Welcome to sunny, calm, no pirates in the anchorage, Male! You have no idea how nice not having to think about pirates is. Even on our passage from Cochin, though a route believed to be safe from pirates, I was looking over my shoulder during every one of my night watches and even during the day at times. Our second evening we scared ourselves when two large cargo ships came quite close. Luckily it was during Randal’s watch so I didn’t have to guess what to do. And I might not have interpreted the blob on the radar as anything more than an echo of the brightly lit cargo ship that showed up on our AIS, the Asian Emperor. But Randal could see a dark blob not far from the Asian Empress. No lights and no AIS. The Asian Empress tried to make contact VHS contact with the dark blob, but no luck. Everyone passed everyone and finally the Asian Empress told the dark blob to turn on its lights since there were no pirates in the area. (In pirate areas everyone travels in the dark with radar and AIS turned off so they will be less noticeable to pirates who might be monitoring on their electronic equipment. And ship lights show up miles away, especially big ship lights.) Randal and I were quite spooked and started looking for small skiffs that pirate “mother ships” (what an insult to the word mother!) send out. Obviously there were none or I wouldn’t be writing this; another horrid thought! Next watch a medium large ship came along with its lights on but no AIS which is odd. But from its shape Randal guesses it might have been a military ship since they don’t broadcast an AIS message. That was a comforting thought. Maybe the big ship had let the military know about the creepy dark blob. But from then on, I just wanted to get here and be done. Every watch seemed to take hours and hours, and though each watch is 3 hours, they can pass fast especially when worry free and interrupted by the lights from some freighters or fishing boats. But from then on, we saw nothing, not one ship of any kind because we were no longer near the shipping lanes. That’s great any other time but this passage I would have welcomed the freighter traffic. Even during the day time hours we saw nothing. The sun was shining, our Paravane fish kept us from rolling in the swells. It should all have been lovely. (As I type this we have the single side band radio turned on and are listening to the “morning net” during which everyone on the boats in the anchorage may call in and share information or ask questions. We heard that the Blue Water Rally boats, who Quest had been a member of, are now going to transport all of their boats. People are also discussing getting last minute rooms when the boats are finally loaded and how to get to the airport for early flights, when we can finally make reservations, because the ferry doesn’t run before 7:30 am or something along those lines. It’s all very interesting and informative.)

So here we are in the Maldives off Hulhule Island. We arrived yesterday morning at sunrise and waited to be checked into Male. There was a bit of miscommunications so the agent helping all of the boats in our group and the marine officials didn’t get to us until about 11:30. But they were very professional and quick and young enough to enjoy the lollipops that I gave them. Didn’t have to “pay them off with cigarettes or alcohol or chocolate; they just did their jobs and left. When they left we pulled up anchor and motored over to the anchorage off Hulhule Island, got things settled, had a visit from ‘Nita and Bud from Passage who loaned us 20 rufiyaa (12.8 = $1) for the ferry from Hulhule to Male. It costs 4 rufiyaa per ticket to go to Male and 5 rufiyaa to come back. We set out from DoraMac on our dinghy, tied up at the wharf and just made it with no minutes to spare as we caught the 3pm ferry to Male so we could go to an ATM, get our phone and computer SIM cards and look around a bit. (Hulhule sounded like U lu when I asked someone; Ulumale ferry was what I heard and realized that the male part was Male and Ulu was the name of the island we were starting from so we would know how to bet back to our dinghy.) There are two phone services here on Male but we were warned to get the Dhiraagu so we did. Of course it wouldn’t work… So they sent us a few blocks to the mobile phone service center and a brilliant and lovely young woman made it all work. By then it was time to go back to the dinghy so we’ll have to wait to go exploring in Male where everything must be flown in so is pretty expensive. We caught the ferry from Male with less time to spare than from Hulhule but they actually hold the ferry if they see someone madly rushing to buy a ticket which is very nice! I made Randal an especially delicious dinner of instant mashed potatoes mixed with tuna and “tinned” peas. The Brits say tinned and it sounds so much better than canned. Anyway Randal loved it and for dessert had a chocolate topped and filled donut from a Male bakery. We had a very quiet night to start to catch up on the sleep we missed during the passage. Today we’re back to Male and I’ll start taking some photos.

Flags flying during our passage.

We left up our flag and Red Sox banner and ran the whole time with lights on as well as our radar and AIS.

Our view looking north.