Sailing in the Maldives Part two

I’d like to say it was all sunsets, sunrises, adventures, beautiful fish ect. But that morning we woke up to a missing dingy that could have realistically only been stolen while we slept on the anchorage near a remote uninhabited island. It’s a huge blow to our journey as it’s how we get to shore to shop, forage and (most importantly to me) fish! The moon is rising late in the night so it would have been a perfect time to come and steal it and there had been a few lobster fisherman inspecting our boat earlier in the day. A huge shame as they will not get anything from it, just cause us a huge amount of annoyance and it cost. It may be recovered once they realise there is no value in it but it’s extremely annoying..

Captain Terry is almost obsessive about squid and one morning he managed to get one, they sometimes hang around under the boat waiting for small fish and krill type planktonic creatures, hopefully he’ll get a few more to make a meal out of it! 🦑Calamari!

Since our dingy got stolen we have resorted to the paddle boards for getting ashore which as a first timer I found them very pleasant, super buoyant and with a couple of dry bags you can sort of keep your things dry. I then had a 6 ft shark bite the end of my fly line off while casting at a bone fish?! Then dragging the bone of out the back reel high, tip brushing the water, it caught a rock and disappeared-faster than I could turn around, the tide coming Over the wall was like a ragging river so I’ve left my half a sage rod (worth $800) out there somewhere!

Some serious graffing on this Maldivian atoll, actually seems to be a popular past time on all the inhabited islands here, though I have not been offered any ‘free weed’ as of yet and thus not been able to ‘free ur (my) mind’ these graffers need to have some substance behind their artwork
This guy - all in the expression, ‘what the f**ck are you, you weird red freak, get off my island with your ginger disease’

I have literally hundreds of photos of dolphins, some much, much better and more dramatic than this one from today but we had a real sea life show today with huge amounts of dolphins of all different species, two big groups of pilot whales and a bill fish bonanza, watching them smashing tuna close to the wall of an atoll. All hugely welcome sights, beautiful and breathtaking.

Beautiful creatures that often come and hang around the boat while we are on anchor. Watching their behaviour is fascinating, the way they shoal, the changing of colours. When in the lagoons these local shallow water species are normally jet black, which I find peculiar but as soon as a fish, ray or anything that could pose as a potential threat, they instantly turn a sandy white

From Paradises to Apocalypse.. 🔥🔥🔥 we arrived on an island very near Male, the capital of the Maldives, to haul the Cat out for maintenance. Sunken ships, kilometers of burning rubbish, sea awash with debris and chemical spills.. (all in these two photos) and actually this island, Male and many of these islands are built on rubbish and waste. They have a rather serious waste problem here but building islands out of them is one answer to the rising sea levels I guess...

Red man (me) getting stuck into some maintenance on the props as we are up on the hard stand in the boat yard. It’s a huge change from the remote atolls of the Maldives and indescribable picturesque colours of the ocean and atolls but I’m enjoying the overly busy boat yard, all the comings and goings and some comedic local goings on.

This enormous heap of burning rubbish is like a volcano 🌋 it’s almost beautiful in a horrible way.

Male the island capital of the Maldives. I have only previously heard and read bad things about the place but I found the complete opposite during my two day stop over. The narrow streets are mostly lined with trees and parked motorbikes and as you walk through them you have riders darting around you from all directions with out having to particularly worry about getting yourself run over. The people are absolutely lovely, incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and kind, there is absolutely no ‘tourist tax’ on anything, hugely surprising considering how tourism is the key driver of the economy here. Saying that, It wasn’t cheap though, almost teetering on UK prices for the goods and services I needed to visit the place for. But clean, friendly, honest and extremely pleasant ❤️🙌 Male!

A city at complete standstill. Friday being the most important day in the Islamic week many shops and services are closed. But I have never witnessed this at the 1pm prayer the whole of the usually chaotic Male fell silent except for the sounds of prayer from the mosque’s throughout the island city. More intriguing and spectacular was the streets were completely blocked with people on their prayer mats, hard to define from this picture (as out of respect, I didn’t want to get too close taking pictures) it at every intersection hundreds and hundreds of men were kneeling heads to the asphalt on the street at times, no traffic, no horns, absolutely no noise, nothing except the mosque and this huge show of passion for their religion. Moving and beautiful. As soon as the last Salam aleikum was spoken they all stood and the horns, traffic and hum drum of the city ignited instantaneously. Quite spectacular. 🕌❤️🙌

ON TO PART THREE!!!---