To The Chagos islands

We left Gan on April 3 about 10am for Salomon Island in the Chagos islands about 280 miles away. The BIOT British Indian Ocean Territory administer the islands. They were colonized in the past and then the people were moved of them in the 1970's. Now no one lives here and the only way to see the islands is by private yacht
Diego Garcia about 100 miles South which is now a military base and the reason the people were kicked of he islands by the british. It sends out a patrol boat occasionally to check permits. You need to apply to the Britsih for a permit and pay 50 pounds a week for the privelage to a maximum of one month stay.

We motored out of the pass at Addu and headed wsw course to get some westing in because of the current the East flowing current here. Motored all night and had one big squall go over us. Started sailing at daylight and continued sailing for most of the day. Then back to motoring. The current did not seem to be more than a knot against us and then it disapeared for the last 150 miles. May even have a half knot current with us last 100 miles.
The booby birds are back, had one on our mast head all night, stopping our windex that shows the wind direction from turning. Again too much motoring for this passage. The last 35 miles the wind came out of the west and we had the best sailing since Gan. We slowed boat abit so we would not arrive until about 10am at pass entrance as we wanted good light to see the coral heads at entrance as well as inside lagoon.

We arrived right on time and motored through pass no problem. We talked to Mr Curly on the VHF and they were anchored at the Fouquet anchorage, but the West wind was making it a bit unsafe and they decided to head over to the Boddam anchorage. So we followed them over.
We dropped anchor a half hour later off Boddam island after 4 nights at sea. A beautiful spot. After a few days here, (April 11) one of the yachts with email and satphone capability heard there was an 8.6 earthquake off Sumatra and could be a tsunami. Most of us then evacuated the lagoon for a few hours until they heard it was safe.

We spent a lesurily month here. Few chores to do, just relax and enjoy. No place to spend money. There was lots of sosializing with other boats, lots of walking on the islands. collecting and eating some coconuts. Watching all the coconut land craps which get quite large. Lots of swimming and snorkling and people did a lot of fishing. Read lots of books and when done we just trade books with other yachts. There was 5 yachts when we got here on April 7 and a max of 15 yachts before boats started to leave.


INFO
-For Routing it was suggested that we should get some westing in as soon as we leave Gan. Which we did, we went about 15 miles past the Longitude of Salomon, but I don't think we needed to go past the actual longitutde of Salomon. Since we were over we came in on the west side of Speakers bank.

The equatoral current disappeared for the last 150 miles and a boat behind us noticed the same thing.

-The pass entrance waypoint off our track is 1. 05 18.296S 72 14.522E

2. 05 18.539S 72 14.666E and we saw minimum 22 feet going thorough pass and minimal current.

We anchored in 48 ft at 05 21.37S 72 12.74 There are many boomies in this area so care is needed. There is several wells on the island which we used for laundry, some people say you can drink the water. We put a bit of bleach in it before putting in our tanks. We dont drink our tank water just us it for washing, and drink the watermaker water which goes in jugs.

The anchorage off Baddom is good for wind protecttion but the bottom is all coral. We had our chain snag under some coral thus short scoping us as a small squall blew through. We decided to take a mooring closer to shore after we examined it at low tide and put a new rope around the existing chain. The long chain was wrapped around a huge coral head. Had a bit of difficulty getting chain and anchor up to do our move.

We walked around Boddam island in just over two hours started an hour before low tide. There is several good trails on island which we walked most days.

Over the weeks we had lots of squalls some with winds from S or SW at up to 35 knots, sometimes very little wind and often 15 to 20 knots for short period during squall. Very little lighting and thunder. The first week we had light winds from every direction of compass. Then mostly W to SW to SE winds. We got one blow out of NW for a few hours that blew around 30 knots near end of our stay.

Only one yacht went over to Peros Banhos and only a few boats stayed a few days at the Fouquet anchorage, probably because there is 3 wrecked yachts over there showing how unsafe it is.