Last Days in Cochin
We have had a good time in Cochin, done lots of work getting Chasamba looking and feeling like an ocean going yacht again, but now we are nearly ready to leave. We have added another fuel tank, and now have 400 litres capacity, changed the propellor to one with better pitch, fixed the hydraulic steering, fixed broken stanchions, changed one shroud which was showing signs of wear, fixed the swim platform and painted the topsides. We now have our name painted on the stern! And a shark mouth, which is too small for my taste, on the bow! We have enlarged the battery banks by 100 amphours too, although some of the batteries are getting old and will probably fail soon.
We have enjoyed the food here, and the prices of course, with a good mutton biriani costing about 1.5 pounds sterling for two people. ( Biriani is a rice dish, and comes as a big heap of tasty, buttery rice covering hunks of whatever meat you want, and little dishes of salad and pickle on the side). The spices are incredible, and contrary to our expectations we haven’t had any stomach problems despite eating and drinking at local restaurants. The fish is also good here, and we have bought lovely mackerel and baked them with garlic and ghee- great!
There are lots of cruisers here, 15 boats today, but most are thinking of moving on, some in our direction and some up the Red Sea. We will miss them, it has been a nice community here, with Christmas and New Year celebrations and lots of booze! Some we hope to meet up with again, either in Chagos or in Thailand, but most we will probably never see again- that is one of the special things about cruising, meeting people and then saying goodbye so soon.
We will leave on about the 15th of January, and head for the last island of the Maldives, hoping that the situation in Israel won’t affect our reception. The dog doesn’t help either, as they don’t like dogs at all. Oh well, we will just hope for the best! After that we will hopefully head for Chagos, although it is proving to be very difficult to get permission, and quite expensive. It is one of our oldest dreams though, and we won’t give up easily! So far we have filled out three different forms, given an undertaking to agree to be removed by the army(? ) if we can’t move ourselves, done travel insurance to cover airlifting for medical treatment, arranged a bank transfer of mooring fees….. does anyone have a feeling they really don’t want visitors?
After Chagos, where we hope to be for two months, we will wander up to Sri Lanka, arriving some time in May, and after a month there its off to Thailand for a bit of a rest, hopefully for 6 months. That is the plan! We should have a satellite phone soon, we have bought one in England and Rachel and Paul of Lynn Rival will bring it out to us, meeting us in Chagos hopefully. It is a Thuraya, which SHOULD have coverage there, but no certainty. If we can get the occasional email out and get weather information thats all we really need. Thanks Mum and Dad, by the way, thats where my birthday money went!
After a lot of hacker attacks, some of which caused us to have to remove all the photos from the site, I have moved all our photos to photobucket.com, there is a link at the right side of the page which should lead straight to the album- go in and have a look!
One Response to “Last Days in Cochin”
 Comment by Ilan Doron January 10th, 2009 at 8:52 am |
Dear Lezley & Oren! |
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