On August 4th, we were ready to continue our journey.

On SY Kat, my mind wandered and was still connected to all of the adventures we lived in the Mentawai Islands, such special place. The couple was really kind and made us extremely comfortable in their nest, we felt like we were at home. By Alexandre’s initiative, we got to know the native Sikereis.

I was baptized by chief Amparoroi on the high mountains of a tropical forest. Today, I’m part of that family of natives through a spiritual and mystical ritual. For the Sikereis, my name is Fredokerei.

After 18 days, we continued on. When we raised the anchor, we felt something was off. It was rising very slowly. To our surprise, along with our anchor, other two ones came along with some cables, all of which took three hours of a lot of cutting to get loose.

It seemed the place wasn’t letting us leave.

The two anchors were left at the bottom of the sea by the owner of a resort of the area. His vessel used to be anchored nearby, Alexandre explained, as he noticed we wouldn’t leave our spot and used his surfboard to come check things out.

In the letters, the position of the place where we anchored were different. If we had arrived in the evening, we might not have been able to enter. With such a crystal clear water, we managed to leave through the corals and slowly left that beautiful place behind us.

The sail towards Mauritius was going to be the longest of the Orient Expedition: 2.800 miles, almost the distance between Oiapoque to Chuí. It lasted 12 days of nonstop sailing, day and night.

During the crossing, we managed to get a current in our favor of 1.5 knots and SE winds with waves of up to 4 meters. SY Kat would surf each step down of the waves.

Also on this crossing, we saw three ships when we were 200 miles away from Mauritius. The speed of the sailboat on this crossing was of 17.1 knots. We reached Port Louis after 295.14 hours, an average of 9.5 knots per hour.

Mauritius authorities were waiting to welcome us. When the boss learned I was brazilian, he summoned me to his office. When I got there, the TV was airing the Olympics and he said: “Brazil is playing the volleyball finals. Sit down and watch!” Afterwards, the same thing happened at the coast guard and immigration.

While we were in Mauritius, SY Kat was anchored in the marina at the center of town on a place called the waterfront.

Geography has everything to do with sailing. Sign up at Estácio to follow this career!

On the next post, you’ll see the rest of the crew’s adventures on the Captain’s Log!