Sailing the Inner Loop: a skipper's anti-itinerary

The Inner Loop is what the charter companies call the standard route between Mahé, Praslin, La Digue, Félicité, and Curieuse. It is a fine route. I have sailed it over two hundred times. The itinerary that the brochure gives you is not the one I use.

The brochure itinerary has you anchoring at Anse Lazio on Praslin on day two. It is the most famous beach in the Seychelles and the anchorage is, by mid-morning, a floating parking lot. I anchor instead in the bay north of Pointe Zanguilles — a position that puts you within a fifteen-minute row of the beach but keeps you away from the charter fleet. You hear the beach before you see it. That is preferable.

The day that most guests remember is the one that is not on the plan. On my Inner Loop, that tends to happen on day three or four, when I find a small bay — I have three I rotate through, and I do not publish their positions — and we anchor for an afternoon with no programme. No guide, no excursion, no agenda. Just the water and the granite and whatever the guests want to do with six hours of unstructured time in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Most guests swim. Some sleep. One couple, on a trip two years ago, wrote letters to each other — actual paper letters, which they exchanged at dinner that evening. They told me about it later. I thought about that for a long time.

The wind in the inner islands is predictable in the northwest season (November to March): gentle, from the north, rarely above fifteen knots. In the southeast season (May to September), you get trades of up to twenty-five knots and you need to plan your passages between the islands to use them, not fight them. An experienced skipper knows when to leave each anchorage. A good itinerary leaves that decision to the skipper.

I always throw away the brochure on day two. My guests have never asked for it back.

*Vire bor* — to tack. The best passage plans are the ones that know when to change direction.