May 17, 2005--Weather Woes, Plus How the Food Is Holding Up
by Al & Beth Liggett

	Beth with her onboard garden! She's holding a bowl of mung bean sprouts, and the bowl in the right-hand corner contains radish sprouts. (Photo from 2002 visit to Chagos.)

The weather woes continue...Now we know that this is the changeable time of year for the monsoons. But it seems that this whole season has been changeable with no regular pattern from either monsoon. What with Tropical Cyclones clutching the areas nearby, and the ITCZ waltzing to and fro, it has been anybody's guess just what the weather is going to do. All the weather input - grib files, buoy weather, Richard's morning ham net sources - have been dead wrong. Murphy's been fiddling with the weather all right, maybe Thor and his lightning bolts too. Tsunami anyone? Or are we El Nino-ing again?

In Peros the anchorages depend on the weather. So we chased around a lot of anchorages seeking protection and comfort. The final insult: after a night of 40K squalls at I. de Coin, the winds turned more NW and we (and 3 others) battled rain and 25-30K winds to get north to security and comfort at the middle of I. Pierre. Not a nice day, but we were sitting it out just fine - until about 7pm when the whole thing went to the SSW, fortunately pretty light. Nevertheless, we were now in 20 feet of water, our bum hanging inward to the reef, the chop bouncing us around, and laying broadside to the swell again. Sigh...

I got up at 2am to check on things; at 3am Al said, "Are you sleeping?" NO. We got up, did what we could in the dark to get the boat ready to sail, had tea and read until daylight. There was no point in making another move; we had made 5 moves in the last 8 days for weather reasons. No snorkeling, no beach walks, no tide pool discoveries. There was no sense staying in Peros without the fun. So we upped the anchor at first light and sailed across the lagoon to Salomon Atoll. TULUM was right behind us. I feel sorry for all the First Timers in Chagos who went to Peros this year, (only 3 of us out of 17 had been there before) as they have not been able to fully enjoy what Peros really has to offer.

Grey with pods of rain around. Winds now less than 10K - isn't that always the way? Blows like stink when you want a quiet anchorage, then hardly wind enough when you want to sail. So slow sailing across the lagoon, but GREAT fishing! Caught a 7-1/2-pound job fish - our first one for this season, and it's a fish we really like. Then a shark - Boo Hissssss - we rarely get one trolling a lure. Al wanted his lure back, so pulled the shark up to the boat and as high as he could lift. He grabbed the lure and I clipped the wire leader with the cable cutters. The Supremo catch came next - a 27-pound wahoo! We pulled all the lines aboard at that point. TULUM got 2 wahoos - guess what Bob was doing for the next 4 hours!

OK. A fish story. Trolling along the inner reef at I. Fouquet. I got a hit and started to pull in the fish and Whammo! Too much for me to handle! We thought the fish had dived under a rock. The bad news is we lost our favorite Tom Mack lure - again. But like a cat, it must have 9 lives, because the good news is that we got it back! Here's a reconstruction of what we think happened from evidence around us. I caught a very nice snapper - my first hit. A shark took a bite out of the snapper - that was the whammo. The hook jerked loose from the lure, sending the lure into the rocks. When we pulled ourselves up to the rocks there was a shark circling nearby. There was also this thing floating in the water - which we later saw was a disabled snapper with huge chunk taken out of its behind. (We should have picked up the fish - it was edible and we would have known for sure.) We tied a buoy onto the fish line and later went back with snorkel gear and retrieved the Tom Mack lure. Whew!

You know, our flock of Yellow Guard Fish have been chasing us all around Peros lagoon. The weather didn't affect them! They were wonderful entertainment, and we felt loved. When we sailed across to Salomon Atoll and anchored, there they were, swarming around the back of the boat as if they hadn't just made a 6-hour, 30-mile swim at 5 knots! Tough little guys.

We moved anchorage the next morning for better holding. Sky was dark and water was too. We didn't notice the yellow fish. But third day here and we didn't have a single yellow fish with us. How sad. And I really don't want to think about what may have happened to them either.

We've been catching a fair number of fish - snapper, trevally, grouper. Our fish log shows that we have caught 162 lbs of fish so far. Course, 2 big wahoo and 2 barracuda make up a large percentage of that total. Al went bottom fishing early one evening with Bob and Gail; he caught a 6-pound snapper and a 6-pound grouper. THAT keeps you in fish for a while! So it's fish for lunch and fish for dinner, and dried fish for snacks in between. And standing in the galley day after day with yet another fish fillet in front of you and wondering how to cook it. After a four or five days of constant fish I break down and say, "That's it." And we have some chicken, or a pork chop, for a change.

