Location: The Wharf, Port Victoria, Mahe, The Seychelles

The Schooner Maggie B is still docked at The Wharf in Port Victoria, Mahe, the Seychelles. We are comfortable, well protected and well supported and provisioned. But we are stuck in a Marina. We have a Hertz car to get into town and around the island. It has remained hot, muggy and intermittent rain, sometimes heavy. The Wharf, despite its rather pedestrian name, is a snappy hotel, restaurant and bar.

The Seychelles have made the interesting decision to focus only on the top end of the tourist trade. Camping out is illegal. There are no big hotels, one with 170 rooms is the biggest. They do not allow discount airlines to fly here and the tickets are going full blast and perhaps the whole bay will be paved over in ten years. Charts are useless as the islands change their shape daily. The Seychelles puts itself out as being rather environmental focused, but nobody talks of the impact of filling up the bay or dredging all the material for the new islands. The islands are used for sporting complexes, the new airport, subsidized housing and very high end condos. It must be very frustrating for someone with waterfront property and wake up to a new island with condos for rich Europeans in what used to be bay.

We are probably off Sunday to check out some of the nearby islands. We have tons of recommendations, but there are even more tons of regulations, with just about every nice anchorage a “marine park.” Good idea to protect things, but hard to work out where one can moor or anchor or go ashore, etc.

We will be back Wednesday, probably mooring at the Seychelles Yacht Club. Rather more in town and with the other yachties, but will need to row back and forth. Willis leaves for home by way of Singapore on Thursday, so we will probably head back out after that.

We are tied up next to a SuperYacht, the Northern Lights, which belongs to a Swedish family. It is off for Thailand on Monday. There is also a very famous yawl here, the Stormvogel. She is a highly successful Blue Water racer. They are off for the Mediterranean, the America Cup and all the Classic Regattas next season.

More photos coming to the web site.

All is well.