Belly of the Whale

Journals in Chagos_________

Chagos Archipelago is in the heart of the Indian Ocean, south of India, south of the Maldives, lying near the fifth parallel. I left Borneo in June, sailed three weeks to Bali, enjoyed Bali for two weeks and reprovisioned the boat. Then I sailed west for twenty-five days before making landfall at Saloman Atoll in the Chagos Archipelago. Chagos is not a secret; it is in fact quite famous. So I was shocked to find, in the fading afternoon sun, as I crossed the lagoon, not one single boat lying at anchor.

Naturally, at first, I was mildly disappointed. How one craves company after nearly a month at sea! But as I settled in with a cup of coffee, a snack, a rolly, and some rum—it hit me. Hard. This was Absolute Solitude, solitude of such dimension that it is nearly without counterpart in the world. I was struck silent with it. I felt my life running before me and thought, if all my life sufferings had the sole purpose to bring me to this place, to this time. . . to this sort of surreal experience of solitude and beauty—then my time has been well bought. This is enough.

Saloman is an atoll of small size and with long expanses of barren reef, which leaves open the endless horizon to the eye. Endless. . . eighteen-hundred miles east to Sumatra, the same distance west to Kenya, eight-hundred miles north to India, and south, who knows?. . . all the way to the Antarctic. As I sit and watch dusk settle over the western motus, I can look directly east down the course that I have sailed for the last month. There is nothing but sea between me and Bali, nothing, sea and the curvature of the earth (and a rare fishing vessel!).

I am not above loneliness. I suffer it the same as anyone I suppose. Perhaps over the years I have acquired more defenses against it, as it rarely overcomes me. But when confronted by the sheer vastness of something like this, the entirety of the world utterly unobstructed—there is no "aloneness" like it. At this moment, I am one of the most singularly isolated people in the entirety of the world, in time as well as space. Since when has man ever accomplished such solitude?

Shipwreck. . . Selkirk? (known fictionally as Robinson Crusoe). . . history doesn't remember castaways. Tom Neale on Suvarrow Atoll. Early astronauts alone in space. Yogis in caves in the snow. Desert hermits. Solitary confinement in prison.

The smallness of Saloman is important. The weight of the ocean lurks so close. I can hear the breakers on the outer reef endlessly. I can see their white spray in all directions. Am I really so safe, protected?. . .so small a place. The great white shark swimming slowly around the small metal bars of the shark cage.

The feeling would not be so potent if this wasn't a spot of such ostentatious beauty. The water glimmers night and day above the white sandy shallows, like a mirror to the moon. The coral hedges billow with small fish like bees around their hive. Some shine with such brilliance I truly wonder to myself if they aren't somehow luminescent, like fireflies or glo-worms. I saw five sea-turtles the first day. One swam straight to me and let me touch it and swim with it for a time. Dolphins and wahoo even enter the lagoon which is new to me.

At night, the moon still waxing, lights the whole anchorage in green light. Carrol the dinghy seems to be floating on air like a magic carpet, hovering above her clear shadow ten feet beneath her. I look out over the sand hoping to see some large sea monster ease through the pass and enter the lagoon to feed in the night. None comes. I sit and play guitar in the moonlight and watch and wait.

One night I thought the bow of the ship was ripped off and fell into the water. I heard such a cachophany I nearly paniced. Did the mast fall down?? How?... I ran topsides to look. And everything was as it always is. Nothing. I looked under the boat to see what might have fell overboard. . . nothing. Then, in the distance I saw a great rushing of water. Some predatory fish was chasing a great school of needlefish. Needlefish are great leapers. What must have happened, as they were chased past, they didn't see the boat, and a great number of them simply collided with my bow and anchor chain. It was a magnificent noise.

Each night if I came on deck with a flashlight, there were such quantities of fish in the shallows where I anchored that the lagoon would boil with them fleeing the light.

I am more comfortable sailing at night, staying out of the sun in the daytime. I have become half nocturnal. So even now I am tempted to stay up in the moonlight for hours, listening to the wind, looking over the reef to the endless miles of sea. The weight of the miles, the expansiveness, isn't oppressive, but palpable, present, tangible in a way I've never experienced. Have you ever had a moment atop a mountain, looking at the world beneath you, so small in the distance, that your individuality, your personhood shrinks to a pinhead? You become nothing, which is to say, part of everything, a fiber in the thread of eternity. I have often climbed peaks for this very communion. One could call it Rapture. Those experiences, all of them, pale to the solitude of Chagos.

