Over before it even got started

After streaming through the Suez Canal we entered the Red Sea where we were flanked by Sudan & Egypt before making our way south towards the pirate zone in the Gulf of Aden where Somalian pirates were our biggest threat. Fortunately we made it through unscathed, although hearing on the news a week later that a Japanese chemical tanker had being taken over by pirates in the same area was a bit unsettling, lucky for us I guess.
From there we started our 4 day voyage across the Indian Ocean where some of the sunsets were just amazing and in between the seemingly endless workload were treated to a BBQ up on the Sundeck and the use of the jacuzzi, for a moment it felt like I was on holidays......then the polishing started again. The weather across the Indian & for most part of the trip was quite good, a couple of bad days with the wind and swell & an incident of motoring across a fishing trawler line, which at first though might have been another small vessel as fishing trawlers are not common in that area.

During the trip we didn't have access to the internet or TV which was just hell as it meant that the crew had to bond & with most of them being quite jaded everyone just seemed to go to bed......at 7:30pm!
I decided to make use of the ships gym & do a workout every night while I could, god did it burn for a couple of days, my body has done a complete 3 60 since Ibiza and I even put one weight as I'm fed 3 times a day! When I went to put on my jeans after making it to land again thought the laundryman had shrunk then in the dryer but no the belt had gone up 2 notches!!

After finally making it halfway across the Indian Ocean to our destination the Maldives, we arrived in Mali where we fuelled up and moved onto our anchorage the next day at Bandos Island. There we had 10 days to get the boat in tip top condition before the guest arrived and also got 3 days off to rest and go ashore. I was lucky enough to be able to sort out a trip back to Mali with the yachting agents, but as none of the other crew members in our group wanted to go exploring it was just me and the laundryman who went to check it out.
Was nice being back to some kind of civilisation as I had a few things to buy and sort our as it was our last time ashore for a while and was wicked to be able to explore the little island capital. The Maldivians are really nice people & didn’t realise they were so closely related to the Indians, but was nice spending a good 10 hours there before being taken back to the yacht. Was also nice being able to go ashore at Bandos and drink & dance with some of the other yacht crews that had anchored up.

Unfortunately though it has all but finished. It seems that I may have rocked the boat a bit much and managed to get fired, for what could possibly be the first time.
In all honesty I would have stayed and just gone through the motions because of the itinerary but most probably came out just as jaded as most of the crew, so not all a bad thing and was a good month on board, an interesting & eye opening experience that I am going to try and do again.
I was flown back to Nice in France via Dubai where I had a 14 hour stopover and after debating with myself for 3 hours and trying out all the seat selections in the terminal reluctantly checked myself into the airport hotel where I’m still feeling dizzy about the price I had to pay. Then it was onto the next leg from Dubai to Nice where I managed to top my longest flight record to 10 hours. All of this flying was through Emirates which is much better than the EasyJet flights I'm use to. One of the finniest things though was when the food come out, there's so much stuff on that tiny little tray and watching everyone trying to manoeuvre 3 dishes of food, a coffee, water, a beer and 2 sets of cutlery and hearing distant sighs as it goes terribly wrong is quite amusing. I seemed to have managed it after hitting some turbulence and ending up my beer & lemon marang in my lap and my buttered bun in my water.

So I'm now back in Antibe, where I didn’t think I would be so soon, it just a week till Christmas & am trying to figure out what to do next as I don't really want to spend the Festive season here alone & freezing my tits off.

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/4002340