MV Dirona travel digest for Reunion 2015


Show Reunion 2015 travel log map Click the travel log icon on the left to see these locations on a map, with the complete log of our cruise.

On the map page, clicking on a camera or text icon will display a picture and/or log entry for that location, and clicking on the smaller icons along the route will display latitude, longitude and other navigation data for that location. And a live map of our current route and most recent log entries always is available at //mvdirona.com/maps/LocationCurrent.html.


   

9/22/2015: Certificate of Clearance
We cleared out of Rodrigues this morning on a 467nm run to Reunion. The paperwork Customs brought indicated our next port of call was Port Louis, Maritius, and they corrected it by hand to read Reunion Island. Port Louis is the typical next port for most pleasure craft leaving Rodrigues--we don't know of a single other pleasure craft that's not gone there after Rodrigues. If we didn't have to clear out and clear back in again at Port Louis, we might have gone there first. But we didn't see enough appeal to warrant the clearance overhead and opted to head straight for Reunion and spend more time there enjoying the scenery Reunion is famous for.
9/22/2015: Traffic
As when we neared Rodrigues, we're seeing a lot of shipping traffic west of the island as well. The ships are all passing between South Africa and the Strait of Malacca. Conditions have been a little rough, with 10ft seas on the beam. 10 feet actually is not a problem at all, it's the 7-second wave frequency. Long-duration waves just slowly lift the boat up and lower it back down again and you hardly notice it. Short duration waves are steep and cause the boat to roll much more.
9/23/2015: Current
We left Rodrigues with 2,013 gallons of diesel and South Africa is about 1,835 miles from Rodrigues via Reunion. So we have far more fuel than we will need for this run. We could easily be running 8 or 9 knots, but are running at 6.5-6.8 in order to arrive into Reunion at first light rather than the middle of the night. We're in one of the strongest positive currents we've ever been in and are getting a fuel economy of 2.91 nm/gallon. You can see from the roll guage directly right of the 2.91 nm/g fuel economy reading that sea conditions have improved as expected. The waves are now 8-9ft on 8-9 seconds and have shifted more to the stern. These conditions aren't bad-we'll cook and do everything as usual--but the boat is moving enough you still have to keep an eye on things as you move around.
9/23/2015: Ship
Most of the shipping traffic we've encountered has been at night, but we actually did see one in daylight too. It looks huge.
9/23/2015: Courtesy flag
Taking down our Mauritian courtesy flag.
9/24/2015: Fuel economy
We're still running in a strong positive current as we near Mauritius, with excellent fuel economy. Conditions have continued to settle, and we're rolling much less than 24 hours earlier.
9/24/2015: Halfway around
As we pass south of Mauritius, we're exactly halfway around the world from Seattle.
9/24/2015: Boat wash
The boat was pretty dirty from being moored off the commercial port at Rodrigues, and we got quite salty on the first day of our run to Reunion. We haven't had much rain to rinse us off, so James gave it a quick power wash.
9/25/2015: Lights
It's just past midnight and 25 miles out we can just start to see city lights on Reunion and the navigation light on Pointe de Bel-Air.
9/25/2015: Le Port
The city lights of Le Port, our destination, are just visible in the distance shortly past dawn. We're about an hour out at this point.
9/25/2015: Est Port
Looking southeast through the commercial harbour, Est Port, into Reunion's dramatic mountainous interior.
9/25/2015: Osiris
The French fisheries patrol vessel Osiris approached when we were still several miles out and closely monitored our progess until we entered the port. Perhaps we do look a bit like a commercial troller.
9/25/2015: Port Ouest
Approaching Port Ouest. We'd contacted Port Control on channel 12 as we passed Est Port, who gave us permission to enter Port Ouest and directed us to moor on the sea wall inside the south basin to clear through.
9/25/2015: Basin Pere Gueze
Entering Basin Pere Gueze. Ahead of us is the 191ft expedition yacht Pangaea, with an incredible assortment of toys on board.
9/25/2015: Seawall
En route to Reunion, we'd been in contact via email with the two Port Captains, Jerome Belhuerne and Pierre Dalele, and given them our ETA. They given us a Declaration de D'Entree to fill out in advance and notified Customs of our arrival. We landed shortly after 7am, Customs arrived around 9am, and we were cleared through before 9:30.
9/25/2015: Entering Port de Plaisance
Port Captain Pierre Dalele stopped by while we were clearing through and said we'd be berthed in the new marina closer to town. The office is in the old marina, which is a bit of a walk from either the seawall or the new marina. So Pierre suggested we bring Dirona into Port de Plaisance and moor briefly in front the office to pickup keys etc. before heading over to our berth in the new marina.
9/25/2015: Port de Plaisance
Moored off the marina office in Port de Plaisance.
9/25/2015: Blue screen
Our NavNet 3D system had been having flickering screen issues on the last day into Reunion. It runs on an embedded Windows XP operating system and this morning we got a blue screen indicating the video driver had gone into an infinite loop. Looks like we've got an issue there to deal with.
9/25/2015: Plugged in
Plugged into the power at our berth in the new marina Grand Port Maritime. We're again using the same power adapter that we built in Papeete and used in Fiji and New Zealand.
9/25/2015: Grand Port Maritime
The new marina, Grand Port Maritime, opened only recently and still has plenty of space.
9/25/2015: American boats
Given we're so far from home, we're surprised to find ourselves moored between two other American boats, Traveler of California and Apogee of Alaska.
