There’s nothing like pulling up the anchor after a week or so of land time. As much as we had enjoyed our stay in Port Blair, capital of India’s Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the crews of the yachts participating in the inaugural Andamans Yacht Carnival were all excited to be heading out to explore some of the 300 surrounding islands.
Most of the yachts were first heading South for destinations like the gorgeous Cinque Islands but as we had spent a few weeks enjoying these and other islands to the South on our previous visit the year before, we decided to head North and go “over the top” of North Andaman Island with rarely visited Interview Island as our destination.
Before heading northward though we had date to keep – a return visit to the restaurant Something Different on Havelock Island. We had enjoyed a couple of meals there in 2017 and had promised to return. Although the restaurant itself is in a rather characterless barn-like building the food is wonderful and the service superb. The waiter and manager remembered us and were delighted to welcome us back – even the chef was brought out to greet us and discuss our requirements.
Before leaving the next morning we had a lovely swim round the boat and after requesting permission to leave the Port we headed for beautiful North Button Island with a stop at a favourite spot Inglis Island for lunch.
We anchored in 7.7 metres and the water was so clear that we could see right down to the bottom.
For lunch we enjoyed some delicious tuna – just caught by the skipper of Beach House. Eating delicious fish surrounded by turquoise sea and a gorgeous white sand island to gaze on, we were in our very own little slice of heaven.
That night we held a competition for the best Salt and Pepper mushrooms (using the tinned variety) on Yantara. We had ordered and enjoyed these at almost every restaurant we went to in Port Blair and wanted to see if we could find the ultimate recipe. We all agreed that there was a tie for the three entries and they were soon polished off.
We were all having such a wonderful time at North Button Island that we thought we would stay an extra night, so before turning in, the skipper of Yantara was able to text a message to Rathnam, organiser of the inaugural Andamans Yacht Carnival, to ask him to let Port Blair Port Radio know of our plans.
Despite the fact that we were meant to call in on our High Frequency radios every evening to report our position, we had very limited success getting through the previous year and our local SIM cards didn’t work anywhere except Port Blair and even then very ineffectively. So it was a great help that Yantara had the technology capable of sending a text message.
After a great day of relaxing, swimming, snorkeling, beach walking and for some, fishing, we set off the following morning for the town of Mayabunder on the Northern end of Middle Andaman Island. The small town of around 5,000 inhabitants is home to a large minority of former Burmese (Myanmar) Karen tribes, who were originally brought in as cheap logging labour by the British.
We had an uneventful trip to Mayabunder spying nothing much more than a turtle and a whale spout. There was very little to see on land – no habitation to speak of except for the odd fisherman’s hut.
When we were approaching our destination we radioed the Harbour Master who was most helpful and welcoming and told us the safest place to anchor where we could be relatively close in but not in the way of the large ferry that was ready to depart at the wharf.
Just after we had anchored and were enjoying our “DOAS” (drinks on arrival) we were paid a visit by a rubber ducky containing four young coastguards who were covered from head to toe in brightly coloured powder paint of every shade and hue. We had completely forgotten that it was the Indian Hindu festival of Holi! Fortunately, as it was late in the day they didn’t have any paint left to douse us in.
Later we had sundowners and dinner aboard Beach House. We were very spoilt – Sashimi, fresh tuna steaks and Frangelico affogato – a five-star meal.
Dinner – freshly caught!
Meanwhile the Holi celebrations on shore went on late into the night and when we woke slightly bleary eyed the next morning we discovered those drums were still going!
If you would like to read more about the inaugural Andamans Yacht Rally and our trip up north follow the link below:
Salty tales from Bali Hai on Sunday 
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