The High Point of our Circumnavigation?

“So where are you most excited about visiting on our circumnavigation”, Jen asked me one day, completely out of the blue.

It was a rainy day in early 2015, some 5 years after we’d started our planning, but with still more than 3 years to go before we actually set sail.

It was an interesting question, and one that I hadn’t even begun to contemplate at this stage.

For me, the drive to sail around the world was a more nebulous concept, an idea, a BHAG, if you will. And until that point, I’d been more consumed with the planning, the skill acquisition, finding the right boat, and yes, even fitting in an all-consuming career in my spare time.

I’d spent a fair amount of time researching the route we would need to take to ensure we were always in the right part of the world in the best and safest sailing conditions, and we had only recently started to lay out the year by year plan.

And of course, as part of that, we’d talked about the various countries we’d be visiting along the way. But the truth is that the vast majority of circumnavigations follow the trade wind route sailed by the Clipper ships centuries ago to take advantage of the most favourable winds, and as a result, 90% or more of the cruising boats out there follow a fairly well established route, with just a few choices (Red Sea or Cape Town, Med or not, Panama Canal or around Cape Horn) to be made.

Even as we were finalising our route, though, I was thinking of these destinations only in terms of practicality. Where could you sail to from each country? How long would it take? What’s the best season to do so? What other choices (if any) did one have?

So not once had I ever stopped to think about which countries I was most excited about, or why. There were simply too many other factors to consider.

The question stopped me in my tracks.

Perhaps it was because of how dreary it looked as the rain hammered down on the skylights in our Glebe warehouse conversion, but it didn’t take much effort to transport my mind to faraway exotic places and get lost in a reverie of anticipation.

“Come on, give me your top 3”, Jen said, interrupting my daydream.

“OK”, I said, still not entirely sure, but figuring whatever came out of my mouth next would be a good indicator of my subconscious desires.

“In no particular order, I’d say Largs, the San Blas islands, and Chagos.”

Largs was definitely the odd one out.

Exotic, it most certainly is not. It’s a small town on the west coast of Scotland, some 40 minutes drive from where I grew up in Glasgow. But what it lacks in sunshine, beaches or world class culinary delights, it more than makes up for in resonance and meaning, at least for me personally.

It’s where my Dad keeps his boat, where most of my formative sailing took place, and has one of the finest fish and chips restaurants in the UK. The idea of sailing up the Firth of Clyde and pulling into my “home” marina, almost exactly half way through our circumnavigation, already had me welling up with tears.

Largs Yacht Haven, where my father keeps his boat, with the town of Largs in the background.

“Alright, Largs I get”, said Jen. “And while it may not have the same resonance for me, I can already imagine how much I’m going to enjoy seeing the look on your face, and feeling your heart swell with pride, as you navigate Steely into the marina there”.

“Tell me about San Blas”. I can do better than that, I said, “I’ll show you”. And I looked up some videos on YouTube from a sailing channel we’d been following, showing a Swedish couple sailing among these spectacular islands near Panama.

They’re picture postcard perfect – a series of tiny islands, surrounded by stunning reef, beautiful palm trees and the whitest of white sand. They’re also one of the most susceptible places in the world to rising sea levels, and in fact are already substantially smaller than they were just a few decades ago.

Two of the many beautiful San Blas Islands, near Panama

If you have a few minutes, check out this video and you’ll know exactly why we’re excited to visit San Blas…(scroll forward to the 5 minute mark for the good stuff)

Trying to ensure we got to see places like this before they disappear was a contributing factor to our decision to circumnavigate mid career, rather than putting it off until we retired and potentially missing out as the world changes around us.

Chagos, on the other hand, was most definitely known to Jen already. It’s part of cruising folklore – by some people’s reckoning, it may be the last, unspoilt uninhabited group of islands in the world.

The only problem? It’s in the middle of the Indian Ocean, 300 miles south of the southern tip of the Maldives, and thousands of miles from land in any other direction. An archipelago comprising 6 atolls and 60 islands, it’s owned by the British and is the last remaining component of the highly controversial British Indian Ocean Territory.

Chagos is pretty much right in the middle of the Indian Ocean - as remote as you can get.

The islands used to be inhabited by the Chagossian people, but they were evicted by the British Government in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the largest island, Diego Garcia, to be leased to the USA to be turned into a military base. Now the islands are completely uninhabited, with the exception of the military base, which is the largest in the world outside of the US.

