Seychelles Letters

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This is going to get a bit confusing, as we actually visited the Seychelles multiple times.  The first time was in 2007, as we crossed from the Chagos archipelago.  Then in 2009 we visited again, coming up from Madagascar.

While several of our 2009 passages were longer, our passage from Chagos to the Seychelles in 2007 was our 4^th longest at the time, and only missed being our 3^rd longest by 30 miles:

Magnet to cruisers: the Seychelles Yacht Club

It was also one of our roughest passages in a long time.  While we have no real objective measure, our passage from Curacao to the San Blas in February 2003, with its sustained 40 knot winds and 20' (6m) seas, and the last 2 days of our trip from the Marquesas to the Tuamotus in July 2003, where we found ourselves close-hauled into 25 knots, stick in our minds as passages not to be emulated.  Considering that those were our worst and they were 4 years ago, we consider ourselves pretty lucky!

The following are our noon positions and statistics as we sailed from the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territories) to the Seychelles.  Wind speeds and directions are apparent - true wind-speeds were somewhat higher and true wind angles were a bit further aft (our forward speed pulls the apparent wind forward):

Totals for Chagos to the Seychelles (2007):  1,024 nautical miles in 6 days and 20 hours, for an average speed of 6.2 knots and a maximum speed of 15.2 knots (says the GPS).  This passage was somewhat slower than expected given the winds, mainly because we had to slow down for the last few days (so we'd arrive in daylight) and when we were in the lumpy seas (for comfort).  One of our least comfortable passages to date.

Our 2009 trip up from Madagascar to the Seychelles was much nicer (and much faster) than our trip down in 2007 as we were able to catch a better weather window.  It was characterized by strong currents pushing us northwest when we wanted to sail northeast, so our speed and distance through the water was actually somewhat higher than our speeds and distances covered over the bottom, which is what is reported below.    Here are our noon positions and other sailing statistics:

Totals for Madagascar to the Seychelles (August 2009):  586 nautical miles in 3.5 days (just under 82 hours), for an average speed of 7.2 knots, and a maximum speed of 14.6 knots.  We may also have set a personal 24 hour distance record.

The newsletters we sent while on both passages are:

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