9/25/2015: SFR
We picked up a SIM card from SFR. The best option available was 5 days for 4 Euros. This included 100meg at 3G, then connectivity dropped to 2G after that. We quickly burned through the initial allocation, but the slower speed supported after seems perfectly workable.
9/25/2015: La Petite Brasserie
We had an excellent lunch streetside at La Petite Brasserie. We'd arrived on a Friday and by noon many of the stores were closing. We were lucky to get our SIM card, as they closed up at 12:30 just as we were leaving. Many re-opened again around 2pm. Lunch appears to be an important meal here.
9/25/2015: Secret Coast
We had James Ellingford's advice in exploring Australia and James is going to use some of ours in exploring our home cruising ground of British Columbia. Here's James aboard Pendana in Hawaii with our British Columbia cruising guide, Cruising the Secret Coast.
9/25/2015: Le Hangar
We had a delicious meal at Le Hangar with Lori and Rob from neighbouring boat Apogee of Alaska. Standing is our animated and friendly host, who runs the restaurant with her chef husband.
9/26/2015: Apogee
Lori and Rob on Valiant 42 Apogee of Alaska left this morning. They'll be visiting Madagascar before continuing on to South Africa.
9/26/2015: Debugging
Our NavNet 3D black box began showing screen anomalies the night before we arrived in Reunion and blue-screened as we neared the dock, reporting an nv4_disp device driver problem. This is an Nvidia device driver--almost certainly we have a hardware problem. NavNet 3D is a Windows XP Embedded device, so we don't have direct access to the operating system. We tried booting up in Safe Mode, but that blue-screens as well. We tried booting up in VGA mode and that hangs. James created a Linux boot partition on a USB jump drive and we booted it up on that, mounted the Windows drive and renamed the faulty device driver in the hope that Windows would use the default Microsoft driver as a fall-back. That hung as well. From Linux booted off the USB, James was able to run graphics and system memory tests and unfortunately they are fine. It's very probably we have a faulty graphics card.
9/26/2015: Graphics card
The faulty graphics card is an Elsa Gladiac 776 GS 256MB. It went out of production around 2006, so finding a replacement on the small island of Reunion should be entertaining.
9/26/2015: Redundancy
Although the NavNet 3D multi-function display black box (MFDBB) crashes, it crashes after it has brought up the rest of the NavNet 3D system. The other devices on the Furuno network, such as RADAR, continue to operate fine. These we can access through our PC-based chartplotter program, MaxSea, so we still are functional even without the full NavNet 3D system. And if the MFDBB fails entirely, we can bring the system up on a second NavNet 3D device, an MDF8, installed on the flybridge.
9/26/2015: NAV mode
Even with the failed multi-function display black box, there's enough redundancy in the system that almost all the navigation data is available. The one thing missing is NAV mode, which we really depend on at sea. NAV mode essentially asks the autopilot to steer to a pre-programmed course rather than just in a specific direction. It's particularly useful in cross-currents and strong winds, or when travelling longer distances. Right now NAV mode is fed via a direct NMEA 0183 connection from the MFDBB to our autopilot and doesn't work anymore. Here James is monitoring NMEA 0183 output from the nav computer in order to feed that into the autopilot to get NAV mode working. We now have it configured so that we can change between NAV mode from the MFDBB or from the PC, so it's now fully redundant as well.
9/27/2015: Nearly fully operational
With NAV mode now working from the PC, we're very close to fully operational again. In our normal operating mode underway, we have two screens attached to our PC, one showing MaxSea in chartplotter mode at small scale and the other showing Maretron instrumentation. And we have two more screens running off the NavNet 3D system, one showing RADAR at small scale and the other showing a mixed four-box window with a depthsounder, and a monitoring camera view, and large-scale RADAR and chartplotter windows. With the NavNet 3D failure we go from 3 navigation display screens and one screen of Maretron instrumentation screen down to 2 navigation display screens and a 10" android screen showing Maretron instrumentation. This is not ideal but functional. At sea, where there is little to display on the chartplotter, we might just run a single MaxSea display and overlay the RADAR on the chartplotter and continue to display Maretron instrumentation on the second PC screen.
9/27/2015: NMEA 0183
Since we had the systems opened and were making some NMEA 0183 changes, we went through and eliminated any unnecessary bus traffic.
9/28/2015: Garcia
At Garcia car rental to pickup a Peugot 208 to explore the island.
9/28/2015: Route du Littoral
The Route du Littora between Le Port and St. Denis runs below dramatic steep cliffs. Judging by the barrier protecting the road, some fairly large rocks fall from the cliffs.
9/28/2015: Chain mail
Many of the cliffs along the Route du Littora were strung with a form of chain mail from top to bottom to prevent rocks from hitting the road. That looked like an expensive operation to install.
9/28/2015: Drainage ditch
Reunion must get some major rainfall to need drainage canal as big as the one disappearing behind the rails. We'd driven to the eastern edge of town, just to see what was around, and were returning back to the core.
9/28/2015: Monument aux morts
We parked the car near the "Monument aux morts" to walk around St. Denis for a few hours. The city, founded in 1668 and named the island capitol in 1738, is rich in colonial history with many well-preserved heritage buildings. Behind the memorial is the old city hall building, completed in 1860. Many consider it the most beautiful building in the city.
9/28/2015: Government offices
This renovated 1800s-era building near the waterfront now houses modern government offices. St. Denis has done an impressive job of preserving its architectrual heritage.
