Cocos Keeling to Mauritius

Millie and David

Having enjoyed the paradise of Cocos and Keeling it was time to do another 2000+mile passage to Mauritius. We left the island around mid day, entering straight into high winds and a big swell making the first few nights very uncomfortable. The sea didn’t seem to subside the whole passage and nor did the wind. This was one of our toughest legs and it felt like it went on forever. On day 3, we ripped our 20 year old head sail in a gust of wind. For the next few days we sailed with just the main and the stay sail, awaiting for a break in the wind to take down and repair the jib. We also planned to use a jib that we had discovered under the front bunk and had check over in Australia. Our plan to take down the old jib and repair it, in the meantime test the jib from under the bunk. We named it the “Phoenix”, it lived up to its name, rising up from the front bunk and carrying us all the way to Mauritius. The “Phoenix” was a huge overlapping head sail that work perfectly in the lighter breeze as a result we managed to maintain 6.5knot average. Meanwhile on the lighter days, we worked together to repair the old jib. The rip was 3metres long and we could only repair it by hand due to our sewing machining breaking back in the south pacific. We began by sticking two pieces of Dacron across the tare on both sides of the sail, we then we hand stitched along the edge of the rectangle. One of us acted as the needle, punching the holes and pushing the needle down whilst the other was the bobbin, under the sail pushing the needle back through. We then reinforced the patch by stitching diagonally across. The whole repair to over 36hours but was worth the effort as we now could use our precious jib again. By the end, of what felt like a never ending time at sea, the wind died and due to the remoteness of Cocos and Keeling we were unable to refuel. therefore we had to carefully manage our fuel consumption as we needed enough fuel to safely moor Penny but we also needed to get into Mauritius as there was some big weather coming in. What felt like a really touch and go passage we made it safely into Mauritius with only 12litres of fuel left in our tanks. Phewww!!