There are over 150 named islands in the Seychelles and well over 1000 kilometers from one end of the island chain to the other. Amongst the 44 “inner” islands including Mahé, Praslin and La Digue, there are dozens – maybe hundreds – of rocky outcroppings and other hazards, almost none of which are marked by navigational aids of any kind. It would take the GDP of a mid-sized national economy to deploy and maintain that kind of infrastructure.

The charter boat companies don’t allow boating at night, which struck me as overly conservative prior to the trip, but now having gone by a few reefs and rocks lying miles from shore that are only visible from the white water of swells passing over them, the prohibition seems more than prudent. Sailing amongst these islands in the dark without a high likelihood of tragedy would require navigational skills and local knowledge that very few visitors would possess.

As soon as the sun had risen enough to clear the low ridge behind the rocks to the north, a small snorkeling expedition set off from the stern of Takamaka. I was part of it, but a leak in my mask brought back memories of an unpleasant snorkeling incident I’d experienced in Fernando de Noronha, and I turned back to the boat. As I rinsed off with the little fresh water hose hidden in the sugar scoop, three sea turtles slowly swam by, coming up for air several times.

Irina, Alisa and Mark plotting our course for the day

When the snorklers returned to the boat, we weighed anchor and motored around Pointe Chevalier into the narrow straight between Praslin and Curieuse Islands. In less than 15 minutes we were at Anse St. José on Curieuse Island where two other boats were anchored. We joined them, and a few minutes later two young ladies approached in a narrow fiberglass motorboat. The entirety of the island had been designated a national park, and they were there gather entry fees, which we paid using a credit card chip on a wireless handheld device. They gave us some information about features of the island, one of which was that if we motored around to Baie Laraie, it would save us a two hour-long hike out and back from Anse St. José to the more interesting parts of the island. I seemed to be the only one up for a hike in the wilting humidity, so we motored to Baie Laraie and dropped anchor in a frisky breeze from the southeast. After a bumpy ride in the dinghy we were ashore.

Baby Aldabra tortoises

After a spot of breakfast, we set about bringing up the anchors that had kept us off the rocks through the night. The bow anchor came up easily enough, but the Danforth set from the stern proved more stubborn. We ended up walking the bitter end from the stern up to a cleat on the bow, then driving the boat over the anchor to dislodge it. There was no good way to run the rode to a winch, which meant hand-over-hand and a t-shirt soaked in sweat to bring it up.

Heading East Northeast, it was only a few minutes before we were cutting across a South Southeast wind driving a 4-6’ swell a few degrees forward of the beam. It wasn’t an optimum point of sail for a heavy catamaran like Takamaka, and it certainly wasn’t comfortable, so the skipper said we’d motor to Praslin Island to get there as quickly as possible. The gear below decks wasn’t stowed adequately for the conditions, and a few small appliances ended up being tossed around the main salon before we managed to recover from our lubberlike lack of orderliness.

It was a beautiful, clear day. The boat powered through the dark blue of wind-blown deep water, with whitecaps popping up here and there. For almost four hours the crew dozed or stared out at the horizon as Praslin Island became less hazy and some of its details more distinct. The water smoothed to nearly glass when we made it under the protection of Millers Point, and we found an anchorage spot amongst a few other catamarans in Baie Chevalier, about 30 yards from a rocky shore to the north and 50 or 60 yards from a white sand beach to the east.

Other than a few private cabanas and a tiny bar, there wasn’t much of interest on shore in this area of the island, so we swam from the boat and had some lunch. Late in the afternoon, Alisa and Mark swam to shore with their dry bags to have a look around. Since we now had cell phone coverage again, they would report back if they found anything that the rest of the crew might be interested in.

At around 4 p.m. a message appeared from Alisa saying that they’d found a bar that served food until 6 p.m., but that we had to be seated by 5 o’clock if we wanted to eat there. Colleen was not feeling well from getting more sun than she’d realized during the crossing from Silhouette, so she said she would stay aboard Takamaka. The rest of us still on the boat got ready to re-enter civilization, then got into the dinghy and headed to shore.

While there was no perceptible swell to speak of out at the boat, the surf on shore was heavier than we expected. We all successfully got out of the dinghy, but as we were pulling it clear of the water, a wave came and filled the dinghy with water, making it too heavy to drag it any further up the beach. It took a few minutes of bailing and draining to get the water out before we were able to move it again to a less exposed spot.