9/28/2015: Vapiano
We stopped for an excellent pizza lunch with the local brew, Dodo, on the patio at Vapiano near the waterfront.
9/28/2015: St. Denis Cathedral
The St. Denis Cathedral dates back to the 1800s.
9/28/2015: Consul General
The Consul General building is another beautifully-preserved colonial structure.
9/28/2015: Maison de Dodo
The brewery for the local beer, Dodo, just west of the city center.
9/28/2015: Kioske des 4 Canons
From St. Denis we could see the road to La Montagne climb steeply up the cliff, so we followed it hoping for some views. The Kioske de 4 Canons was one of several pullouts along the way with incredible view back into St. Denis and along the coast.
9/28/2015: Bus
Large buses moved suprisingly quickly up the slope, but took a lot of the road as they rounded the bends. Driving the road in a small car is at least interesting. We have no idea how anyone could possibly get a 40ft bus successfully up it, much less doing regular runs.
9/28/2015: Switchbacks
The road up was incredibly steep and full of switchbacks--we've never driven anything like it. In the center of the picture you can see two tiers of switchbacks--there's many more above and below.
9/28/2015: Belvedere des 3 Bancs
The amazing view from Belvedere des 3 Bancs. Believe it or not, we're still not at the top.
9/28/2015: Champ de Tir
The road continued to ascend and curve through La Montange and into the mountains, with few pullouts or views until this one at Champ de Tir.
9/28/2015: Est Port
Looking to Est Port from the hills above La Possession.
9/29/2015: Plug n Play
We went to Plug n Play in an attempt to buy a low-voltage relay. It turns out Plug n Play is a boutique computer builder focused on exotic, liquid-cooled gaming systems. Their systems are beautiful to look at and can run north of 5 GHz. They don't stock the electrical components we were after, but pointed us towards a local supplier, Max Electronique, who did. Since the Plug n Play staff know graphics systems incredibly well, we asked about the Elsa Gladiac 776 GS that we need. Of course the adapters they sell are far higher performing and weren't built a decade ago, but they got on the phone to help us and found a local server sales and service company that might have a compatible graphics adapter. Hopefully they find sucess in their used parts bin.
9/29/2015: Le Quai Gilbert
We decided to go out exploring in the car and ended up in St. Paul for lunch. We had a good lunch at Le Quai Gilbert overlooking the beach.
9/30/2015: Graphics testing
In addition to working on finding us a compatible used graphics card, Plug n Play offered to test our card to ensure it was a hardware problem rather than a driver issue. That was really kind of them. Our graphics adapter wasn't able to light a pixel, whereas a similar current-generation Nvidia driver in the same box worked great. It's now certain we need a graphics adapter.
10/2/2015: Waterfall tour
Rain was predicted to fall the entire day, but we really wanted to get out and explore more of the island. Cirque de Salazie is one of three volcanic calderas at the island's center and the access road is full of impressive waterfalls, so we figured this would be a good day for a waterfall tour. The views wouldn't likely be as good, but the waterfalls would be in full force. This is the first one we saw, as soon as we got into the foothills of the Cirque de Salazie at Ilet Payet.
10/2/2015: Cascade Blanche
Cascade Blanche had enough force eject spray horizontally nearly 100 feet off the cliff.
10/2/2015: Tight squeeze
The road into Cirque de Salazie is narrow and winding with many small bridges that are only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. The road also was busy with bus and truck traffic. At several points en route we had to stop to allow a larger vehicle room to negotiate a hairpin turn.
10/2/2015: Waterfalls
Waterfalls ribboned the slopes as we gained elevation and neared the town of Salazie. Rain had been falling most of the way, but we still got a decent view to the cliffs.
10/2/2015: Bridal Veil Falls
Cascade du Voile de la Mariee (Bridal Veil Falls) are the largest of the pictured falls, slightly left of center. The falls drop in several stages and continue down into the ravine at the bottom center of the picture.
10/2/2015: Marie a Vielle Place
We stopped for a late breakfast at a picnic shelter at Marie a Vielle Place. The picnic area was on the edge of a gorge and the views down likely were fabulous in more clear weather, but it's pretty socked in right now.
10/2/2015: Gorge
The gorge below the picnic area at Marie a Vielle Place was mostly obscured, but the clouds did clear slightly after we'd finished breakfast and we got a brief glimpse into the valley. The scenery here is simply amazing, even in these conditions. We were very happy to have made the trip.
10/2/2015: Cols des Boeufs
We followed an incredibly steep, narrow and winding road past Grand Ilet to the end at Cols des Boeufs. The road was in excellent condition, but the hills dropped steeply on the outside, with few guard rails, and a 2-ft-deep, car-eating drainage ditch often ran along the inside. And oncoming traffic didn't necessarily stay on their side of the road. We saw little traffic beyond Grand Ilet until we reached the parking lot at Cols des Boeufs, which was absolutely jammed. This is the start of the popular 4-day hike through Cirque de Mafete, the westward caldera adjacent to Cirque de Salazie. Had we any hope of a view, we would have taken the short path nearby to the Piton Marmite lookout. But a heavy rain was falling and visibility was so bad we were having trouble seeing the hood ornament.
10/2/2015: Farming
Small farm plots were packed in the hills all along the route.
