INDIA  TO  OMAN

Now here is another big one, across 1680 miles of the Indian Ocean from Cochin to Port Salalah.

You will probably need to motor out from India as the winds close inshore are very unreliable. As you clear the coast you will meet fresh, uncomfortable headwinds. Do not try to sail the rhumb line to Port Salalah yet, as you will be very close on the wind causing yourself discomfort and seasickness. Go almost straight west out through the ten degree channel just south of the Lakshadweep Islands. Ten degree channel is recommended because it avoids most shipping. Or you can pass through the Lakshadweep Islands at latitude 10 degrees 14 minutes north of Cheriyakara Islet.

 

From here you may be experiencing slow and uncomfortable progress hard into the wind.  Do not worry about being south of your course line.  Just push on. As the days go by the wind will turn to the northeast. Soon you will be on course. After that you will free your sheets and then later the wind will be on the beam. The seasickness will be forgotten and you will enjoy comfortable sailing in sunny weather on a beam reach. These trade winds are fresh and a lot of this passage should be done with one or two reefs in the main, the staysail up on the cutter rigs and 50% of the big Genoa rolled away.

The wind often seems to freshen in the late afternoon so I found it pays to put the second reef in for each night before dark.

There are fishing boats and nets out here that will cause you problems. Fishermen from Sri Lanka are here in international waters and their nets are miles long and unlit.  I hit three and became entangled twice on my last passage across here. It is a hell of a job to cut your way out in an ocean swell at night. In fact, now I think that the most dangerous thing I did on my whole world voyage was to get in the water at night with my knife and cut my way through those heaving nets by hand.

WE WERE TRAPPED IN THE NETS OF THIS FISHING BOAT.

I eventually worked out that the nets are up to three miles long and that the fishermen hang off the leeward end of them.  They do have VHF radios but they usually will not answer calls and if they do the language problem makes communication almost impossible.  So when you see a boat or a boat light, the nets will be strung out to the northeast. Simply turn left and pass to the south. And good luck!

200 miles out from Oman the wind usually fails. There is little choice but to motor in otherwise this last 200 miles can take an extra week.

AVERAGE  CONDITIONS  EXPECTED

IN THE INDIAN OCEAN IN FEBRUARY

One of my crewmen wrote the following notes on sea-life during our Indian Ocean passage from India to Oman.

Nights on the boat are an experience entirely different than days. They are more personal because you are usually alone on deck with just the sea, the sky, and your mind. Some nights the moon is so bright you can almost read. Some nights the moon has already set and it is pitch black. I think that out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 650 miles from land in every direction, that I could see all the stars. All of them! Nearly every night, there is bioluminescence in the water. Millions of little creatures that glow in the dark when the water around them is disturbed. The glow is brighter some nights than others, and is a greenish yellow colour like teeth in a black-light. As the boat moves through the water at night, the bow shoots out little swirls of glowing dots that in a peter pan sort of way often makes the boat look like it is trailing fairy dust. The rudder at the back of the boat always has a trail of glowing bioluminescence, sometimes shorter, sometimes 60 feet behind the boat. On choppy nights, the waves that would have white caps during the day where the waves break a little bit on top, have clearly visible glowing caps all around the boat.

Despite all of the bad things that I have to say about dolphins and their fish stealing antics, they were responsible for one of the most exceptional experiences I have ever had. We heard the sounds of dolphins just after dark one night and went up the front of the boat to see. What we saw were ghostly glowing streaks rocketing through the dark water and playing around the boats front. They were like glow in the dark comets, or spectres in the night. First there were 3, but soon there were about 10 to 12 racing around each other. As they came closer to the surface, they were brighter and you could clearly distinguish the glowing outline of the dolphins in front of their trail of light. When they jumped to get air, the dolphin momentarily disappeared into the dark, were a momentary flash of shiny skin in the starlight, and reappeared a half second later when they landed with a glowing splash. I think that we watched this light show for about 20 minutes before they fired themselves out and away from the boat.

The deep-sea ocean is a vast desert. We carry 700 liters of water on this sailboat, and enough flour and rice for us to survive for two months at sea because there are no rest stops along the way. That said, like any desert, there is life out there if you know where to look and happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Although the possibility of boredom is great if you happen to travel very slowly through the middle of the ocean for 14 days, it was never very difficult. Time adjusts. Everyone slows down to a relaxed pace. Time is marked by meals and when your next watch starts. Because you spend so much time surrounded by endless miles of sea, it takes much less to get you excited.

Every day at least one thing happens that makes the day special.  We caught a few fish one day (mackerel, tuna, and dorados) and had enough for two days of fresh fish for dinner. We saw a dinner tray sized sea-turtle beside the boat on a day when there was nearly no wind, so we pulled our sails and Alan jumped in to swim next to it (until it decided it had had enough and took off into the deep, surprisingly quickly). While we were stopped, we all took a swim in the 4000 meter deep water. There were other days when there was no wind, the sea was as calm as a lake, and we also stopped to swim. We saw dolphins, dolphins, and more stinking dirty rotten dolphins (* more on the DES below).

We saw a sail-fish glide by the boat and look at our lure, much to our delight and horror (it would have been quite a sight to hook him, just to see him leap into the air in a flurry of twisting and thrashing, once, because he would definitely have snapped the line and carried the lure away in its mouth). We saw flying fish nearly every day that we were out of sight of land and had to throw the unfortunate few stiff ones off of the deck in the morning (I think the record was 8 in one morning). On the day that we arrived within sight of Oman, we also passed through a group of 30 foot sperm whales, and spent a half an hour steering the boat as close as we could to them before they dove.

We had a few days with plenty of wind to spare and rough seas that made standing, cooking, playing with Lisa, and using the head quite a challenge. On the calm days slow days, Alan has answered all of our questions about sailing, the boat design and maintenance, diesel engines, his few electronic devices on board, and celestial navigation.  I've learned to use a sextant, have taken a few sights on the sun, and have learned how to look everything up in the almanac to calculate our position the old fashioned way.

PORT SALALAH ENTRY

PORT SALALAH ANCHORAGE

AVERAGE WIND SPEED/ DIRECTION

AVERAGE CURRENT SPEED/DIRECTION

AVERAGE WAVE HEIGHT IN METRES (FEET)

AVERAGE AIR TEMPERATURE Degrees C (F)

AVERAGE SEA TEMPERATURE Degrees C (F)

AVERAGE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE

AVERAGE PERCENT CHANCE OF GALES

AVERAGE PERCENT CHANCE OF CALMS

AVERAGE WIND SPEEDS LESS THAN 10 KNOTS

AVERAGE NUMBER OF HOURS TO RUN MOTOR

ANGLE OF BOAT TO WIND

AVERAGE BOAT SPEED

AVERAGE DAYS FOR PASSAGE

13 Knots @ 45  Degrees

0.5 Knot @  240 Deg

1.00  (3.2)

26 (75)

26 (74)

1013 Millibars

1 %

10%

LESS THAN 10 KNOTS 3-5 DAYS

1-3 Days

150 Degrees from Starboard bow

5.0 knots

12 Days