When we found Mark and Alisa, we learned that there had been a breakdown in communication. The bar offered nothing more than a kids menu in terms of food, and even that wasn’t available after 5 p.m. No one seemed in the mood to stay at the place after the let down, so we all walked back in the direction from which we’d come. Near where the dinghy was parked sat a tiny shack with a tiny drink menu. Cocktails didn’t seem to hold much appeal, but fresh coconut water still in the shell was on the menu, so some of us opted to order that rather than return to the boat with nothing to show for our efforts.

We returned to the dinghy once the coconut water was gone and got a good soaking getting it through the surf into calmer water where the outboard could be safely started. Feeling tired, hungry and damp when we got back to Takamaka, an emergency meal of pasta with pre-made pasta sauce and sausage, onions and bell peppers was quickly thrown together and served. Spirits were restored by the end of the impromptu meal, but by then it was nearly dark, and the day had taken more out of us than we might have realized. With a much more secure anchorage and no need for watches through the night, the prospect of a good night’s sleep made everyone turn in early.

We motored north through Cerf Passage until we cleared the wind shadow of Sainte Anne Island, then turned northwest in the general direction of Silhouette Island and put up sails in a light breeze. The wind speed and direction varied somewhat, so we weren’t traveling in a straight line, but it felt good to be underway, and even better to have the motor off. The conditions were perfect for getting a little familiarity with the boat.

As we neared the island, we dropped sail and fired up the iron gennies. A squall that looked harmless enough from a distance passed over our general vicinity and completely obscured the island behind a curtain of heavy rain. There were a few nervous moments where we slowed the boat down and switched to digital navigation until the rain had passed and we could see the island again.

Anse Mondean was a tiny nick in the northern shoreline of the island just deep enough to offer modest protection from passing swells, and on this particular day it was on the leeward side of the island. We tried multiple times to set the anchor in 4-5 meters of water, but the plow anchor kept dragging on the sandy bottom. We finally got it set well enough to keep the boat from moving in the wind, but not enough to withstand putting the engines in reverse (the ideal way to set an anchor), so it was decided that a Danforth anchor would be set from the stern to keep the boat from swinging too much.

The Danforth anchor was in a forward locker. It sat atop a big pile of heavy rode, but when we removed everything from the locker, we discovered that the rode wasn’t attached to the anchor’s chain. The rode had eyes on each end that prevented us from using a bowline knot to attach it. A shackle would have been the ideal solution but we couldn’t find a spare one on board, so we had to scavenge one from the lines used to hoist the dinghy out of the water.

Once the rode had been attached to the anchor, everything was loaded into the dinghy, which Irina and Robbi then motored a few dozen yards from the stern of Takamaka and dropped the second anchor. They came back aboard and we all had dinner together. Just before nightfall, a local fishing boat showed up and dropped anchor about 100 yards further out from our location.

The boat still seemed to be moving around a lot, though not necessarily dragging anchor. For the sake of everyone sleeping better, we agreed on a watch schedule through the night where each of us would be up on deck for 90 minutes to keep an eye on things. My time slot was from 3:30 a.m. to 5, and Colleen would follow, taking us to sunrise. I got up when the alarm on my phone went of at 3:20 a.m. and relieved Alisa. The fishing boat appeared much closer than when I’d gone to bed the night before. The breeze seemed to be constantly shifting, making the boat dance and swing between its two anchor lines. There were a few times where I was on the brink of rousing the skipper thinking that anchor was dragging, but then the boat’s drift toward the rocks would halt and it would slowly return to a more comfortable location. When the moon set at about 4:45 a.m., it became even harder to tell the distance between Takamaka and the shore and the fishing boat. I woke Colleen up a little past 5 and we sat together until the dawn light crept in from the east at about 5:20 and it was easier to judge the distances between us and the various hazards.

A conversation that we’d had with one of Rodney’s friends when we’d first landed on Beau Vallon beach indicated that there was a population on Silhouette Island, and we saw a ferry going to and from the island. But if there was a population, there was no trace of it visible from Anse Mondean. Other than two concrete columns set atop one of the large pieces of granite that served as the only indication of a human presence on the island, it was all dense jungle growing in and around large faces of granite.