10/2/2015: Hell-Bourg
Hell-Bourg, named after former governor Amiral de Hell is a small hamlet tucked into the center of the Cirque de Salazie. This is looking up the main street pretty much from one end to the other. With its narrow streets and closely-packed buildings, the city felt very old-European.
10/2/2015: P'ti Koin Kreol
We had a delicious lunch in Hell-Bourg at tiny P'ti Koin Kreol, which seats about 16 people. James had sauteed fish and Jennifer had chicken with the local vegetable, chouchou, a pear-shaped vegetable imported from Brazil in the early 1800s.
10/2/2015: Another waterfall
We'd missed this several-hundred foot waterfall just outside Hell-Bourg on the way up, possibly it was hidden in the mist. It was already starting to disappear as we looked for a place to stop and take a picture.
10/2/2015: Riviere du Mat
The road up to the Salazie runs mostly alongside the Riviere du Mat. The river wasn't very high now, but judging by the canyon height and the distance above the water to the first growth, the flow can be impessive during the height of the rainy season.
10/2/2015: Salazie
The Paroisse Notre Dame de l'Assomption (Parish of Our Lady of the Assumption) dominates the scene as we returned back through Salazie.
10/2/2015: Bridge footing
Two sets of substantial old bridge footings straddled the Riviere du Mat near Ilet Petit Trou. We frequently saw evidence of road construction and rerouting on our trips around the island. The roads all are well-built and in good condition--narrow, but impressive engineering to be there at all.
10/2/2015: Rivieres des Roches
After returning out from Cirque de Salazie at St. Andre, we continued our waterfall tour slightly to the south near Bras-Panon. The route was well-marked, but as we followed a single-lane road that barely cleared the sugar cane fields on either side, we were beginning to wonder if we were in the right place. The road ended in a parking lot and a bridge over the Rivieres des Roches, source of the waterfall at Bassin La Paix.
10/2/2015: Steps
We crossed the river and followed a well-trod footpath to a set of steep stairs that led down to the north side of the waterway.
10/2/2015: Bassin La Paix
The spectacular falls at Bassin La Paix pour over a lip into the basin below.
10/2/2015: Niagara Falls
The last waterfall on our tour was Niagara Falls. While not quite as large as their namesake, the falls were beautiful and did throw an impressive amount of mist into the air.
10/2/2015: Road flooded
We'd tried to reach Niagara Falls through the exit just south of Ste-Suzanne, but the bridge at route N2002 was flooded and closed to traffic. So we'd had to drive through Ste-Suzanne at rush hour. Traffic was terrible and we were hoping to find an alternate route back out. But this road also was flooded. We probably could have made it across, but it didn't feel worth the risk.
10/3/2015: Le Maido
The viewpoints into the mountains are best seen early in the morning as by mid-morning they often cloud in. So we left Le Port at 5:30am on the 39km drive to Le Maido to take in the sweeping view into the Cirque de Mafete. Following another well-maintained, but incredibly steep and winding road, we reached the viewpoint by 7am. As we ascended, we passed into and above the clouds. From the parking lot, we couldn't see the coast through the clouds, so we worried the cirque also would be obscured when we arrived.
10/3/2015: View
We almost cheered when we reached the viewpoint--the cirque was clear and we could see all the way down inside. The view was just incredible.
10/3/2015: Cirque de Mafate
We spent ages walking along the viewpoint and feeling incredibly lucky to be here with such good visibility. The video https://youtu.be/wBf0Zjk2D3Q (1:38) shows the 360 degree view looking into the cirque, zooming in on two of the several villages inside the cirque. Hiking trails lead through some of the villages--hikers eat and sleep at walkers lodges along the way. The clouds over the coast had lifted while we were there, so we also got a good view west to the coastal town of St-Gilles les Bains.
10/3/2015: Piton de la Fournaise
Among Reunion's many natural wonders is Piton de la Fournaise, an active and accessible volcano at the south end of the island. Smoke and steam from the volcano is clearly visible from Le Maido.
10/3/2015: Breakfast
A picnic breakfast cliff-side overlooking the cirque.
10/3/2015: Clouds
The scenery changed constantly as we watched with clouds flowing over the cirque lip, into the center and up the sides.
10/3/2015: Helicopter
Several helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft toured the cirque while we were there. We're told the helicopter trip is a must-do experience. By 9am clouds were starting to obscure the cirque.
10/3/2015: OPAR
From the parking lot we walked a beautifully-built road to an observation tower we could see on a point to the southwest, hoping for a good view of the coast. The area around the tower was quite overgrown though, and the view no better than at Le Maido. More interesting was the building we noticed when we turned back east. This is one of three OPAR (Observatoire de Physique de l'Atmosphère à La Réunion or Atmospheric Physics Observatories) on the island. The other two are in Saint Denis and at the Gillot airport.
10/3/2015: Le Grand Benare
Several groups of runners passed us as we followed the road further. The path we are on leads to an excellent 360-degree viewpoint at Le Grand Benare and appears to be a popular running route.
10/3/2015: Visibility
The paved road ends at the research station, about a quarter of the way to Le Grand Benare. Beyond the way is over a steep and rutted dirt track. We continued for a bit, but visibility deterioted to the point where we could hardly see the road in front of us, so we didn't see much point in continuing.
10/3/2015: Tour Cycliste
As we neared Le Port on our return back to Dirona, several police motorcycles approached in the oncoming lane and directed traffic off the road. Cyclists in the 69th annual Tour de La Reunion followed soon after. This was the 8th of 9 stages and runs 2 laps around Le Port before finishing in La Montagne in the mountains above St. Denis. The steep winding road to La Montange is challenging enough by car, we can't imagine biking it.
