Day 9: Sailing to Hope Island
September 30, 2005

We woke up at 5am, and made preparations to set sail for Hope Island. Setting sails this morning was much smoother and faster than yesterday, as the crew's familiarity with their work was obviously improved from our experience. The wind had picked up quite a bit, and our sailing speed doubled - to almost 6 knots - which is roughly 6 miles per hour. This doesn't seem like much, but when you're out in open water, with large waves sloshing past, and the boat pitching about, it seems fast enough. We're heading for the Hope Islands, and we've got to cover about 40 miles today. We are also getting a chance to work on steering the ship during our rotations at the helm. This is an amazing experience, and you can feel the power of the sea and the wind directly. The two of those natural forces are impossible to control, and we're learning to work with it instead of fighting it, which is a natural human instinct.

During our passage, several pods of Indio-Pacific dolphins came up alongside of the boat and swam with us. They're quite playful, and it seems they're jumping up out of the water to check us out. One pod, with 2 large bulls and 2 smaller youngsters (or females?) stayed with us for a few minutes and swam along the front of the ship, jumping and weaving only feet from the Makulu's bow. (See video). That was very exciting, and now I'm looking everywhere for more dolphins.

We arrived at Hope Island around 3pm. The island is surrounded by reefs, and has a small, natural channel for boats to approach through. We had to be very careful. Once in, and tucked behind the island for wind cover, we anchored. There were 6 other boats anchored here too, and no sooner than we arrived, a small dinghy pulled up with a lovely elderly couple in it. They invited us to join them for drinks on the island. After our chores were done, several of us took the inflatable kayak over and joined them for Bloody Marys.