Cargados the Hard Way

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pargliding cargadosIn many ways the last trip started over 10 years ago. I was sitting in a pub on the SW corner of Vancouver Island near the Juan De Fuca Straits with a guy who’d just completed a circumnavigation. It was the spring of 1999 and other than commercial fishing in the Bearing Sea I’d never been offshore and had no idea how it all worked. This guy’s stories of adventure kept me rapt for hours and I furiously scribbled notes about all the places he reckoned were “must sees”. One in particular seemed more enticing and yet elusive than any other. Chagos. I’d never heard of it and remember pulling out a map later that night just to make sure it was real.

Blowing our minds in the Maldives

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Maldives Islands SpeedflyingI’ve never been into drugs. But I imagine “coming down” would feel a lot like I do right now. A bit dizzy, a bit confused, a lot tired. The last 15 days played out like an eternity and somehow also disappeared in a flash. When I look back it all seemed to start ages ago because there’s no way you can fit into each day all the things that happened, but it also seems like the clients just stepped on the boat. My body and those of our guests show signs of genuine abuse. I’ve got a serious limp after smacking my calf into a Kiteboard while rescuing a sinking mask; the guests thankfully are unhurt, but they may want to have a skin exam in the near future. The sun has crisped their skin like burnt bacon.

Journey through the Andamans

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Andaman Islands Kitesurfing
I try not to get too excited about any of the locations on our itinerary. Most of them are places I haven’t been to in the past, just like our guests. But I’ve found if you allow yourself to romanticize and dream too much, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Readers might recall this was the case with Myanmar, where the guidebooks and the crazy costs to get there conspired into hype which got the better of me (see “Long Days in a Strange Land“). So as we sailed, well motored west from Myanmar across the Bay of Bengal to the Andaman Islands I left the guidebooks on their shelves, and kept my mind buried in the engine rooms, which needed attention, rather than the horizon.