I arrived Saturday 23rd after a ten-hour flight. Mahe, the main island in the Seychelles, has steep and jagged granite peaks clothed in brilliant green. About a thousand miles from Africa in a brilliant blue sea. A shock after cold English February.
Tom Goreau and Wolf Hilbertz greet me at the airport. Nut brown and cheerful, but with bad news. Orphee, the principal research vessel for the trip, is nowhere in sight although it was due into Victoria, the port here, on 15th February. And there is no sign of any of the three consignments of scientific equipment, shipped via British Airways and also due on the 15th.
Seychelles makes Switzerland look cheap, even at the black market exchange rate nearly double the official one. So we take local bus into town rather than a taxi. The locals are friendly and laid back. A banner across the road reads ‘Lannen Lape ek Larmoni’ – Creole for l’Annee de la Paix et l’Harmonie (the year of peace and harmony).
We put up on Vaka-Lele, a yacht of about 38 feet acting as support vessel for Saya 2002. The skipper, a 59 year old German named Hartmut Kubitza has spent something like twenty years sailing the Indian ocean. There is no sign of and no word from the second support vessel, the Ceres, which was to have followed Vaka-Lele from Madagascar.
It seems that the Orphee was still in the port of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, as of yesterday, 22nd. It is not clear whether or not she left for the 1,000 mile plus journey to Victoria today. Pete Lucas, whom Wolf has hired as skipper, is by all accounts an excellent sailor, but he is a poor communicator and dyslexic. Pete’s most recent email is garbled and incomplete.
Pete has been in Dar since the beginning of the month, but it seems that, against explicit instructions, he has not loaded the full 3.2 tonnes of steel needed for the Saya project, which means Wolf will have to redesign the main structure. And there may or may not be a problem with the engine – an unacceptable risk almost anywhere, but especially in these seas. Also another boat, captained by an Italian named Lorenzo, may or may not be coming. Either way, there will be no film crew at Saya as promised.
It’s taken Tom and Wolf nearly five years to get everything in place. But now, everything feels like it is unraveling, and precious days are slipping away. I’ve brought good wine and Talisker whiskey, which would help bring the day to a mellow end, but for an endless stream of graphic verbiage from Kubitza about Thai and Malagasy females.
Tom talks about the sea warming happening this year over the Australian Great and much of the South West Pacific. This will cause massive coral bleaching and death, he says. “The trump card of those deny the gravity of threats to the world’s reefs has been the Barrier Reef – they say that if it is doing fine then surely there is no problem. But believe me the entire system is dying – not later this century, but now”.
Caspar Henderson
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