Our famously miserable boat ride from Port Louis, Mauritius to St. Brandon’s Atoll is done. We left promptly on an old fishing boat at 1 pm. The journey took slightly over 30 hours. No one got seasick but that’s because most took seasick medicine. Only lobster captain Mike Lodge and I that sucked it up – pretty easy for Mike. I felt like crap about eight hours into the journey after our first sunset. But I hit the one of the sleeping matts, popped an Ambien and got rocked to sleep and remained asleep all the way until 6 am.
When I got up at 6 am with most of the rest of the group, sunrise peeked through the window. We had 17 hours under out belt. Mentally, you feel like the ride is about over. But its not. 12 hours later, at 6 pm we still weren’t there. We watched the second sunset of our boat ride at 7 pm. Then finally, we reached Rafael Island of St. Brandon’s Atoll at 8 pm. Once again, the boat ride took 30 hours. A long one!
It was great to get our feet on hard ground. Everyone except Mike was a bit wobbly. But once we moved in our rooms and broke out our tackle, things got better. We just finished a delicious chicken dinner and its time to hit it. We’ll be fishing in the morning. I’ll also explain more about our set up here on the atoll.