Author: Spalax 2

Okay. This is it. I’ve had it. My patience has been stretched to the limits of the known Universe. My boat, Spalax 2, has been cooped up for the past year in New Caledonia because of the virus and I can’t continue my global circumnavigation. What’s worse, a few days ago New Caledonia has yet again gone into total lockdown.

Here is my ultimatum: Corona, either you go away PDQ, or I will. I’m going on a hunger strike!

But seriously, folks. I’m not on a hunger strike. I’ve just been fasting for the past five days and I feel terrific. My mind is like a razor, my eye is like an eagle’s and my senses are stripped bare.

Fasting is just another way of combating lockdown boredom. I’ve done it before, so I knew what to expect. The first day is tough. The second day is even tougher. But if you make it to the end of the third day, you’re home free: The sensation of hunger disappears; the feeling of wellbeing returns.

And how do you do it? Just replace all your meals with beverages such as artificially sweetened Assam tea, salt-and-pepper tomato juice, clear bullion soup, orange juice and multivitamin juice; take long walks in the park and short bicycle trips in the forest, do Pranayama exercises and in the process loose a couple of kilos of excess body weight.

… and have a Cohiba Madura, of course.

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.