![Beachcomber crew](https://memesailing.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/beachcomber-crew.jpg?w=300&h=208)
All girls crew: Cas, Avril, Lyn, Daph, Elizabeth, Me, Josey
They shipped the boat a month early for the 1989 Beachcomber Race from Mauritius to Durban; we had rather wanted to be shipped last as we could have done with a bit more training, but now we were determined to make the most of it.
Cas, my Co-skipper and I decided to be there when the boat arrived, We had borrowed the L34 Yacht and we had found a sponsor for the all girls team rather late, so we wanted to make sure we did not have a problem.
That left us with a month in Mauritius, but Reunion was close by and with the owners permission we decided to sail there for a week or two.
One of our crew, Daphne decided it was a chance not to be missed and took leave to sail with us. That made it 3.
Our departure from Grand bay was not without mishap; we sailed out through the reef in the afternoon, and found we had one of the other boats sails onboard as well as ours. We were one of 10 boats all on the same ship so it was a bit chaotic. We turned round and now had to sail back in through the pass in the reef at night, wake up the boys on the boat and give them the sails and then sail out through the reef again. The pass was not well marked at all which led to a few anxious moments.
This accomplished we set sail for Reunion 125 NM away.
Once we had cleared the bottom end of Mauritius, the seas were big and this led to all of us getting seasick, we did not feel like doing anything, so we kept the boat on shortened sail and put Sebastian the autopilot on. (We named all the equipment on board with boys names, for a giggle on a all girls boat). The seas were rough and the swells in that part of the Indian Ocean are huge, we had a knock down and the sprouter with all the bean sprouts took off, spraying bean sprouts everywhere, we cleared them up as best we could but the whole race long we were finding little curly sprouts coming out of the woodwork.
It was the days before GPS or even Sat Nav. I forced myself to take a noon sight and then an afternoon sight to fix ourselves to be able to pick up Reunion at dusk. The Island showed up as the sun set as an enormous dark mass against the red of the sunset.
Once we had sailed up to the Island, which we reached about 2200, we had to decide whether to take a port or Starboard turn, Starboard won as it was down wind and leading to the lea of the Island.
About midnight, Daphne called me up to say there was a ship, it was anchored.” There must be a port nearby”, I said, “they only anchor ships off of ports. Let’s go closer and see what we can find”.
We were all awake now and Cas joined us as we sailed towards the shore. “Look, it looks like some ships there: said Daph, “do you think there is a port there?”
“There must be,” I remarked thoughtfully, “I do not think they have started parking ships on land yet.”
Hey, that ship looks as though it is sandwiched between to bits of land in the cliffs.” Daph said in awe. It was an amazing sight, the port had been carved out of the cliffs and from where we were the ship looked as though the cliffs were close on either side of the ship.
Well ships need tugs and where tugs can go, we most certainly can so there has to be space for us to pass, was our reasoning.
We saw the Green light of the Starboard breakwater but no red one for the port breakwater; it did not bother Cas or me as lights go out at times and are not always repaired promptly.
We continued slowly towards the shore and sure enough the Port breakwater became visible against the background. Once passed the breakwaters, we saw small fishing boats moored on buoys off to Port and the shipping channel straight ahead. Then it took an abrupt turn to Starboard, we followed it passed more ships to a small floating jetty with one other small harbour craft moored to it.
We decided as we had run out of harbour and no one was answering the VHF Radio, we would spend the night there and have a good sleep and see if anyone would talk to us in the morning.
We woke up to a moonscape of terraced black bleak lava rock reaching up as far as we could see through the hatch, at the top was parked a bicycle. It looked so ridiculous we could not help laughing.
We found out later they had dug a new port out of the lava rock. An amazing feat and all around us were high, black terraced walls, devoid of any vegetation and looking like something from a Sci Fi movie.
No one came to see us or wanted to talk to us on VHF so we left deciding to find the old port so that we could clear in. We decided that we were “Columbus” sailors in that when we set out we were not sure where we were going, when we got there we were not sure we had arrived, when we left we were not sure where we had been, and we did it all on borrowed money.
We trailed behind the boat on harnesses having a bath on our way round and moored in Port des Galets and waited for customs and immigration to arrive.
The Official was good looking, but after he kept on asking us where the man was, he was no longer that attractive. He asked us who was skipper and Cas and I said we were, who was crew and Daph said She was, again he said, “but where is the man”. He definitely thought women were not able to sail without a man. Needless to say he did not win the popularity vote with us, but we did enjoy the laugh that you could still find such mucho male.