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    Sailing With Senta: Across Coral Seas
    Sailing With Senta: Across Coral Seas
    Sailing With Senta: Across Coral Seas
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Sailing With Senta: Across Coral Seas

    By Faith Van Rooyen

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    About this ebook

    This second book in the Sailing With Senta Series describes life in the uninhabited Salamon Atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean and the subsequent 1700 mile voyage to Langkawi in Malaysia. After an extended period of land travel and cruising under sail in Malaysia, Singapore and Southern Thailand, Faith and her husband Pierre then sailed Senta westwards across the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka, Maldives and Chagos. There they had to decide whether to continue to the west and be home in South Africa to welcome in the year 2000, or to turn back to the Far East cruising grounds.

    Colour photographs and charts help tell the story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFaith Van Rooyen
    Release dateDec 27, 2013
    ISBN9781310136337
    Sailing With Senta: Across Coral Seas
    Author

    Faith Van Rooyen

    Born 1938. Educated at Yeoville Convent, Johannesburg High School for Girls and Witwatersrand University, all in South Africa. Worked for more rhan 35 years in the computer software industry, designing and writing and implementing systems for business on mainframes and personal computers. Retired in 1995 to fulfil a life-time dream of cruising with her husband Pierrre on their forty foot Armel sailing boat, Senta.

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      Book preview

      Sailing With Senta - Faith Van Rooyen

      Sailing with Senta - Across Coral Seas

      By Faith Van Rooyen

      Copyright 2013 Faith Van Rooyen

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Other books in this series

      Acknowledgements

      Chapter One Chagos to Langkawi

      Chapter Two Langkawi to Thailand

      Chapter Three Langkawi and Thailand

      Chapter Four Tour of Malaysia and Singapore

      Chapter Five Haul-out at Ratanachai

      Chapter Six North to the Burmese border

      Chapter Seven Sri Lanka here we come

      Chapter Eight Sri Lanka to Maldives

      Chapter Nine Maldives to Chagos

      Appendices

      Glossary

      Other Books in the Series

      Sailing With Senta - Eastward Ho!

      Sailing With Senta - Across Coral Seas

      Sailing With Senta - Africa Calls

      Sailing With Senta - Tropical Dream

      Sailing With Senta - Borneo Here We Come

      Sailing With Senta - Playtime in the Philippines

      Sailing With Senta - Small Boat Voyaging

      Acknowledgements

      Many thanks to

      Judith Ryder, long time friend in Wakkerstroom, South Africa, who has spent a decade managing our affairs while we sailed among Indian Ocean islands.

      All the new friends we made along the way who helped us find out how wonderful the cruising life style can be.

      For Pierre, Brett and Ingrid.

      -------------------- ooo --------------------

      Chapter One Chagos to Langkawi

      By mid 1997 Pierre and I, in our sailing boat Senta, had completed a shake down cruise to Madagascar, East Africa and the Mocambique channel.

      We had returned to South Africa for a few months to make minor alterations and repairs and to re-provision.

      We then sailed to Salamon Atoll in the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean on our second cruise.

      Pierre relaxing at Takamaka island, Salamon Atoll, Chagos

      After almost two months in this remote, uninhabited tropical paradise we were ready to move on further eastwards to Langkawi Island Malaysia, at the north end of the Malacca Straits. This was to be our longest ocean crossing so far, eighteen hundred nautical miles as the crow flies. But possibly a lot longer as a sailboat sails, having to follow the vagaries of the wind.

      Senta left Salamon Atoll on Monday 1st September and made reasonably good progress in the moderate south easterly wind. We had been advised by cruising folk familiar with the route to avoid crossing the equator until we had reached 80 degrees east so as to stay in the southeast trade winds as long as possible and then cross the doldrums belt surrounding the equator where it was narrowest.

      After four days Senta had averaged 110 miles per day, but the wind was becoming light and fitful. Light easterly breezes during the day forced us northwards and then disappeared in the early evening. We dropped all sails and sat rolling around until a light south westerly breeze came through a few hours later.

      Senta ran goose-winged with the genoa poled out through the night until the calm returned in the pre-dawn light. We crossed the 80deg.East meridian, with the Equator 29 miles to the north thus achieving what we had been advised to do.

      Poor to no wind most of that night changed to a fresh northeaster in the early morning. The 06h00 sight showed we had crossed another meridian, 81degrees. with the equator still eleven miles to the north, though it is possible that we may have crossed and re-crossed it during the night, with our doldrums dodging manoeuvres.

      Pierre had been troubled by a tooth ulcer for a few days and this started to affect his ear, which became agonizingly painful. We started treatment with a course of anti-biotic and eardrops.

      The morning was spent hunting cat paws, and in the middle of the day we drifted across the equator. Our first formal ‘Crossing of the Line’. The night was spent lying a-hull with all sails down to stop them shaking themselves to pieces.

      A week out of Chagos the wind continued light to almost nothing, but what there was came from the east, forcing us northwards towards the Bay of Bengal and away from our desired course to Sumatra. The nights were interrupted by rain squalls, during which we had to furl the genoa for a few minutes while the wind increased to 25 knots, then followed by calms which had us flopping around in the waves left over from the squalls. Typical doldrums weather.

      By Friday 12 September we were within 200 miles of Sri Lanka. We heard on the radio that a massive high pressure system had moved up the Malacca Straits and into the top of the Bay of Bengal, effectively nullifying all signs of the south westerly winds that should have been blowing.

      An exhausted swallow arrived on board and spent the night sleeping on the curtain rail above the galley counter.

      Senta’s galley - the swallow’s refuge

      At dawn the next day he left in the direction of Sri Lanka after a couple of test flights away from and back to Senta. Before each flight he perched on my head as if to say goodbye and thank you. I hope he made it to dry land.

      That night a light south west wind arrived and we could start on our way again. During the early hours of Saturday morning a green flare emerged from the water about a half a mile away to starboard. Our navigation manuals told us that this is the signal from a submarine that has just fired a test torpedo and might want to surface. We didn't see the sub, but the night was dark and it was unlikely that

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