Moon setting over Silhouette Island at 3:30 a.m. - Photo courtesy of Alisa

We had an 8 a.m. appointment with James to take us and all of our gear to Eden Island to board the boat. We sat on the patio in front of the house and watched an impressively large local species of bumble bee wrestle nearby blossoms until James arrived at 8:15. As we wound our way down the coast we had a nice conversation, talking of weather, sports and the 2020 Seychellois election which had brought a new party to power for the first time in 43 years.

Irina (skipper), Mark (first mate) and Joe (sea chanty instructor) were already at our pre-arranged meeting spot, and we added our luggage to the tidy pile awaiting pickup by one of the several electric flatbed carts available for hauling people and provisions up and down the long floating docks. My sister and I ordered sweet and savory crepes at a nearby shop while we awaited the arrival of the last two crew members, Alisa (LPN) and Robbi (German engineer). When the crew and all their belongings were finally assembled, I rode in the front of the cart with Irina and the driver, with only room for half of me on the bench seat.

We dismounted next to the slip farthest from shore and formed a bucket brigade to quickly get all of our belongings aboard Takamaka, a Leopard 50’ catamaran. Cabins were assigned, gear was stowed, then Alisa and I walked back to the resort’s taxi stand to go into town to purchase last-minute provisions while the rest of the crew received an orientation from The Moorings’ staff and performed checks on systems and equipment.

A woman named Beryl, who seemed a little gruff when she told us she would be our shopping guide, took us first to an open-air produce market, where she pointed us toward stalls she thought had the good stuff, and away from the ones she thought were a rip-off. She said fruit was better here, but everything else we should get at the grocery store. We bought two large bunches of fingerling bananas, eight kilos of mangoes, guavas, papayas, three pineapples, lemons, limes, “local oranges” (green peel with pale yellow-orange flesh), grapefruits and four avocados the size of softballs.

Across the street was a specialty butcher shop that received the Beryl Seal of Approval, so I dodged oncoming traffic and dashed into the small, mercifully air-conditioned shop to purchase pork sausage, chicken thighs, chicken breasts, charcuterie meats, deli meats and two large wedges of basket cheese, one with pepper flakes, the other with caraway seeds. Bacon was eye-wateringly expensive, so I struck it from the shopping list and checked out, then ran through a gap in traffic back to Beryl’s taxi.

On we went to a large grocery store. Alisa and I split the remaining portions of the shopping list; I got vegetables and beverages, she got dairy, snacks and sundries. Things were going well until I learned that I had to go to a special counter to have each of the different vegetables I’d selected (red onions, yellow onions, potatoes, yams, tomatoes, one massive pale green cucumber, carrots, green beans, red and yellow bell peppers, romaine lettuce, garlic and cilantro) individually weighed and labeled. The line was 12 people deep at said special counter, so I reminded myself that I was on equatorial island time, and patience was restored. With all of my veggies properly documented, I loaded a case of Seychelles Breweries’ Seybrew Premium Lager, a case of Eku Bavarian Lager, a six pack each of Sprite and Coke, four cans of Slow Turtle Cider, and a bottle of white wine for “cooking” onto my shopping cart.

I met Alisa at the checkout lanes near the front of the store and chose the cashier with the shortest line. I didn’t understand her signals to pick a different lane and learned the hard way that I’d chosen the slowest cashier of the bunch. After an eternity of watching items slowly pass over the barcode scanner and the resolution of two discrepancies in my vegetable paperwork, we finally exited the store and met Beryl in the parking lot, who kindly helped us load everything into the back of her micro-van.

We made one last stop at a little convenience store in a vain effort to find popsicles and ice cream before returning to Eden Island. Everything we’d purchased was transferred onto a flatbed electric cart, then driven what seemed like the six miles between the shore and the boat. Alisa had forgotten her cash on the boat with which she intended to pay Beryl, so she grabbed her wallet and walked back to shore to pay our helpful and patient taxi driver. Once again a bucket brigade was formed to get all the provisions on board. Most of the storage space was in the floor of the main salon, which made it awkward to put things away with so many people standing on the hatches that covered where the supplies needed to go.