10/4/2015: Marion Dufresne
The French Oceanographic research vessel Marion Dufresne arrived into port yesterday. It's registered in Marseilles, but operarates from Reunion. The Marion Dufresne serves the French Southern Indian Ocean and Antarctic holdings and was built for the extreme weather conditions there, where 12–15 meter waves are common. The ship was incredibly well-rigged, with several impressive cranes fore and aft.
10/4/2015: Tour
The Marion Dufresne appeared to be running tours, so we went over to find out if we could get aboard. The tours were popular and completely booked up in advance, with large crowds waiting their turn to board. Fortunately there were several no-shows, and we were able to get a stand-by slot on one of the tours.
10/4/2015: Dining room
The ship can carry up to 100 passengers, with 6 officers and 22 crew. It was recently renovated and looked beautiful inside, closer to a cruise ship than a research vessel. This is looking into the dining room, which can seat up to 58 people in two sittings. In addition to research and support work for the French territories, the Marion Dufresne also carries eco-tourists. Although the fare for the month-long trip starts at $9,000USD per person, the trip is apparently very popular and tickets are sold out three years in advance.
10/4/2015: Galley
The galley on the Marion Dufresne is almost as beautiful as the dining room. We're told the food on-board is excellent, with meals accompanied by high-quality French wine.
10/4/2015: Kerguelen Islands
The French Southern Indian Ocean holdings include the Kerguelen Islands, the St. Paul and Amsterdam islands and the Crozet Islands. All are roughly south of Reunion between latitude 37 and 50. This chart on the wall shows the Kerguelen Islands. They look like wonderful cruising territory--too bad they're so remote.
10/4/2015: Cinema
The tour was all in French, but we could understand some and one of the other participants spoke English and interpreted for us.
10/4/2015: Eurocopter
Reunion-based Helilagon provides the ship's Eurocopter.
10/4/2015: Life boat
One of the ship's 16-person lifeboats was open for viewing. We've never seen the inside of one, and hopefully never will need to.
10/4/2015: Research facilities
The ship had two large research facilities that looked capable of supporting several dozen researchers.
10/4/2015: Bridge
The bridge was huge, with excellent visibility.
10/4/2015: Helm
The helm is a Raytheon ComPilot 20. The ship has two electric propulsion motors, 2,650 kilowatts each on two shafts, and a 750 kilowatt bow thruster.
10/4/2015: Chart
On this chart of the Indian Ocean at the bridge, the area north of Madagascar was annotated with crosshatches and labelled "High Risk Area". And a large rectangle was drawn in the area south and east of Madascar and labelled as the Malaysian Airline search area. We asked one of the bridge crew how they managed the high risk area. They said they mostly avoided the area, and brought French military on-board if they had to go there. And the airline search area was annotated as a reminder to look for debris to help the search.
10/4/2015: Hold
The ship's hold viewed from the bridge. It's a long way down.
10/4/2015: Marina
The view to the marina from the bridge of the Marion Dufresne. Several more international pleasure craft arrived over the past few days and the marina is starting to fill up. Dirona is just visible at the left of the picture. We're the only power boat in the marina except for some small local craft at the far left.
10/6/2015: Valve adjustment
The valves on our John Deere 6068AFM75 require adjustment every 2,000 hours. We last did this in New Zealand not even two years ago but it's due again.
10/6/2015: Drive belt
Checking the main engine drive belt, accessory, and idler bearings. James is feeling for rough spots or noise when rotated, or free play.
10/6/2015: Pressure test
We pressure-test the cooling system every 2,000 hours. It's one of those jobs that seems like a waste, as we never find a problem. But this time we did—the pressure test indicated a very slow leak.
10/6/2015: Coolant leak
We found a coolant leak where the hoses connect to the main engine keel cooler. The installed clamps were too big and had bottomed out rather than clamping with full force. James replaced the two clamps with four high-quality clamps of the right size and stopped the leak. The corrosion visible at the keel cooler is from a small saltwater leak that will require hauling the boat and removing the keel cooler to properly repair. Ironically, the leak showed up just after our last haulout in New Zealand. We've temporarily sealed the leak with epoxy, which does work, but it appears to cause some surface corrosion.
10/6/2015: Oil leak
We also investigated a small oil leak at the main engine power take-off cover. The sealing o-ring was hardened and cracked. We don’t carry a spare, but successfully sealed it up with Permatex orange and will get two spare o-rings on our next Deere parts order.
10/6/2015: Vacuum
Time to change the bag on the central vacuum.
10/7/2015: Belvedere du Nez-de-Boeuf
We left the marina at 5:30 this morning on the 2-hour drive to le Volcan, Piton de la Fournaise, at the south end of the island. As with all the mountain roads we've driven, the elevation brough some spectacular viewpoints. This is looking south through the Riviere des Remparts river valley from Belvedere du Nez-de-Boeuf.
10/7/2015: La Plaine des Cafres
The La Plaine des Cafres viewed from the road to Le Volcan. The large mountain on the right is 10,068ft (3,069m) Piton des Neiges, the highest point on the island. It's a popular multi-day climb with an amazing 360-degree view from the summit. On the left is 9,500ft (2,896m) Le Grand Benare—we'd walked partway along the track to the viewpoint there when we visited Le Maido.
