And between the two there’s the getting ready.
I’m not sure what causes the mental division between one
place and the next. The physical divisions can vary: While crossing the South
Pacific, one major line was the equator; another was the jump from one island
group to another; in some places the separation is geographically small, but
culturally wide. This time the divide is a 300 mile light-wind passage along
the same geographic ridge of ancient volcanoes we’ve been exploring for the
past two months. But the journey will take us from sparsely populated atolls to
unpopulated ones.
We’re going from help-is-available to self-sufficient.
We’re also leaving behind the 4 am calls to prayer.
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| during squally weather the fishing boats stopped by to give us weather updates and food |
Becoming more
self-reliant:
For the most part self-reliance is the goal of cruisers. In
practice, it’s impossible to plan for every contingency. In the Maldives we’ve
been incredibly fortunate to have access to shipping agents from Real Seahawks.
When we arrived in the Maldives, Assad met us at our boat (with ice cream and a
sim card for our cell phone) then proceeded to answer any question we had—from
where to buy x, y & z to what address should we use as a mail drop.
Here in Addu
City, Matthi has arranged
for our laundry, found us a welder and located carpenters and mechanics for
other boats. Mostly he works as a large ship agent. He tells us large ships
don’t need anywhere near the service yachts do, and while our fees are less
than a ship’s, he enjoys the challenge of helping us on our way.
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| being invited into people's yards for mangoes and coconuts was a wonderful way to meet locals |
Chagos doesn’t have an Assad or Matthi though—so there the
reliance turns to helping each other. We’re carrying water maker parts to one
boat that needs them from another boat that’s delayed for repairs. But aside
from acting as a courier we’ve also been the contributor and receiver of a
variety of different spare parts and expertise.
But truly, once we hit Chagos, we’ll need to be as
self-contained as we’ve ever been.
Stocking up for
self-sufficiency:
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| This squall reached 60 knots--it kept us at anchor and food delivery stopped through the Maldives |
It’s true that people eat everywhere. But as we moved away
from agricultural regions it’s been clear that not everyone eats as well as
everyone else. In the Maldives
the main dish is tuna—it comes fresh, canned, dried and smoked and is found on
the breakfast table, lunch table, dinner table and in snacks for tea. Along
with the tuna you’ll find rice, cabbage, red onions, carrots and the occasional
bean and tomato. All of these are tasty in moderation—but in the long run
they’re both redundant and don’t keep as well as you might hope. So that’s led
to a bit of a scavenger hunt for fresh food.
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| a healthy tuna industry feeds the population a LOT of tuna |
Addu city is the second most populous atoll in the Maldives—but
that really doesn’t say much. Not even the resorts buy their food in the Maldives—they
have it shipped in separately. The rest of the country gets far too many
staples from India.
The food travels by slow boat and by the time it arrives, and is distributed to
the outer atolls, the eggs are 50% bad and the cabbages are nearly sauerkraut.
To make the best of it, we’re dependent on kindness. In one
store the shop keeper called me over to see his newest produce—so I could
select the best options. On the great egg hunt (eggs didn’t make it to Addu
city in the bad weather—and the atoll ran out) one shop keeper took off by
scooter and searched shop-to-shop until he found a new shipment of eggs—then he
came to find us to take us to the eggs. In some villages we’ve been given fresh
mangos and on one the council president, Mohamed gave us a ‘clump’ of about 30
drinking coconuts.
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| our 'clump' after a week of use still looks awfully big |
Once we get the food we need to preserve it as best we can.
I’ve been pickling beans, making chutney, sun drying tomatoes and canning meat.
We’ll leave Chagos either when we start to get hungry or our permit runs out.
When to go
Much of the ‘when’ was determined by our 60-day Maldivian
cruising permit, which has run out. The rest is weather and readiness. The
weather looks okay—not perfect, but fine. And there is always, always more that
can be done and more food that can be bought—but we’ll leap off into the new
and unknown tomorrow. It’s sooner than we’d like, and before we’re really ready
but that’s how cruising is.
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