I was still arranging food items in the three refrigerators and one freezer on board when the boat began to move away from the dock. Some part of my subconscious did the math on how long it took to walk to shore and return to the boat and realized that it was highly unlikely that Alisa had made it back onboard after paying Beryl. Colleen knocked on her cabin door, and sure enough, there was no response, so it was relayed to the helm that one of our crewmembers had been marooned. Full astern all engines back to the dock, where Alisa was able to step aboard via one of the sugar scoops, then half ahead all engines around the southeast end of Eden Island through a narrow channel in the reef leading out to Cerf Passage, bound for Silhouette Island.

After the first decent night’s sleep in 72 hours, we felt ready to tackle a visit to Victoria. Once again my sense of scale was off, and what looked like a “short bus trip” on the map was in actuality a half hour ride into town. We beeped the bus pass that Pina had loaned us two times and took our seats amongst the commuters. The diesel engine roared going up the hills and the air brakes weezed going down. We disembarked at the main terminal and tried to find our way out through a maze of small alleys and busy narrow streets.

Not really sure which direction to go, we stopped in a little shop and bought some water in hopes of staying hydrated. A woman working a traffic security gate nearby wished us a good morning, and we asked her if there were any a nearby bakeries. She pointed us in the direction of a bustling commercial district that was full of small shops on narrow alleys.

We shopped and wandered for a few hours, eventually making it out of the warren of little shops and open-air market onto the main commercial street with newish looking bank and government buildings, as well as a very large, very new library building. It was getting hot and we were beginning to wilt, but Colleen was determined to go see the botanical gardens, so we forged on, walking in shade wherever we could find it. For a modest sum we were able to enter the gardens, which were shady and a few degrees cooler than the street. The highlight of the visit was being waved into the enclosure of giant tortoises by one of the employees, who showed us how to pet and feed the massive, primordial creatures. If you’ve ever left a ball of dough uncovered for too long and the outside dries out while the inside remains soft, that is similar to the rough, loose skin of a tortoise neck.

At 2 p.m. we met the rest of the crew for the first time at Eden Island Resort south of the city for a lunch together.

Backyard boulders

Views from the street

One of the details I’d failed to take care of promptly when we missed the original flight from Newark to Dubai was notifying our hostess that we would be arriving 24 hours later than originally scheduled (I did eventually send an email when I remembered, but to no effect). That oversight and the fact that the apartment we were going to had no street number resulted in a chaotic phone conversation between our cab driver and the hostess. Not knowing that we were arriving that morning, she had locked the place up and gone out for the day, and there was no way she could let us in until that afternoon. The cab driver eventually put me on the phone with her, and after a scolding about not notifying her of the changes to our itinerary, we reached an accord to meet at 3:30.

We asked the cab driver if he knew of a place that we could spend the next six hours, preferably somewhere that we could safely leave our luggage. He said he knew of a place and drove up and over the hills on a narrow winding road to Beau Vallon, a huge curving beach on the west side of the island. He dropped us and our luggage at a tiny commercial district where the road met the beach and turned north. It was still early by island standards so there were very few people out, and none of the shops or restaurants were open yet. We sat for several minutes looking out at the ocean that was almost perfectly flat, slowly summoning the energy to figure out what to do next.

Colleen set off on a walk and returned a few minutes later saying that she’d found some reclining beach chairs nearby where she thought we might be able to sit more comfortably. We picked up our gear and trudged across the sand to the chairs sitting in front of a low sea wall in the shade of a large tree with glossy dark green oval-shaped leaves. When I set down my backpack and sat down on the chair, exhaustion washed over me, and I couldn’t help but lay my head back and close my eyes. Colleen somehow still had the energy to get changed and go for a swim, and I drifted in and out of sleep while she floated up and down on the tiny swells.

A local man, bare-chested and wearing old jeans cut off just below the knee, began unstacking several more of the lounge chairs and arranging them in the sand under the trees that grew along the sea wall. We asked if it was OK that we had set up camp on two of the chairs, and he replied that it was fine as long as we paid him a rental fee. It was a relief to hear that we didn’t have to move, and I was happy to hand over some rupees. He introduced himself as Rodney, saying that he worked at the sushi restaurant nearby, and that we were welcome to leave our luggage there if we liked. We thanked him for his hospitality, then he set off on his business of getting ready for the day.