10/7/2015: Plaine des Sables
As we popped over the rim at 7,742ft (2,360m) Pas de Sables, the view across the volcanic ash Plaine des Sables was surreal. We felt as if we'd landed on another planet.
10/7/2015: Pas de Bellecombe
The sweeping view from 7,582ft (2,311m) Pas de Bellecombe to Piton de la Fournaise across it's outer crater, Enclos Fouque.
10/7/2015: Ferme
We were planning to hike the track across Enclos Fouque and up to Balcon du Dolomieu for views down into Dolomieu Crater. Unfortunately the track was closed due to high levels of volcanic activity. Several people did climb over the locked gate anyway, and we were sorely tempted to follow. But getting arrested in a foreign country held little appeal, and the track might actually be closed for good reason. Customs mentioned that a tourist was killed during a recent eruption.
10/7/2015: Formica Leo
The small crater Formica Leo in Enclos Fouque far below us along the track to Balcon du Dolomieu. It was so named due to its resemblance to the pitfall traps built by antlions, an insect that preys on ants and other small crawling creatures.
10/7/2015: Plaine des Osmondes
We followed a track from the locked Balcon du Dolomieu gate north along the crater rim. After about 20 minutes we reached a clearing with views across Plaine des Osmondes at the north end of Enclose Fouque to the ocean in the distance.
10/7/2015: Le Volcan
Shortly before Pas de Bellecombe, we'd passed a jam-packed car park and our map showed a trail leading from there around the eastern edge of Enclos Fouque with a viewpoint towards the volcano. We decided to try it, hoping for a good view. About twenty minutes in we were stopped in our tracks and amazed to see lava spewing from the volcano. At this point, we were no longer disappointed that the track to Balcon du Dolomieu was closed. Rather, we felt lucky to be able to view a live eruption and could see the advantage of not being within spitting distance of it.
10/7/2015: Flow
Molten lava flowed down the edge of the caldera in a red, oozing stream.
10/7/2015: Track
We were far from the only ones on the track—at least a hundred other hikers were here as well, including one tour bus full. This shot reminded us a little of that famous photo of prospectors crossing Chilkoot Pass during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush.
10/7/2015: Piton de Bois Vert
We stopped at 7,460ft (2,274m) Piton de Bois Vert with an excellent view to the volcanic action. We watched for ages, amazed, as lava constantly boiled, bubbled, and spewed out of the volcano.
10/7/2015: Lava river
Molten lava flowed in rivers and reached almost to the edge of the cliff directly below us.
10/7/2015: Lunch
We had a picnic lunch cliff-side taking in the amazing scenery and the exciting volcanic activity. The video https://youtu.be/nYAz5wx9T1I (1:19) starts with a pan from our lunch perch to the lava rivers and then zooms in on the volcano. You can hear the sound of the volcano as ejected molten lava lands on the side of the caldera.
10/7/2015: Fog
Although we were in a real rush to reach the volcano early in case clouds obscured visibility, it's a good thing we stopped to take a few photos on the way up. This is the view from inside the car around 1:30pm on the way back down. The fog was so thick we could barely see the road in front of us and couldn't see the lit headlights of oncoming traffic until they were within three car-lengths away. The road was twisting with steep drop-offs on either side and at times we had to slow down to about 20 kph to avoid driving off the edge in the fog.
10/9/2015: Baguettes
We restocked our supply of delicious French baguettes today. We eat one or two a day, and sometimes more.
10/9/2015: Graphics card
Plug n Play called this morning. In a show of amazing customer service, they'd somehow managed to track down a used Nvidia 6200 graphics card that is compatible with the graphics driver in our Nav Net 3D black box. It's not identical to the failed Elsa Gladiac 776 adapter (a clone of the Nvidia 760) but it just might work. Getting the card in and out is a real pain the way the black box is mounted, but James has had a fair bit of practice now and is getting pretty efficient at it.
10/9/2015: Booting
The moment of truth. Even Spitfire picked up on the excitement. The block box booted up properly using the new graphics card without a hint of a blue screen. But it remained in VGA and single monitor mode, rather than switching to high resolution two-screen mode.
10/9/2015: THANK YOU Plug n Play!
We found that if we just went into the installation menu after booting, the system would properly switch into high resolution two-screen mode. The black box appears to be working perfectly now. It's soooo nice to see it back. THANK YOU Plug n Play!
10/12/2015: Cirque de Cilaos
We left the marina at 5:30 this morning to drive up to the Cirque de Cilaos, completing our three-cirque tour. This is the first glimpse to the cirque as we pass through the dramatic gorge of the Bras de Cilaos (the river Cilaos Arm) at of elevation 676 ft (206 m).
10/12/2015: Islet Augustin
A few buildings in the village of Islet Augustin are just visible about halfway up on the left of the photo. The road we just travelled on passes between the spire at center and the bluff to the right. We're now at elevation 1,254 ft (382 m).
10/12/2015: Viewpoint
Several formal viewpoints were on the route, with beautifully painted interpretive signs labelling the towns and natural features.
10/12/2015: Grand Benare
The mountain on the left in the distance is (2,898m) Le Grand Benare and in the center is 9,905ft (3,019m) Gros Morne at the itersecetion of the three cirques of Salazie, Mafete and Cilaos. We last had a view to Le Grand Benare looking across La Plaine des Cafres on our way up to the volcano.
10/12/2015: Bras do Cilaos
The Bras de Cilaos isn't carrying much water now, but looks as if it can flow a torrent.