Is this happiness? I don't know. I don't think so. It has some pleasure, no doubt. I scream out and laugh at the absurdity of it all. I revel in the beauty. But the experience is of vast space that is beyond my mind, a tremulous presence in a world that would suck me into the void if I were a micron smaller.

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Diving__________

Chagos is an atoll. Atolls, as a rule, are most interesting underwater. The diversity of their motus—the little islets around the perimeter of the atoll, is spare, populated by seeming luck. Birds, crabs, and the abundant coconut palm.

Underwater however species migration is much more prolific. The reefs provide a rich foundation for a diverse—not to mention spectacular—ecosystem. Chagos has its barrier reef along with ten to twelve motus. Inside this is a protected lagoon roughly four miles across. Inside this lagoon are many coral heads rising up from a moderately shallow (60 feet and more) bottom. These coral heads and the many fingers along the inside of the fringing reef are splendid diving.

I like to dive first thing in the morning. When I say, 'dive', I mean snorkel, or free-diving, or skin-dive. I don my mask and fins and fall overboard. There is so much coral around my boat I needn't travel—at least before breakfast. The coral is not magnificent in color. Past bleaching is still evident, but, that said, there are some glorious individual corals of so many colors, particularly red, and a few spotted with neon green. What captivates me is the quantity of fish, both in numbers and species, and particularly the small ones.

My unfortunate analogy is that of flies swarming a carcass. There is no other description: these small fish swarm over the coral, through the coral like fingers through hair. And the little guys are so handsome. They are all colors, but some have stripes that I would swear glow of their own light. They shine without the sun. They are truly magnificent, which is something special in things so diminutive.

Of course there are the many butterfly fish in abundance and many others: wrasse, parrotfish (huge ones) baby blue tangs are the most populous, copper sweepers, peacock rockcod, cardinalfish, seaperch, Moorish idols, demoiselle (these are the ones I'd swear glow), dascullus and damsals, blemmies and gobies, and on and on and on.

In "Song of the Dodo", David Quammen describes small island wildlife as not being "tame", as that implies a sort of learned trust or tolerance to humans, but instead "naive"—they have no gene or trait, no history, -that lends them mistrust or fear. We are neither predators nor prey. They are often curious. Noddies (a seabird) come and rest upon my railngs in calm weather. The fish tolerate proximity just short of touching. Indeed a special experience for me was finding a sea-turtle, which abound here, and having it actually swim to me! It swam around me, then let me follow him for a while and even let me touch it, not that it enjoyed that bit. How amazing: swimming with a sea-turtle, not just seeing one fleeing before you, but watching, interacting with it. Such amazing and strange creatures. I wonder how they survive. When I found him, he was munching on coral, and when I left he went back to munching on coral.

I have found two wrecks here, both sailboats. One less interesting than the other. One magnificent though. You'll have to read elsewhere for an account of it (Row to the Land of the Coconut Crab). Full to the brim with copper sweepers—all content to watch me join their company.

And the octopus—one of the most amazing things I've EVER seen.

Sharks aren't as common as I'd like. I've seen only a few.

[I have since found them, they are all in the pass, the other way from where I was diving.]

A new activity for me is taking Alice, the dinghy, out in the afternoons for a row. We go along the reef, pulling very lightly and cleanly with the oars. We glide over the shallow waters—three to six feet, and more—waters that aren't my favorite depth for diving. But from the dinghy, it is like looking into an aquarium. Sometimes I row backward as to be facing forward, or set a drift. I always find a turtle, and had a black-tip reef shark circle around once. It was so clear. And this particular shark was a beautiful copper color, very elegant. I roll a cigarette and drift, watching the butterfly fish and my favorite powder blue tangs dance through the coral like woodducks through a cypress swamp.

Rain_________

Of course, mostly I've done nothing but read. It has rained continually for over a week. It is hard to motivate to dive if there is no sunlight. Rays of light bring the underwater world to life. There is no terrestrial forest in the world to match a coral reef in light. (I am saddened to say, as my love is on land, not at sea. Yet it is undoubtedly so.) And there are few to no terrestrial animals to match the splendor of the fishes. I can think only of the colors of parrots, peacocks, and ducks, woodducks and harlequin ducks in particular. Maybe throw a pheasant in there as well. These birds match the fish in color, I'm not sure they have the grace. When has a bird ever glowed . . like some of these little gobies and demoiselles?? They have no clumsy appendages, only sleek, slender forms perfect for their environment.

