June 5, 2005
by Al & Beth Liggett

A few days ago we celebrated Sunflower's Birthday! She is a very healthy and beautiful-looking 29-year-old. Incredible how the time flies. We wish it was a prettier day for celebrations, but once again we are in the "grey skies with misty rain" part of our weekly weather cycle. Nevertheless, Al baked bread – he's getting better and better - and I baked a pumpkin pie. Al really prefers pie over cake, and I don't think Sunflower cares much one way or another.

Last night we noticed a big ship steaming along just outside the atoll. It was still there this morning. Three of the crew raced into the lagoon on a test run of their fast rescue inflatable boat. They stopped and gave us – are you ready for this? - fresh fruit – apples, oranges and even a pear! What splendid birthday presents for Sunflower!

The weather has been a MAJOR topic of conversation the past 2 weeks. Of course we want to know what our weather will be today in Chagos, but also for the surrounding waters. There are many good sources of weather, but it seems they are often out of sync with the reality of conditions reported by the yachts actually out there. Several boats have left Chagos by now. Some are headed west to the Seychelles, and some are headed east to Thailand/Malaysia. Everyone is interested in what weather those enroute are having, and what weather they can expect when they make their own departure. So we all spend a lot of time on the radio discussing the weather.

It's easy to sum up what the weather has been here at Salomon lately – unpredictable! Or if you said gray and rainy, that would get it too for the most part. It has not been easy to go play in the sun lately. A rundown of conditions from my daily notes of last week:

A few days later:

We have moved from I. Fouquet back to Boddam. We were having too much wind from the N to be comfortable. The last straw was a heavy rain squall with 20-25 K from the NW. This put our stern to the shore. We were sitting in an uncomfortable chop on top of a big swell to boot. Fortunately the sun became brighter so we could see the reef patches and we hiked up the skirts and fled to Boddam.

Adventures on the reef at low tide – of a different sort than those reported in last message!

Ile Fouquet. We went through "Shady Camp" on the trail to the other side of the island and out onto the reef flats about 8 in the morning. We noticed some people out on the edge of the reef to our north. We thought, "Those Yachties are out early," but commented that there seemed to be more people than would be expected from the few yachts at anchor. Next time we looked, they had disappeared.

We were looking for a "blue hole" – a tide pool reported by yachtie friends that was said to have lots of trapped fish in it at low tide. As we walked steadily northward, we kept thinking that there were 2 people sitting down on the reef. But no; they were probably rocks.

But the "rocks" kept changing slightly. As we drew nearer we saw that there were indeed 2 people sitting down on the reef and they were NOT YACHTIES. We knew that there were illegal fishing activities carried on in Chagos by the Sri Lankan fishermen, and had seen several of their camps on some of the islands. In fact, we had seen a camp on I. Fouquet just a few days back while taking a walk. It had been all broken down, probably by the Fisheries Patrol.

As we got closer to the "people rocks", it became apparent that there were also 2 men laying down on the reef in front of us! Can you imagine what it must be like to lay down on a coral reef? Al said, "Stay here. I'm going to go talk to them." He had his machete in his hand; I had just our little reef-poking spear. One of the men got up and went over to the 2 "people rocks", who stood up at that point.

Al's brief conversation with the man:

Are you fishing? Yes.
What are you catching? Mumble mumble. (There was a white rice bag
nearby.)
Where are you from? Sri Lanka.
Do you have a boat? No.
Do you have a camp? No.
About then 2 other men whom we hadn't even seen on the reef stood up. Al decided it was time to leave. No fear, I had already started towards shore myself. And then we saw that there were 2 other men approaching the Sri Lankan group from a part of the reef that we had already passed. We hadn't seen them at all! The eight men kind of grouped themselves together and talked, and then headed toward shore themselves at a different angle than we were heading. We purposefully went down the beach, back across the trail to the lagoon side, got in the dinghy and went back to Sunflower.

Then we saw Chris from Harmony rowing back to his boat from the shore. We went over to chat about this and learned that he had come across a camp, in use as evidenced by the carcass of a turtle. Chris didn't see anybody, but estimated that the camp would hold about 20 men. I figure if they can make themselves look like rocks, they can probably look like ferns and coco palms real easy too. We reported these sightings to the Pacific Marlin (this is the Fisheries Patrol vessel). They were on site later that afternoon. By then, the NW winds had chased us down to Boddam.

The SE winds have been blowing at a pretty good clip through here the past 3 days. Boats going to Seychelles are getting hammered by thunderstorms, strong winds and huge swells kicked up by gales to their south. The one boat on passage east to SE Asia has just had a hell of a trip: bad weather, 60 K squalls, big seas, knockdowns, mainsail problems, injuries from getting thrown across the cabin, lack of sleep, rudder problems, tons of rain. Seems the whole of the Indian Ocean is a weather mess at the moment. We're content to sit and wait.

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