Two days after flirting with one of the most beautiful terrestrial paradise, the Maldives, the crews of trimarans ‘Majan’ and ‘Musandam’ will face the underworld of the Indian Ocean with the meeting of the Tropical Cyclone ‘Gelan’ determined to barring their way.

“Have you ever made a journey to somewhere, where you know bad news awaits you?  We’re on a journey with some very bad news just ahead of us. As I write, there is a Tropical Cyclone called “Gelane” just off Mauritius. Its barometric pressure is 975hpa. If we were foolish enough to go within a 100knm radius of it’s epicenter, we would be battered with giant waves and winds gusting up to 100 mph.

The storm is slowly tracking SSE at 3 knots. Every two hours our satellite navigation systems flash up warnings to alert us to the danger, and to stay away from the area. The red popup message comes on with a loud beeping signal, that even though you know about it and you hit cancel only 2 hours ago, it serves as a constant reminder that the storm is still raging ahead of us.

Paul and Thierry Douillard have been tracking it even before we left the Maldives. As its slap bang on our track, you would be forgiven for suggesting we should just sail a course around it from days ago. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the second tropical storm in the area, just to east of the main one. The diversion would be huge. You would have no guarantees that it wouldn’t change direction and track back out at you.  So go round the whole thing to the West, I here you chant. Problem number 2, Madagascar is in the way and you would be even more stupid to get yourself trapped between an angered storm and a lee shore. That would, be the true definition of “stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

So without trying to sound like a story I read my kids about a bear hunt. We can’t go round it, we can’t go over it, and we can’t go under it so we’ll have to STOP!

Yes you read that right. It looks like we’ll need to slow right down and stop. We may reef right down to reduce sail and hit the very under utilised seaman’s choice, of going slower.

Sailing boat’s don’t have brakes, but if they did, this is when they would be used. Just as a Formula One racing car driver hits the breaks before going into a tight corner too fast, we are hitting the brakes before we go into our Indian Ocean corner too fast and spin out.

This is Moshin and Mohammad’s first tropical cyclone – but they have trust in Paul (and God) to keep them safe. Moshin has helped fix a few broken parts as we have slowed down. Mohammad helmed for 2 hours straight this morning.

Stop Press: Paul has now confirmed that we are to sail at a maximum of 8 knots until further notice.

It has been a very hard decision, but to go into the storm headfirst, knowing what we know now, would be madness. Stay tuned for more twists and turns on this changing racetrack.”

Mark Covell