Of course many look to have come straight out of a nightmare—there is a vast spectrum of morphology to be sure. But the fish who inhabit the sunny side of the reef are invariable handsome and stunning in color, and their match is hard to descry ashore.

The Authorities__________

People at last!! Today the British authorities came in a great orange ship called the Pacific Mariner (how original, especially seeing as we are in the Indian Ocean.). They are stationed out of a US military base on Diego Garcia, a small island south of here, but still a part of the Chagos Archipelago. One of the only times I can remember being truly pleased to be boarded and checked by the military. And they were awfully friendly and understanding. They fielded uncounted numbers of questions from me—a whole months worth! And seemed happy to do so. Of course, I had my permit, that helps.

They also levied the unhappy news that the prolific rain I've experienced over the last two weeks is only HALF of a tremendous front moving through. And I had thought of leaving today. . . what now? How long shall I wait? . . . surely not another two weeks!

The Sailing Vessel Afar_________

After two weeks alone, I open my hatch to see a boat coming through the pass and heading my way. Excitement indeed. I get out the binoculars. It is hard to believe, but I could swear I knew the boat. As it slowly approached the letter became clear on the bows: ARAR. Pete aboard afar was a friend of Annabelle's in New Zealand. We met him in the Philippines and again I saw him in Kudat, Malaysia. And stranger yet, when I bussed down to Kota Kinabalu (also in Malaysia) I saw him when I went to walk the docks there. He was heading down the west coast of Borneo some weeks before I headed down the east coast. But he was also heading for Africa, via Seychelles. How he came to be here now, seemingly behind me I couldn't fathom. He should have been well ahead. And yet there he was.

This was great.

I hopped in my dinghy and rowed over as he slowed to drop the hook. He had new crew. Long story short, we laughed and told stories. We drank of all of my remaining rum. He had already come to Chagos a month before, but had left to sail north to the Maldives to surf, and was now returning. His crew he picked up there and was a great and interesting guy. Pedro. He is planning to bicycle from South Africa to Europe.

My birthday was just a few days off and the weather seemed to be clearing. We caught fish and celebrated. We took their motor dinghy across to the coconut crab island and succeeded in catching one of the monsters. That was good fun.

I left them there on the 18^th. The wind was fair and I had been in Chagos nearly three weeks. Time to sail. Pedro, as I left, gave me a great big brownie as a birthday cake for the road. This was great. I was touched.

I sailed out to find the wind on the nose, as always. I shortened sail and started clocking miles. They would turn out to be some of the finest I've ever sailed.

The Passage________

Happily, there is very little to say about the passage from Chagos to Kilifi, Kenya. The saying 'no news is good news' is never more true than it is on passage. However it wasn't what I expected.

I expected SW'lies. I got mostly Southerlies. I might have that that a wind off the beam would have been uncomfortable, but there was little swell most of the time. The wind was light, 12 kts. We maintained a slight heel and great speed. The wind seemed to shift 20° fore or aft regularly so I had to watch the course like a hawk. When the wind came even farther toward the bow it was never strong enough to be uncomfortable, never a beat. When the wind went aft it was strong enough to steer a fair course.

I could almost say I had no windvane breakages, but five-hundred miles from Kenya a lower weld which held the lower starboard arm sheered, and I was forced to lash it together. Needless to say, with only three supports, the vane was a bit wobbly, but at the same time the winds decreased, easing the load on the vane. It held course all the way into the coastal waters.

There, about forty miles out, the wind died all together and it was just at dawn, therefore I had a perfect motor into port to arrive in the early afternoon, which I did.

I found the entrance to Kilifi Creek to be slightly hairraising in that the second set of towers has been encroached upon. I am blind anyway. I was trying to steer a 270 through the outer pass meanwhile staring hard over my shoulder with the binoculars trying to find towers to line up a 330.

I couldn't do it.

And I couldn't see the outer reef. I had to come in as tight as I could to the shore break—which I could see—and follow that line, which turned out to be something like a 320, so I felt good and clear of the outer reef.

On passage I had managed to fix the depth sounder which had quit on me in Chagos. (Normally things break on passage—on this passage I actually fixed things that were already broken. Ha.) so I could see that I maintained a good depth all the way in.

The boatyard anchorage is great. The people who work there are incredibly pleasant. Customs and Immigration are both available in Kilifi since July, and they were wonderful as well.

No problems, a rare passage that you arrive with energy and a smile.