Even though I could barely hold my head up, some part of me felt anxious that we were “wasting time” just sitting there on the beach. While it would indeed have been nice to get into our apartment and offload our stuff, I had to remind myself that looking out at the ocean while doing nothing was one of the primary reasons we’d taken this trip, so we were in fact doing exactly what we were supposed to be.

A few hours of lounging put enough gas in the tank for us to get up and cross the road to The Boat House, a rambling, ramshackle building set amongst thick tree trunks. The maître d’ showed us a place to leave our bags without us even asking, then seated us at a table near the front looking back across the road toward the beach, with Praslin Island visible to the northeast. I ordered chicken curry and Colleen got spicy shrimp and pineapple followed by coconut nougat. I ate slowly as we still had another hour to kill before we could go to our apartment, and as I looked around the place I started to notice little details that indicated that the place wasn’t ramshackle at all, it had just very cleverly been made to look that way. Someone had put a great deal of thought and effort into giving the place a vibe like it had been pieced together organically from random materials over the course of a few decades, and had succeeded brilliantly.

In the course of exchanging some U.S. dollars for the local currency, Colleen was able to learn the name of a guy in the neighborhood who ran an “unofficial” taxi that would be able to take us to our apartment. We gathered up our belongings from The Boat House and met him at the side of the road in the exact same spot we’d been dropped off six hours earlier. The driver called our hostess from the road, confirming that she was home and getting directions to the place. We pulled off at the bottom of a steep driveway and waved to our hostess looking down from a balcony overlooking the main road.

Pina was very fit and full of energy, saying she’d just come from a long hike high in the hills and that that was the reason she couldn’t let us in earlier in the day. She gave us a tour, and not realizing that we were brother and sister, had left the bed unmade in one of the bedrooms. She ran back to her house nearby to fetch some sheets, and when I tried to help her make the bed, she waved me off and told me I should go take a shower. She showed us the Wi-Fi information, left us a bus pass that we could use to get to Victoria in the morning, entered her phone number into WhatsApp on my phone in case we needed anything, then darted off. I took the prescribed shower, arranged the mosquito net that hung in a loose knot over the bed, then crashed headlong into the pillow.

A panaromic view from our apartment balcony, taken at dawn

We had found some dinner at what would be called a “food court” in the U.S., but much more upscale than our typical version of it. Looking for something healthy, light and hopefully a boost to my immune system, I ordered a bowl of beef phở, with noodles, peppers, cilantro and lime in a spicy broth. It had exactly the fortifying effect I was hoping for.

It was 1 a.m. local time and the terminal was now filled with people waiting to board planes to all parts of the world. In spite of all the activity, the atmosphere was still calm and quiet. No garbled messages about boarding groups or gate changes, no security announcements, no “Paging passenger Bob Flibber, paging passenger Bob Flibber, this is the final call for your flight to Sheboygan.” When we arrived at Gate B6, all of the Emirates employees were dressed in smart tan suits. The women wore red caps with ivory chiffon scarfs, either wrapped around their faces or elegantly draped around their necks. It made the American flying experience feel shabby.

We walked down some stairs and through a large seating area filled with people to get the walkway onto the plane. I marveled that all the forward sections of the plane were completely empty, but as I settled in to my seat in the second-to-last row of the plane, I realized that they were loading the plane from the rear, and that all those people we’d passed by would board after the back of the plane was mostly full. Gone was the annoyance of waiting in the aisle while someone struggled to get a huge bag into the overhead compartment that they had no business bringing as a carryon in the first place. It was brilliant, and why other airlines haven’t adopted a similar approach is mind-boggling.

The plane pulled away from the gate at 2:15 a.m. It was 3:15 p.m. of the previous afternoon in San Francisco by my internal clock and I felt wide awake, so I watched a couple documentaries on the seat-back screen, one on the war camerawoman Margaret Moth, the other about The Sonics, a band from Tacoma that languished in total obscurity for 40 years before becoming a global cult phenomenon. Sometime around 4 a.m. the flight attendants served a hearty breakfast, and by the time I was finished eating, fiery oranges and purples of an Indian Ocean sunrise were visible through the port-side windows.

