In a word awesome!

I’m not sure what is the best part, the speed, the comfort or the space.

We rented a Lagoon 400 with 4 staterooms which meant each kid got their own stateroom.  They all enjoyed having their own space for part of the trip.  The boat was a little rough for wear but the important stuff all worked – engines, stove, refrigerator and toilets.  I even got to fix a few things which was exactly what boating was about when we were on Viatori.

Enough of a boat review…

We flew to Seychelles via Abu Dhabi and I booked a airport hotel but I didn’t realize that this hotel was inside the security zone which meant that when we cleared customs and collected our luggage we now had to re-enter the secure zone after re-checking luggage.  It is a great idea but we didn’t pack for an in airport over night and on re-clearing through customs we lost a Cutco knife to the security folks, insult to injury.  Our hotel was small but good, we all slept a few hours then packed up and headed out to find breakfast.  Thankfully we spotted some McDonald’s workers who we followed only find they don’t serve breakfast only the standard menu.  On vacation you are supposed to try new things, so we had burgers and fries for breakfast.

Landing the Seychelles was like landing in Hawaii with an open air airport and the tropical greenery every where.  Clearing customs was easy and then we took a puddle jumper to Praslin Island.  On the flight we saw at whole bunch of boats and at least one manta ray.   Soon we were at our boat, which is named Medoc.  I took care of the paperwork and the rest of the crew moved aboard.  We rented from DreamYatchCharters.com which has about 25-30 boats in the Seychelles most of which are catamarans.

It was dark by the time we “had the keys” and our provisioning service showed up so we stayed on the dock the first night.  The next day we untied and headed out towards the national park and stayed off Anse St. John between Praslin and Curieuse Islands.  We swam off the boat to cool off and then took are dingy to shore.  The motor was small and crappy, needing two hands to run; one for the throttle and one to hold the choke closed.  We stalled at least once on the way to shore because the engine quit with about 50 spectators.  This anchorage is in the national park and you are charged 10 dollars to anchor over night.  Also if your feet touch the island it is also 10 per person – a little steep when you are used to the Bahamas where nearly everything is free.

I went back to the boat to get cash because we had only come with bathing suits to enjoy the beach for a while.  The beach was nice and the kids had fun while I got the stuff.  Then we walked across the island to see the giant tortoises at a conservation farm.

Next morning we sailed to the other side of Praslin but stayed on board because there was a lot of surf at the beach which generally means you will flip the dinghy when you get too close to the shore.  If we had a proper dinghy anchor I might have anchored off the beach and swam but we only had the standard cheap one which has zero holding power.  We played a game, read books, cooked and watched a movie.  A nice day.

There are hundreds of islands in the Seychelles but the main grouping is about 20-30 centered around Mahe.  Praslin is about 40 miles from Mahe and since the weather was good we motor sailed to Mahe to stay in the marina on Eden Island.  On the way down it was a little rough being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and for a while I wondered what the heck we were doing there, but after we completed the passage and pulled into a new and exciting place I remembered why I like cruising – seeing new places while travelling with your home.

Eden island is a 1%-er haven.  You can only get there by car and the only private security we saw was on Eden Island.  The houses are huge, very expensive, mostly empty and surrounded by mostly unused toys (boats and sea-doos).  That being said for us it was a great stop, we spent three nights there hitting up the grocery store, shopping for a few things, eating great ice cream ($5 a scoop ouch) and exploring the island.

There is a snorkel spot in the other Baie Ste Anne across the bay from Eden Island so we headed over there to anchor and snorkel right off the boat.  This didn’t really work out as while we were anchoring a rope got wrapped around one of the propellers.  It took all of us about 1.5 hours to get it off between the boys winching, Leah manning the dinghy and me in the water with a knife and using one rope to pull the other ropes off.  There was no damage – thankfully and we all got work together.

One of the biggest differences with being on a boat this time, the boys would actually fight to “drive” the boat.  They were also able to actually do things boat related instead of being more like talkative cargo.  Our time on Viatori was great but if we were to sail away again, it would be a totally different trip where we could do more hikes, inland exploring and the crew could be responsible for some of the tasks on the boat.

After getting the rope off we did make it to the shore and then it started to rain so I went back to the boat to close the hatches.  At one point on the way back I found myself surfing waves with the dinghy which was cool but dangerous because when they break they can flip you.  Using the throttle I was able to get out of the wave before it caused any trouble.  The boys chased each other around while Leah and I chatted.  Then back to the boat for nude-y showers and soap swims.  This is were the boys climb up one hull, get a fresh water rinse, soap up, walk to the other hull and then jump off.  The soap gets rinsed off as they swim back and then they get a fresh water rinse, saves on water and is fun too.  Dad had to show them how to do it first, Mom didn’t do it ever.

The most dangerous thing on a boat is calendar and we experienced that the next day because we had to get the boat back to Praslin and the weather had picked up more than expected.  We had a rainy crossing with 20 knots (36 kph) minimum wind and 3 meter beam seas.  Despite this it was a comfortable crossing because we were in a catamaran.  In Viatori it would have been awful.  The boat made 9 knots all the way and we could have gotten more but that was enough.  Ethan threw up after trying to watch a show, everyone else slept or read in their staterooms.  It eventually became a bit boring but seeing the other island appear out of the mist was great.

Throughout the trip I didn’t do the docking because I never had piloted a catamaran before, but this time I did.  It is totally different then a mono-hull but having two engines makes everything really easy once you get the feel of the throttles.  We had to “Med. Moor” which means you drop an anchor and then back toward the dock.  The anchor holds you off the dock and the ropes to dock hold you to the dock as well as preventing side to side motion.  After stopping the dock boys decided they wanted to move us so for the next 20 minutes we sat aboard and watched them play bumper boats including putting a massive scratch on the front of a brand new Lagoon 39 and backing our boat directly into the metal dock, tying it and leaving it there to rub.  I fixed that but all the boats had dock damage because there is no “adult supervision” on the dock 24-7 in Praslin.  In Mahe, there was a guy who kept the workers on a short leash and the boats there don’t get damaged at all.

The next morning we packed up, got our rental car and headed to our first hotel for the first part of our land based vacation on the Seychelles.