Sailing in the Seychelles by the sea shore

A week before my rostered flight to the Seychelles I received an exciting text message, along with the rest of the crew, from our captain proposing that we hire a yacht and spend three of the four nights sailing around the islands of the Seychelles!

Of the 11 of us only one was an experienced skipper - our Irish captain Chris - so you can imagine the follies that took place over the course of four days and certainly the wrath of mother nature didn't help matters. Day one we set sail from the Seychelles marina just after lunchtime with ice cold eskys full of beer, champagne, wine and ginger beer for the Pimms!! Music immediately started filtering through speakers and toasts were made to smooth sailing as we each reserved a spot on the netted flooring at the front of the catamaran, breathing in the oncoming ocean breezes and the gentle sound of breaking waves from underneath. Then, as if someone had flicked the 'off' switch for clear skies, sun, fun and laughter it was clear we were heading directly into an impressive storm. After two hours of nauseous wave riding through grey skies and pelting rain we were jubilant sailors to be finally reaching a protected harbour for the night.

Our victory unfortunately was short lived. In order to make our way onto the mainland for dinner we had to rely on the small six-man inflatable dinghy to take us to the refuge of steady ground, however after watching Captain Chris yank on that motor chord with impressive gusto for ten minutes we started to face the realisation that we would not be walking on land that night. With limited food supplies and a diminishing stock of seasickness tablets I knew it was time to open up the sausages which I had bought along in my mini-esky bag. No longer were the crew mocking my domestic organisation, instead they were lining up to get their ration of two sausages and tomato sauce. The remainder of the trip proved to be much smoother - picking star fruit from island trees, meeting some lovely local people at dinner and as each pink sunset fell over it became customary to sit on the front deck to pop corks and marvel at the incredible view around us.

Living off the fat of the land with fellow Aussie Melanie, and those knock out sunsets!!

On our third afternoon six of us jumped into the waters for the final time, with our snorkels and flippers to check out the marine life and it wasn't long before we came across an extremely friendly and equally curious yellow turtle. We just could not believe our luck at not only finding a turtle, but to have him stay and swim with us! We formed a circle around our new friend and he casually inspected us each, looking directly into our eyes. He let us get so close we were able to touch his slippery mossy green back. It will be a moment I will never forget and if it's possible to get underwater goosebumps, I certainly had them!