Had a laugh reading a recipe that called for "2 slightly beaten eggs". Are they kidding? ALL my eggs come out of their shell "slightly beaten"! So a recipe which separates a yolk from the white is just not doable. I am careful to open them one by one into a separate cup before adding to the recipe, and I throw away about 10% of what I open. The eggs still taste OK.

Actually, I thought I was going to lose more than that because these eggs were "slightly beaten" after only about a week from Thailand. So I froze a dozen to see how that would work. They seem OK; it will just be a pain remembering to let them thaw in time to use in a recipe. I have about 5 dozen eggs left now out of original 13 dozen.

Fresh stuff is going, going, gone. The onions need weekly inspection for rot - from the inside out. The potatoes are not keeping up their end of the bargain - tossing a lot away. But we have lots of good garlic still. The jicama are withering; I just peel them and set the quarters in water in the frig and they kinda resuscitate themselves in a day or two. There are still
6 carrots from Thailand because I supplemented them with 2 kilos from Addu. I have one pomelo out of 10 left, and 4 green apples. My limes this time are a total success story - they have been in the frig the whole time and I haven't lost a single one. We have plenty of green tomatoes brought to us from Addu by a yachtie friend (with more carrots). She meant well, but these have been green tomatoes for 4 weeks now, and I doubt they will ripen any more. But they are lasting. Maybe they're plastic?

My garden is not great this year. All my seeds poked up through the dirt just fine and grew to be about 4 inches tall and then just stayed that way. The cilantro - well, I have never been able to grow cilantro. The little chive onions are doing OK at least. And we are coaxing radish sprouts to grow in their dirt cups. That's my fault - I didn't buy fresh radish seeds before leaving. Only about 20% of the seeds germinate and make usable radish sprouts. However, mung bean sprouting is no problem - I get a new crop every 4 days. So we have a salad of sorts to munch on with the parade of fish meals: chopped cabbage, various sprouts, jicama, heart of palm (from the hinterlands of these islands), chives, green tomatoes. The cabbage is almost gone, and frankly, that's OK. Fish everyday I can cope with, but it's going to be a good long while before I want to look at a chopped cabbage salad again.

About a month ago we got word that a "Cruise Ship" was to visit the atolls that week. People were thinking hundreds of passengers, swarms of divers/snorkelers, jet skis, that sort of thing. Nothing came of it. Then a few days before we evacuated Peros, here was this little ship with 12 passengers aboard. Friends of Chagos group someone has said. Anyway, they were only in Peros overnight. And there were no jet skis.

One of the reasons that everybody has been chasing anchorages in Peros with the grim weather was this thing with the impending visit of the Chagosian group of Islanders. Nobody wanted to move to Salomon Atoll and then just have to turn around and come back to Peros. Well, on Cinco de Mayo we got the word that the visit had been cancelled, probably postponed until October. Lotta politics driving this one, is my guess. The tequila flowed more freely at the beach party that night, you can be sure! And a whole flotilla of boats from Peros left the next morning for Salomon. Now that we've moved over too, there are probably only 4 boats left, and we know 2 of them will be coming over next week.

We are anchored at Boddam island, not our favorite place, but suitable for the weather. We are anchored with about 30 other boats. It looks like Au Chalong without the speed boats. It is not what we come to Chagos for. And from past experience, we know the fishing will not be as good.

Apparently some of the First Timers to arrive from Peros had negative reception on shore, or were basically given no welcome at all. Much grumbling. All the Peros boats we have talked to say they prefer Peros over Salomon and wouldn't be here except for the weather. But I guess it serves the purpose for those who want to sail 1800 miles to a "deserted" island to play volleyball at 4 o'clock (in smoke filled air, by people who think they can only bake their bread at that time) with a bunch of yachties every day though. Oh well. IF the SE monsoon ever does settle in, we will move over to I. Fouquet (yes, another one - those early explorers didn't have much imagination, did they). And then we will start to enjoy ourselves again.

See ya. Lots of love and hugs.
Al and Beth

P.S. TULUM says they have a huge swarm of yellow fish around their boat now.
Dare we hope?...

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