Sailing With Senta: Tropical Dream

By Faith Van Rooyen

At the beginning of March 2001, a three thousand mile voyage under sail brought Faith and Pierre to the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
There at Perhos Banhos and Salamon atoll they enjoyed life in an uninhabited tropical paradise, visited only by fellow sailing enthusiasts. Five wonderfully exciting months later they continued eastwards to Langkawi Island off the west coast of the Malaysian Peninsula.
Colour photographs and charts help tell the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Faith Van Rooyen
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310600982

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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Sailing with Senta - Tropical Dream

By Faith Van Rooyen

Copyright 2013 Faith Van Rooyen

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Table of Contents

Other Books in this series

Acknowledgements

Chapter One Playtime in Paradise

Chapter Two Some Work to be Done

Chapter Three Chagos to Langkawi

Chapter Four Around Langkawi

Chapter Five Christmas in Thailand

Chapter Six Meeting Friends in Langkawi

Chapter Seven After Play comes Work

Chapter Eight Back to Langkawi

Chapter Nine Chagos Again

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.

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Chapter One Play Time in Paradise

Seven months and nearly three thousand miles under Senta’s keel had brought us from South Africa, via East Africa and Seychelles to the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

At the beginning of March 2001 we sailed through the pass into Perhos Banhos, the western most atoll in the group. A turn to starboard and a short leg into the wind took us to anchor on a sand patch between Diamante and Grande Mapou islands. There we saw 'Southern Voyager' a New Zealand boat we had last seen in Malaysia in 1998. After a brief chat with Ree and Noel we tidied up the boat, cooked a meal and then slept - and slept.

Perhos Banhos Atoll - Chagos Archipelago.

On our previous two stops at Chagos we had not visited Perhos Banhos and were pleased to be there now. We knew we could only stay a short while as the south-east trade winds would start to blow in a few week's time. The anchorages in this large atoll are uncomfortable and often dangerous in strong winds.

Seventeen happy days at Perhos Banhos saw us swimming, snorkelling, fishing, sailing the dinghy, doing a bit of boat cleaning and maintenance and making new friends with people from the other boats in the anchorage. On the night of Saturday 17 March a beach party was held to celebrate St Patrick's day. Crews from the six boats in the anchorage had an excellent time.

We became particularly fond of the crew of 'Rose of Sharon', sailed by a Zimbabwean family, Jonathon, Rebecca and their two children, Sophie and Sebastian seven and five years old. They had left their game lodge and safari park to the mercy of the ruling government and its land re-distribution program, bought 'Rosie' in Cape Town and sailed west-about, three quarters of the way around the world. They were now on their final stretch home. Sophie needed to start school soon,

Towards the end of March the expected south-east wind started to blow and the anchorage became uncomfortable. The wonderful thing about living on a boat is that if the location of your home changes from wonderful to horrible, you can always move. So we did. On the last day of March we sailed out of Perhos Banhos, en route for Salamon atoll twenty five miles away.

Our mobile home.

As we sailed through the pass we caught a one metre long job fish - a lovely light blue colour, but with lots of sharp teeth. The fish was taking a long time to die in the cockpit, so Pierre eventually cut its head off. I then filleted the rest. Pierre, tossing the remains overboard, picked up the head, which promptly bit him. Not pleasant, being bitten by the head of a dead fish. Anyhow it made a few excellent meals, lightly fried with garlic and onions.

A north-west wind of twenty knots treated us to a fantastic sail, reaching at seven knots to enter the pass at Salamon Atoll at 1130 in bright sunlight. Under reefed main and working jib we slowly sailed westwards up the atoll to Boddam Island, with the bommie obstacle course clearly visible. Claire, of 'Brumby' later told us that she had seen a boat sailing in, said to herself, 'Who on earth is that sailing in through the bommies?', checked through the binoculars and then said, 'Oh - Senta! I might have known'.

Salamon Atoll - Chagos Archipelago.

So there we were. In the paradise of Salamon atoll where we planned to spend the next four months with friends who would come and go, and doing just whatever we pleased to do every day. We prepared Senta for this extended stay. Sails were covered, sun awnings set up, sheets stowed below away from the sun's harmful rays, winches covered, cockpit dodgers removed to allow more breeze over the boat. Senta and her crew settled down to enjoy our tropical dream.

We counted nine boats in the anchorage at Boddam Island, some of whom we knew; Southern Voyager and Nom de Plume (New Zealand); Brumby (Canada); Mariposa (Germany and Richards Bay); Lady Guinevere(UK); Bubble Hull (Mayotte). We met the crews of the other boats the following evening on the beach at a pot luck party to celebrate John's(Nom de Plume) 60th birthday.

Boddam Island Salamon Atoll.

The next day an American boat, Leviathan, a Down Easter 32 crewed by Richard and Paula Porter, arrived from Addu atoll in the Maldives, some three hundred miles away. They reported a hard passage with winds of sixty knots. Their boat had taken in a lot of water. The cause of this massive leak was never really explained, but there was talk of chain plates working or a leaking stuffing box round the propeller shaft. Paula was extremely upset and vowed that she would never go to sea again, but would rather remain at Salamon for the rest of her life.

Tragically, when they left for Mayotte at the end of May, they encountered bad weather between the Farquhar Islands and the north-east tip of Madagascar and Leviathan disappeared. We could only assume that the cause of the previous intake of water had not been fixed, she became water logged in the rough seas and sank.

Richard had been in daily radio contact with the other boats on the same passage. Most of these yachts stopped at Farquhar island to let the bad weather blow over. Leviathan carried on and there was no further radio message from her, although an EPIRB signal was reported from the area.

After Leviathan had been missing for over a week and prompted by cruising boats, the French Navy from Mayotte sent a ship, and the American Navy an aircraft from Diego Garcia to search. But nothing was ever found. We were all upset, wishing too late that we had done something to ensure that Leviathan's leak was repaired before she set sail again.

The incident was a sober reminder to everyone that, happy and carefree as our existence seemed to be, we were actually living with constant danger against which we had always to be prepared.

Talking of danger and back in time to early April we began to think of making certain that Senta stayed securely anchored in the imminent change-over period. The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) would cross over