The map is not the territory, as they say, and the land masses that appeared below as the plane began its descent were much larger than I had envisioned while studying maps back home. The Boeing 777 we had boarded in Dubai seemed impossibly huge to be landing on a little speck in the middle of the ocean. It seemed disproptionately large compared the one-story airport building when we walked acroos the tarmac in Victoria, but the tall, steep hills covered in riotous greens and striking rock features dominating the landscape put everything back to its proper scale.

The line at customs moved along pleasantly, and it wasn’t long before we’d retrieved Colleen’s checked bag from the baggage carousel. We had the slightly unusual experience of having our bags scanned on our way out of the airport. They wanted to have a look at the rigging knife that I’d packed in the checked bag, but waved us on after satisfying themselves at its relative uselessness as a weapon. I exchanged $100 in cash for the local currency (14.60 Rupees to the Dollar), then we went off to find a taxi to take us to the north end of Mahé Island where I had reserved a two-bedroom apartment.

We rustled up some snacks from the self-checkout stores dotted around the terminals of Newark Liberty International Airport, including chocolate milk, which my sister assured me was the most effective way of maintaining hydration. We stood at the back of the crowd, watching as boarding groups 1, 2 and 3 made their way onto the plane. For reasons understood only by United Airlines, boarding is split into two lines that merge back together just as people are asked to scan their boarding pass. When boarding group 4 was announced, we stepped forward, but were unsure of which line we should be in, and no one around us seemed to be moving toward the gate. In that beat of confused hesitation, a gentleman behind us said we should be Line 1, so we went ahead, apparently the only two souls in Boarding Group 4. It’s a modest club, but extremely exclusive.

Because of our missed connection the previous night, the United Airlines agent had upgraded our seats to Economy Plus, so our seat numbers were in the 30s instead of the 50s. We were seated on the right side of the plane, in a row that as of yet had no one else sitting in it. The overhead luggage compartment was completely empty, but we still jammed our bags as close together as possible in hopes of leaving room for the poor souls behind us. From our seats we watched a few dozen more people trickle in toward the back of the plane. The trickle became a drip, and pretty soon there was no one else but the flight attendants coming down the aisles. All the passengers in our half-full section held their collective breath…the announcement that the boarding doors were closed went off like a starting gun, and there was a rush of bodies spreading out to claim as much space as they could find. I slid over from the middle seat to the aisle seat, thereby establishing dominion over a modest 3-seat fiefdom, gratefully occupied by two sore, sleepy peasants. A woman laid out across all four empty seats in the middle section next to us, providing a vivid illustration of the proverb “Fortune favors the bold.”

Colleen fell asleep almost immediately after the spate of irritating announcements that airlines insist on making until the plane reaches cruising altitude. I made a stab at sleep, but gave up after a few minutes. First I watched a few episodes of “Barry” on the small screen in front of me. But staring at a screen while traveling doesn’t feel right (except of course hours in front of a text editor banging out long-winded blog posts), so I switched to reading my book. It was Jack Kerouac having a conversation with himself for two months sitting alone in a fire lookout tower somewhere in the northern Cascades of Washington, which, as reading material goes, was pretty tough sledding. It wasn’t long before my eyelids drooped and drowsiness fell heavy enough to overcome the ungainliness of sleeping sitting up.

The cabin went dark, meal carts came and went, a baby wailed itself into exhaustion, and the plane shot towards a dawn that came ludicrously early by the clock on my phone. I read, I wrote, I dozed, I ate while the hours slid by at a pace of their own choosing. Window shades remained mostly shut until after the final meal was served about an hour from Dubai, and then the blinding late afternoon light was allowed in just in time to watch our descent through the sandy-colored air down to a sprawling city built on the slim margin between sea and dune.

After we deplaned, we had to go through an abbreviated customs and security check to get to our connecting terminal. At 7 p.m. local time, the terminal was almost entirely empty. It was clean, comfortable, and above all, quiet. Unlike Newark, there were no blaring announcements every 15 minutes about not smoking in the terminal or accepting packages from unknown persons. We found plenty of empty lounge-chair style seating where we could put down our bags and put up our feet. It felt luxurious after 12+ hours in the air, even with half-empty Economy Plus seating, and we sat for a time gathering our wits and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi.