I was anxious as I had never sailed on this boat in wind speed excess of 20 knots.