Sailing in the Maldives Part Three

'Syria is calling’ there is quite a bit of this promotional graffiti dotted around Male, it’s dominantly Sharia here. Makes you wonder how many have left the islands and joined the war..

Back in the water finally! Thanks to all the friendly and helpful boat yard workers at Gulf Craft especially Prakash, (pictured there) the driver of all machinery, from Chennai. This boat lift is a seriously cool bit of equipment, able to lift 150 tons, watching it in action is a spectacle. 💪🏼🏗

Goodbye burning rubbish heap dead ship island. Can’t say we are going to miss your incessant steaming acrid burning smells or overly industrial atmosphere but it was interesting all the same.

The China Maldives friendship bridge ☺️ paid for by China obviously. Connecting Male city to the airport. A hugely beneficial friendship all around I imagine..🤔 the US’s biggest (and possibly only) Indian Ocean naval base is in southern Chagos (British Indian Ocean Territory) 200 miles south of the Maldives..

My cousin Ivor joined us on the boat yesterday 🙌 and later that night on a live bait, floated way out the back of the boat with a balloon, hooked a large fish that was fought for around ten minutes with some incredibly strong runs until it came up alongside the boat only just out of sight, then proceeded up the under the anchor chain, snapping the rod from the strain and angle then eventually broke the 120lb mono leader near the hook. We shall never know what it was and needless to say Ivor had a restless nights sleep... but you never forget ‘the one that got away’

irst premature tasters of ‘Vamanos XXXX’ being where we are in the world it’s pretty much impossible to get alcohol outside of resorts so we have taken to brewing our own! Ivor brought out some ‘turbo yeast’ him and captain T added sugar to juice and sugar and in 12 hours the main ‘cauldron’ brew should have completed fermentation but for safety sake, we absolutely needed to sample some slightly prematurely... 🥂🍾

Zac (Chow Chow) from Oz has joined the crew, flew from Borneo to stay with us until at least Madagascar. Here Zac with his biggest catch of all time, I know it’ll get broken when we are heading to Chagos but so nice to see a beautiful fish on board that’ll provide meals for days!
Boat to boat local deals 🤗 Ivor dealing with the lobster negotiating. Beautiful and cheap!

Part Three next....