10/12/2015: Pont de la Boucle
The road up to Cirque de Cilaos was the most winding, steep and difficult Reunion road we'd driven so far. And that is saying a lot. At several places, the road narrowed to one lane with blind corners where cars honk their horns before passing through to alert any oncoming traffic. Here at Pont de la Boucle (Loop Bridge), the road actually loops back over itself after a hairpin turn. We're now up to elevation 2,200 ft (670 m).
10/12/2015: Tunnel de Peter Both
Drivers must wait outside the single-lane Tunnel de Peter Both for any oncoming traffic to pass through before entering.
10/12/2015: Le Palmiste Rouge
We stopped for breakfast at a viewpoint overlooking the town of Le Palmiste Rouge. We're now at elevation 3,274 ft (998 m).
10/12/2015: Mare Seche
The small village of Mare Seche is visible on the plateau in the middle distance, with Le Grand Benare directly behind and the Cirque du Mafete in the distance at center. The road we're on passes between Mare Seche and the hill to the right of the village. We're now at elevation 5,816 ft (1,772m).
10/12/2015: L'Eglise Notre-Dame-des-Neiges
The striking church Notre-Dame-des-Neiges at the northern end of the town of Cilaos is a prominent landmark throughout the cirque. The church was completed in 1942 and is on the list of Reunion historical monuments. At Cilaos we've dropped down to elevation 4,000 ft (1,220m).
10/12/2015: La Roche Merveilleuse
The panoramic view to the Cirque de Cilaos from 4,700ft (1,432m) La Roche Merveilleuse. The town of Cilaos is on the left with Piton des Neiges at center.
10/12/2015: Cilaos
Close-up to the town of Cilaos from La Roche Merveilleuse. We passed through that central mountain directly behind the town, Gros Morne de Gueule Rouge, in one of the two tunnels on the way up. The dip in the distant hills at the right is a viewpoint into the cirque called La Fenetre (The Window) that we are planning to visit sometime later this week.
10/12/2015: Bras Sec
Looking west across the cirque from a viewpoint outside the village of Bras Sec. The paved road ended here—we followed the dirt road a short distance, but it didn't look likely to yield any good views.
10/12/2015: Bassin des Salazes
We drove a short distance down steep switchbacks on the road towards the village of Ilet a Cordes but turned back after taking in the view across Bassin des Salazes.
10/12/2015: Rue de Pere Boiteau
The town of Cilaos is a mecca for hikers and we constantly saw people setting off on various hikes as we drove around the cirque. This is looking down the main street of Rue de Pere Boitea with Piton des Nieges in the background. The hike to the 10,072ft (3,070m) summit of Piton des Neiges is extremely popular--the parking lot at the start of the track was packed. The return trip takes about 10 hours and normally is done over two days with an overnight stop at a guesthouse en route.
10/12/2015: Market
Cilaos had lots of restaurants, and various shops catering to tourists and hikers, but didn't feel overly commercial. A few cars had followed us through earlier in the day, but a constant stream was arriving now and the streets were getting busy with pedestrians as well. This market off the main street was jam-packed with shoppers and local bottled products inside, with boxes of dried seeds and beans throughout. Outside was a selection of fruit and vegetables, with firewood and more dried beans. Cardboard signs giving prices and availalbity covered any available wall space.
10/12/2015: Garden
Some of the Cilaos houses had exceptional gardens that stood out even against the surrounding scenery.
10/12/2015: Lunch
We had a picnic lunch on the way back at a small park on the other side of the valley from the Bras Sec viewpoint.
10/12/2015: Tunnel de Gueule Rouge
Exiting the single-lane Tunnel de Gueule Rouge through Gros Morne de Gueule Rouge. As we'd passed partway through on our way to Cilaos, oncoming traffic also entered the tunnel. With a car behind us, we couldn't back up and were almost playing chicken for a bit there until we came to a brief wider section in the middle of the tunnel where oncoming traffic can pass.
10/12/2015: Superted!
Superted V arrived into Reunion this morning. We last saw Jean and Matt in Darwin, and weren't expecting to meet up again until Cape Town as they would be reaching Rodrigues a couple of weeks after we did. But they also opted to skip Mauritius and so we had a few days overlap in Reunion. Boats longer than 17m can't berth in the new marina, so they'll likely remain along the sea wall. At 16.5m, we're lucky to have squeezed in.
10/14/2015: Plaine-des-Palmistes
The view to sea over the town Plaine-des-Palmistes from Rue de la Republique. We're just above a set of steep and windy switchbacks that will take us down into the valley below.
10/14/2015: Foret de Bebour-Belouve
Looking northwest to the Foret de Bebour-Belouve, our destination, where we plan to hike into the see the Trou de Fer waterfall. The eastern side of the island gets more rain and the flora and fauna is markedly different from the dryer west side. This feels much more like a jungle or rainforest.
10/14/2015: Arum
We drove through thick, lush forest to a parking lot at the end of the road and from there walked a short distance to the start of the track. Along the way we passed many plants and flowers that we'd not seen in other parts of the island, including many stands of beautiful Arum (the white lily-like flower at the bottom left of photo).
10/14/2015: Gite de Belouve
The Gite de Belouve provides visitor accommodation in the heart of the forest. The facility was larger than we had expected and looked like a great place to stay.
