WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAY

Your blogger with a fine maldivian red snapper caught during a competitive event while on holiday. Weighing in at just over a kilo it failed by 10mg to take first place. It is suspected that the judge had obtained a copy of the author's memoirs 'Not Heavy Enough To Win A Prize?' and was determined that your blogger should continue to run true to form. Note: no fish were harmed in the taking of this photograph as rubber models were available for trophy picture-taking. It tasted pretty good 'though.

For those who have been hanging on my words (hah! he says with a sharp exhalation. Chance would be a fine thing he adds) … apologies. I have been on holiday. I have taken a wholly unearned break and gone to the Maldives where my wife and I boarded a small motor vessel, the Yasawa Princess, and for the next week set no foot upon land that wasn’t a small island until we returned to take our flight home. The Yasawa Princess is essentially a dive boat and a good half of the twenty or so passengers were serious divers who, every morning and every afternoon, were taken to a spot where they strapped on big steel air bottles and were dunked into the deep blue sea. The rest of us were taken to small islands, often unpopulated, each with palm trees, sand (and sand flies) surrounded by clear, shallow, light blue water and beyond that a coral reef that – wait for it – corralled us within its peripheral protection. Within the safe embrace of the reef there are fish of such beauty that the humble snorkler is quite smitten with the wonder of it all. Without the reef there is depth. So deep that the water changes colour from light blue to a dark indigo and there are to be seen the real mysteries of the deep – as well as more of the nice pretty fish. The safety of the shallow island beaches, for all their clear water should not be taken for granted, however. The week before our visit a diver struggling to remove his fins hoicked off one only to place his now bare foot on the top of a stone fish – a fish that (guess what?) looks like a stone but one with horrible spines that carry an even horribler poison. A rush to hospital from some remote island in the Indian Ocean must have been, taking into account modes of transport, a fairly slow and agonising rush. Rush is relative in places like this.

Most people have an idea of what a cruise boat looks like. The full page advertisements in newspapers and magazines show glittering monsters and speak of the de-luxest of de-luxe travel. We have travelled in one such boat, MV Opera, and it was splendid. The fact that one was at sea didn’t seem to matter. The insulation from sea and weather made it a capsule experience. In those days the breaks I took were definitely earned and I wasn’t at all bothered by the mountains of food. Then we took a trip on Star Clipper, a five masted anachronism that took whatever the wind had to offer and fairly tanked along. There was far less insulation from the elements and I well remember our second morning at sea after a distinctly blowy night. One of the big sails, ‘up there’, a t’gallant or a royal or summut, blew out, that is, split from bum to breakfast time (a nautical expression, dear reader). As we breakfasted two of the crew wheeled an industrial sewing machine out onto deck together with a roll of canvas and just ran up another one. So that was a bit closer to the elements. We loved it.

Yasawa Princess is powered by a diesel engine and, as I said, she is small. Our cabin opened onto some decking and a railing and the sea – just down there and occasionally just up there. When the boat punched into waves the water might easily decide to give that bit of decking outside the cabin a wash. At night we never tied up alongside some quay on an island; the boat would stop, there would be the sound of thunder as two anchor chains were let down and then she would swing so that her sharp end (another nautical term this) was facing the wind and then she would gently oscillate, swinging from side to side, while we all drank, talked about our day and went in to eat. The stern (or blunt end if you prefer) of the main and upper deck was open and well illuminated so one could lean over the rail and look down to watch the dolphins that found an opportunity to take their evening meal from the fish attracted by the light.

What made the Yasawa Princess such a hit for us was the company. Whether it was crew or passengers all were fine people and our farewells as the tender took us away to catch our ‘plane were noisily sincere.

You may read more about this splendid little boat on travelcollection.co.uk or just Google Yasawa Princess.