Chagos is quite literally in the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean. With Asia 2000 miles to the east, Africa 2000 miles to the west, and India 900 miles to the north it’s one of the most remote places a cruising sailor can dream of.
repairs
Sailing to Durban, South Africa – Problems In The Night – Day 3
10:00- Took advantage of no morning watch and slept in a bit. Woke to the sound of the motor droning on and on. The rhythm can sometimes be very comforting as it chugs away. Started doing a bit of morning reading.
“So, when are you guys headed to the Caribbean?”, Behan asked. My face tried to show that I’d never been asked that question before but in fact it was probably the 50th time that week.
After weeks of work and pools of sweat the last and final steps of rigging Delos are completed! We get the forestay up and go sailing to tune the rig. The crew gets an invite to a Mexican restaurant from our friend Jeff we met in the local cruiser bar.
March, 2015- Phucket, Thailand. We work like dogs to finish up the rigging project. We make awesome progress but run into some problems with our forestay and the Ronstan pins provided.
Rigging Our Sailboat (Part 2 of 3)- Sailing SV Delos Ep. 62.
The crew gets amongst it and dives head first into changing the rig on our Amel Super Maramu. We pull down the old wires in sections, then head off to the rigging shop to cut, measure, and press our own swages.
With the season for crossing the Indian Ocean slowly closing and after finding a broken strand in Delos’s rigging the crew head for Phuket to figure out what to do next!
New crew Frida and Max from Sweden join Delos in Langkawi, Malaysia! We immediately put them to work sanding, polishing, and griding and we haul Delos out of the water for a bottom paint job.
Karin and Brian head to the awesome city of Bangkok! Their mission is to get their Indian Visa’s sorted out. Along the way they visit temples, eat local foods, and explore the streets.
Brian and Karin take 3 months off cruising to visit family in Sweden and America and end up circumnavigating the entire globe by air in 3 months! They return to Kudat and have only 4 days to get Delos ship-shape before the new crew arrives.
We’d spent the last week at the Raja Ampat Dive lodge, tied up at their secure mooring and enjoying the beautiful scenery. We went on a expedition into the jungle to see the Red Bird of Paradise and did a few dives at the amazing Cape Kri.
After leaving Delos on the hard for over 10 months we came back to her and worked 12 hours a day for 20 days! Here is a brief video of a few things we did.
Getting off the dock is the first step and sometimes you just have to unhook that umbilical cord that delivers unlimited power and water and just do it. Just get off the dock and see what happens.
When we pulled Delos into the Bundaberg Port Marina last February there was a lot of uncertainty in my life. I honestly had no idea if this would be our last adventure together, or if by some lucky stroke of the stars I’d be allowed to continue on.
A modern cruising boat is much like a house. On Delos we have many of the same conveniences that make life a little more civilized including electricity, flushing toilets, running water, refrigeration, air conditioning, and a washerdryer.
After our relaxing Christmas Vacation in Paradise village we cast off the dock lines and headed back to the anchorage at La Cruz.