The Chagossian people have fought over decades to be allowed to return, and have secured multiple court victories including the support of the United Nations. But the UK continues to deny them, and as part of a calculated strategy to prevent their repopulation, the entire area was turned into the world’s largest Marine Reserve in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, then, this is not an easy place to visit.

The British Indian Ocean Territory Administration, based out of the UK, monitor the area to prevent any commercial fishing or illegal anchoring in the marine reserve, which spans 40,000 square miles. To do that, they have a 70 m patrol ship which permanently cruises the area, occasionally returning to its base at Diego Garcia to resupply. As well as enforcement duties, it also carries scientists occasionally to conduct experiments, and sometimes the British Military will join the vessel to enable them to conduct exercises in the north of the archipelago.

Grampian Frontier is the BIOT patrol boat.

Apart from the marines, the enforcement officers and the occasional scientist, the only other people allowed to visit are sailors transiting the Indian Ocean, who are looking for a safe stop to await a weather window for their next passage.

To be granted a permit, you need to be able to prove that you have a valid reason for stopping there, as well as top of the range Medevac and Wreck removal insurance to cover you should anything untoward happen, given the remote nature of the location.

There is absolutely nothing there – no facilities, no people, nothing. So, you need to be entirely self sufficient for up to a month (the maximum time you’re permitted to stop there), plus the time required to sail there, and onwards to your next destination.

But of course, it’s that very remoteness that has made it so desirable to sailors. To be able to enjoy pristine tropical islands, amazing marine life and reefs, and the famous red footed boobys and coconut crabs that dominate the islands, and to do so without tourists, or indeed be disturbed in any way, is incredibly enticing.

A giant coconut crab

A Red Footed Booby

In a typical year, somewhere between 20 and 50 yachts will sail through the Indian Ocean from north to south, and most will try and secure a permit, although not all will be successful. This number has gone up in recent years due to piracy issues in the Red Sea forcing sailors from SE Asia to take the long way round past Cape Town. Just in the last 2 years, as the threat of piracy has receded, so the numbers sailing past Chagos and applying to stop has diminished again.

And this year, only 9 permits were granted, as the BIOT Administration stopped issuing them once the extent of Covid-19 became clear in late February, meaning that more people would reach the summit of Mount Everest in ONE DAY than would be able to visit Chagos in all of 2020.

As good luck would have it, we were one of the 9 boats issued a visa before the shutters came down, as were our two buddy boats, Erie Spirit and Sonrisa. Even better, the BIOT Administration promised to honour our permits, if and when we were ready to sail there.

But while we spent 4 months in the Maldives, none of us was prepared to sail on to Chagos, until we had an onward destination whose borders were open. Even Maldives itself was shut, meaning if we sailed to Chagos, we would not be able to return. And for all their helpfulness, BIOT continued to insist that the permit length would be rigidly enforced, and we would be heavily fined (or even jailed and our boat impounded) if we outstayed our welcome.

Besides, at least in the Maldives we had access to fuel, cooking gas, and food. Once we left and headed to Chagos, we were entirely on our own with whatever resources we had needing to last us until we could sail to another country that would accept us.

And so we waited. And waited. And started to fear that our chance to get to this sailors’ nirvana was slipping away.

When we heard that the Seychelles was accepting applications from yachts, we started to seriously consider it as an option. And Chagos is (kind of) on the way from Maldives to Seychelles.

But still, we were reluctant, as we’ve started to come to terms with the fact that normal cruising as we know it is not going to return for at least 12 months, and our preferred place to wait that out continued to be SE Asia. The only problem? Both Malaysia’s and Thailand’s borders continued to be tightly shut, with no sign of when they might open.

For weather reasons, the latest we could sail back from Maldives to SE Asia is October, so we had determined to wait it out in the south of the Maldives and hope borders would open in time.

We had an epiphany in late June though, when we realised that if we wanted to, we could sail to Seychelles and hang out there for a bit, and STILL sail back to SE Asia if their borders opened before October. If the borders do not open in time, well, Seychelles has a good marina, and is a beautiful place to either spend 12 months, or leave the boat and fly back to Australia.

And the best bit? If we took the chance, we could also sail to Chagos on the way. Some intense discussions with Erie Spirit and Sonrisa ensued – none of us particularly wanted to be in Chagos alone – not only would it be potentially lonely, but with no facilities or other people there at all, there is a certain comfort to be had from knowing there are other boats nearby to help if you have mechanical or human reliability issues.

And besides, who wouldn’t want to spend time in a dream location with their friends?

And so, in early July, we each reached out to the BIOT Administration and set our arrival dates.

We were going to Chagos!