Author: Spalax 2

Here is a map of the final leg of the globe-girdling voyage of Spalax and Spalax 2.

Leg 14 – Corfu, Greece, to Portoroz, Slovenia

• Departure date: May 15
• Distance: 470 nm
• Duration: 4 days
• Heading: 320 degrees

Okay. This is it. The final, homecoming, run up the Adriatic Sea to Slovenia’s City of Roses, Portoroz.

The deed is done. The planetary girdle is buckled. The Captain is blissful.

Leg 13 – Port Said, Egypt, to Corfu, Greece

• Departure date: April 17
• Distance: 810 nm
• Duration: 7 days
• Heading: 300 degrees

Having negotiated the Egyptian bureaucratic maze and transited the Canal, Captain Marjan will be itching to splash it across the Med and conclude the voyage in his native Slovenia.

Not so fast. Spalax 2 will want to stop over on the island of Corfu to buckle the girdle of the global circumnavigation that began there back in 2009 with Spalax, Captain Marjan’s first boat.

Leg 12 – Port Sudan, Sudan, to Suez, Egypt

• Departure date: April 1
• Distance: 670 nm
• Duration: 6 days
• Heading: 340 degrees

Unlike the first Red Sea leg, the second one is going to be a hard six-day slog against headwinds all the way to Suez at the entrance to the fabled Suez Canal.

Here is a map of legs eleven and twelve of the voyage of Spalax 2 in 2022.

Leg 11 – Djibouti to Port Sudan, Sudan

• Departure date: March 18
• Distance: 580 nm
• Duration: 5 days
• Heading: 325 degrees

This leg up the Red Sea will be a breeze, a leisurely downwind run to Port Sudan. Spalax 2 will bank off the vestiges of the north-east monsoon, as it squeezes through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea.

Here is a map of leg ten of the voyage of Spalax 2 in 2022.

Leg 10 – Uligamu, Maldives, to Djibouti

• Departure date: February 25
• Distance: 1550 nm
• Duration: 13 days
• Heading: 290 degrees

Perhaps the most challenging stretch of the circumnavigation. The trick is to give the Horn of Africa a seriously wide berth to avoid any Somalian entanglements of the Jack Sparrow kind and hug the Yemeni coast before entering the Gulf of Anden and making a mad dash for the safety of the former French colony of Djibouti.

Here is a map of legs seven, eight and nine of the voyage of Spalax 2 in 2022.

Leg 9 – Galle, Sri Lanka, to Uligamu, Maldives

• Departure date: February 15
• Distance: 445 nm
• Duration: 4 days
• Heading: 280 degrees

Spalax 2 will say goodbye to the land of enjoyable encounters and point her bows in the direction of the world-class scuba diving destination that is the Republic of Maldives.