10/14/2015: Cirque de Salazie
Behind the gite is a fabulous viewpoint over the Cirque de Salazie. We were almost directly above Hell-Bourg, where we'd had lunch a couple of weeks ago.
10/14/2015: Sentier du Trou de Fer
The Sentier du Trou de Fer (Trou de Fer track) took us deep into the rainforest. A few sections were muddy, but many parts that would have been had raised walkways, steps or wood laid across.
10/14/2015: Viewpoint
From the thick enclosure of the forest, we popped out to a viewing platform above a deep gorge. About ten people were there when we arrived at 9:30am and by the time we left a half-hour later, at least twenty were there with more arriving by the minute. This is a popular hike.
10/14/2015: Trou de Fer
The view to the Trou de Fer waterfall was fabulous (click image for an enlarged view). The video at https://youtu.be/yc16nIWyJo0 (0:47) shows the gorge and a close-up of the falls and the video at https://youtu.be/oyFv9BeEII4 (0:22) shows a helicopter making a pass across the falls and leaving through the ravine on the right.
10/14/2015: Breakfast
We'd planned to have breakfast at the falls. But the platform was pretty muddy and too busy, so we returned back out to have our meal at a picnic table overlooking the Cirque de Salazie view. It's a good thing we got those pictures earlier--by the time we finished breakfast the cirque was completely socked in as is typical by mid-morning.
10/14/2015: Suspension bridge
From the Foret de Bebour-Belouve, we continued east through Plaine-des-Palmistes and along the southeast coast of the island. Along the way we stopped to check out the old East River Suspension Bridge (the bridge certainly has a French name, but surprisingly the only sign describing the bridge history was in English). The bridge opened in 1890, the successor to another bridge that the river had swept away only three years after it was completed. The suspension bridge was in service until 1979 when a new concrete bridge replaced it.
10/14/2015: Lava flow
The 2007 eruption of le volcan was one of the most violent ever recorded, producing 3 million cubic meters of lava per day. The flow reached the sea just north of Pointe du Tremblet and cut off the road for several months.
10/14/2015: Le Vieux Port
We had a delicious lunch of rougail boucane (smoked pork ribs prepared Croele-style) in the garden at Lonely Planet-recommended Le Vieux Port.
10/15/2015: Foret des Makes
We made another early-morning drive along a steep and winding mountain road to a viewpoint called La Fenetre. Three days ago we were at La Roche Merveilleuse on the other side of the cirque, looking across to La Fenetre. On the way up we passed through a wonderful park in the Foret des Makes. Blooming planted flowers filled the hillside around lovely picnic areas.
10/15/2015: La Fenetre
The sweeping view into the Cirque de Cilaos from Le Fenetre was spectacular—we could see all the places we'd visited while touring the cirque earlier in the week. The video at https://youtu.be/hozyvbQozpA pans across the cirque from southeast to northwest, then zooms in on the the village of Ilet a Cordes, the town of Cilaos and the L'Eglise Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, the Pont de la Boucle (loop bridge), and finally the village of le Palmiste Rouge.
10/15/2015: Breakfast
A picnic breakfast at the edge of the cirque.
10/15/2015: Port-de St-Pierre
After visiting La Fenetre, we're returned down to sea level to have lunch in St. Pierre at the southwest end of the island. Some foreign pleasure-craft do moor in the marina here when visiting Reunion, but space is rather limited and most go to Le Port instead. We inquired about moorage, but at 55 tons Dirona is too heavy for their facility.
10/15/2015: La Medianoche
We walked down to the harbour entrance to enjoy a coffee just as skipper Mareike Guhr was taking La Medianoche to sea, likely en route to South Africa. We'd had dinner with Mareike in Rodrigues and chatted briefly with her while she was visiting friends in the Le Port marina. The entry to the St. Pierre marina is as tight and difficult as it looks, and is closed during heavy swell when waves break across the entry bar.
10/15/2015: Beach
The reef off St. Pierre creates a protected swimming lagoon along a popular sandy beach.
10/15/2015: Le Cocotiers
St. Pierre has an abundance of restaurants—we had a difficult time choosing one for lunch. We finally settled on the outdoor patio over the water at Le Cocotiers where we had delicious sauteed fish. We've yet to have an average, let alone poor, meal in Reunion.
10/15/2015: Checking out
After returning to Le Port, we stopped by the marina office to settle our bill, fill out a departure form, and request an appointment with customs for a weekend departure. Customs was already scheduled to clear out another boat on Friday at 7pm, we we'd just be added to the list.
10/15/2015: Superted
Dinner with Jean and Matt Findlay from Superted. We'd stopped by for a quick visit the day they'd arrived, but it was great to spend more time together and catch up over another excellent Reunion meal.
10/16/2015: Douane
Douane (customs) arrived this morning and cleared us out, along with several other boats. We're now all set to leave for South Africa over the weekend.
10/16/2015: Battery
The pair of start batteries shared between the generator and the wing was showing low voltage. These are 24-volts systems, so two 12-volt batteries are needed. We charged and tested both and, although they still function, both are now due for replacement.
10/16/2015: Spitfire
Always experimenting with new sleeping places, Spitfire immediately curled up into the drawer exposed when we lifted the master berth to get the battery tester.
10/17/2015: Minnie B
Minnie B of Belfast heading out en route to South Africa. A few boats have already left for South Africa, and the rest will follow over the next few weeks. Most cruisiers will be aiming to reach South Africa before the start of the southern hemisphere cyclone seasaon at the end of November.