Cocos Keeling: Short but sweet

Friday August 19, 2011

Here we sit in Cocos Keeling…. Pretty sleepy, that’s for sure. As luck would have it, it is Ramadan now, so it’s really sleepy! It’s actually snoring. The ferry connecting us to the island where our boat is anchored is only making trips until 3 pm. Oh, and the dive shop has both of its boats out of the water for servicing!

We had an excellent snorkel yesterday in a place called ‘the rip’ – so called because the tide rips through the outer reef into the lagoon at a very fast pace. You can only swim/snorkel in that area just before low tide for an hour or so, and after that the current is just so strong we would be swept away to sea, or at least across the lagoon. So yesterday we swam and snorkelled our hearts out and swam like bandits through the river of a tide to get back to our dinghy. But the coral was beautiful, lots of huge Parrot fish (Buntheads), some Trevali and even a black tipped Reef Shark (although a family of 5 of these circle the boat morning and evening looking for food scrap handouts and we don’t disappoint them)!

We are enjoying our time here, and have decided to push through to Rodriguez Island sooner rather than later – its 2000 NM away to the west. Irena will then go back to Singapore for a couple of weeks work from there. And there will be a lot more for Cress and Eitan to do on Rodriguez – 37,000 pop., hiking, kite-surfing, diving and even restaurants.

A couple of cruisers have mistaken Eitan for our son. “So what it’s like sailing with your parents” asked one yachtie on board for sundowners. Eiton, with his bandana in place thought he said "Whats it like being a pirate" and simply went "Erghhhhh". Parent or Pirate, we really value his company and guitar playing. Cress enjoys the teaching sailing and Irena enjoys feeding him!

We should be in Rodriguez before the leaves hit the ground in Canada. It promises to be a natural wonderland, an island 7x8 kilometres surrounded by a lagoon twice the size of the island in the centre. Mountain hikes, more lagoon side beaches, kite surfing and not too many people. We expect to get underway Saturday or Sunday and will keep you posted on our progress with position reports and lies about how big the fish are (that is if we ever catch any, but of course you will never know for sure!)