Cocos islands

Saturday 7th October dawned and we went ashore the short distance to the palm trees and white sand of Direction Island. A ferry was reputed to go from the big landing stage to Home Island and thence to West Island on Saturdays only. Eventually I tracked down another yacht that knew the timetable and determined that there was one at 10:00, but that it was not possible to get back from Home Island that day. So Mark sped off in the dinghy the 1.5 miles to Home Island, a hard ride against the gale blowing. Justin and I caught the ferry, which is a shiny new fast cat, airconditioned and incongruously showing "Spiderman" on its big screen to keep the passengers entertained.

Tin Tin anchored off Direction Island

However instead of speeding straight on to West Island, where I was anxious to get my clearance for Mauritius, the ferry stopped for a long time at Home Island and we had a two and a half hours to kill until it finally proceeded at 13:00. Home Island is predominantly a Malay settlement, where families were cruising around in shiny electric golf buggies in the heat. We found a couple of small shops and then a supermarket, but nothing in the way of fresh fruit and veg. Wandering around we found the Museum (closed), the Shire offices (with tempting golf buggy with keys in), and sheds full of plywood sailing skiffs, all to the same design and painted identically in white with a yellow band and immaculately varnished inside below a heavy layer of dust. I counted 47 of these in two sheds! A young man working out in a gym explained that these traditional sailing craft come out for regattas at festivals such as Ide, or for weddings.

At West Island the ferry was met by by a cheerful bearded gentleman driving a bus, which for A$0.50 took us the six miles to town. The single track tarmac road, bordered by wide well cut grass lawns, meanders scenically between thick forest walls. The settlement of neat bungalows and administrative buildings was very dead, but there was a stir of activity at the airport where the Virgin flight had finally landed a day late. However the only cafe was shut, so any thought of lunch had to be ignored.

We found the police station by the long grass air strip, which curiously is also a golf course. It was quite something to stroll out to the red flag on the first hole to watch the Virgin flight thunder past a few yards away without any fences or other hindrance.

We finally got our stamp from Cocos Island

A radio set into the wall of the police station invited me to call up the officer, and shortly afterwards he arrived to handle the paperwork. We got let off the harbour dues because he didn't have a method of issuing a receipt, which seemed fair given that no one had come out to Tin Tin to do the formalities and we had spent the whole day trying to get this done.

The community cultural centre had sofas and wifi and a shop full of colourful goodies for tourists who needed beach ware or souvenirs. A small museum section commemorated the Australian naval victory over the German warship "Emden" in 1914, which had been forced to beach on North Keeling.

Whilst Mark and Justin tackled the supermarket before it closed at 3pm, I spent a futile hour trying to find a postbox to post a letter to the Australian Tax office to reclaim tax on diesel that we bought in Darwin. In the process of walking up one long seafront road I spotted thick black smoke from wreckage out in the surf about a mile away. The town was deserted headed back to the police station concerned that some tragedy gas taken place with the outgoing Virgin flight. Once I found someone it turned out that this was the wreck of a derelict vessel which had drifted out of the wide Indian Ocean and smashed on the reef, catching fire in the process!

We caught the last ferry back across the lagoon and then piled into our own dinghy with our shopping for the choppy ride between islands.

We found a beach party starting with all eight yachts bringing food and drink to the two big tables under the shelter. The big brick barbecue was fired up and we had a most enjoyable evening meeting new friends and sharing food and conversation. There were three single handed sailors, Jackie, Wolfgang and Klaus, who planned to sail in company to Mauritius taking turns to keep a four hour watch. Then there was Matthieu and Anne-Laure from Saba II, who we had met in Ashmore Reef, travelling with their three children aged 10, 7 and 5 and two friends Stefan and Isabel. The friends have a ski shop in Pralognan in the Vanoise, and are ski instructors. It was a Proustian treat to have a taste from their bottle of Genepi which evoked strong memories of spending long hours trying to fax documents from the ski shop in Meribel, while young Kate struggled with her ski lessons in a blizzard. Ski instructors staggered in to thaw out and the Genepi circulated regularly. We also met crew from Tangled Up - Nicolas, Madeleine, James and Marcus- all new to sailing and helping the owner take the boat from Darwin to Durban.

The party was celebrating the 8th birthday of Morgan, the son of Warren and Trish on "Mustang Sally" and we were thrilled to all get a chunk of birthday cake! Later a fire was built on the beach and Matthieu brought out his Ukelele and sang wonderful French songs, and then worked through English popular songs so that we could all join in. Nicolas brought 

Boat name plate decorate the tree

out his guitar and added to the band, and Justin showed his talents playing guitar and singing Leonard Cohen songs..... Our beers had long gone, so our big bottle of Bundaberg rum came ashore and was steadily emptied. I have to say that I find Bundaberg is horrible, with strong overtones of aldehydes and esters that are the stuff of headaches, so I didn't touch it.....

We got back to Tin Tin at midnight and I struggled with email and then at about two a.m. managed to call Anne to find out more about Ioan in hospital.

Sunday dawned with less wind and we settled into the beach shelter to use the wifi. Mark and Justin explored while I tried to book marinas in Cape Town, and discover about customs formalities in Rodrigues, Mauritius and Reunion. Then I realised that I could make Internet calls using WhatsApp, and was able to speak to Ion and Kyle at their birthday breakfast, and to have a video call with Alice and see little Felix, and then to speak with brother William. Most satisfactory.

Our final act before leaving was to create a Tin Tin sign for which Mark found a fishing float which we decorated as a globe with our route marked. We then bid farewell to all and at 5 pm followed Tangled Up out to sea and set sail into the sunset for our twelve day voyage for the 1995 miles to Rodrigues hoping to arrive on 29-21st October.