The Maldives chapter of the Naora circumnavigation puts the Eighty2 in the Indian Ocean, in the outer atolls of the Maldivian archipelago, in the specific conditions of the tropical ocean between Sri Lanka and the African coast. For the member in Mumbai, the Maldives is two hours by air. For the member in Singapore, it is four hours.
For the member in Dubai, it is three hours. For the member in Nairobi or Johannesburg or Dar es Salaam, it is five to six hours. For the member in London or Amsterdam, it is ten hours with a connection. The Indian Ocean chapter of the Naora circumnavigation is geographically as close to the Asian and Middle Eastern and East African member as the Mediterranean chapter is to the European one, and in several cases, considerably closer.
The Naora programme does not communicate this as clearly as it should, because the programme’s founders are European and the first instinct of the European founder is to describe the programme in European terms. The correction is straightforward: the Maldives chapter is the chapter where the Eighty2 is in the Indian Ocean.
The Indian Ocean is the ocean that the Asian and Middle Eastern and East African member knows from their geography in the way that the European member knows the Mediterranean. The boarding port for the Indian Ocean chapter, Galle in Sri Lanka, the Maldivian atolls is the boarding port that the member closest to the Indian Ocean reaches most naturally.
What the Chapter Provides
The Maldives and Indian Ocean chapter provides what the member who has been dreaming of the Maldives has been dreaming of, the outer atolls that the resort infrastructure has not reached, the thirty-metre visibility of the atoll lagoon, the manta rays at the cleaning stations, the whale sharks on the oceanic passages between the atolls. It provides it in the form that the offshore sailing boat reaches it: from the water, anchored inside the atoll ring, with the freedom of the self-sufficient vessel that goes where the route takes it rather than where the seaplane infrastructure has been built.
The member from Singapore or Dubai or Mumbai who joins the Maldives and Indian Ocean chapter is joining the chapter of the circumnavigation that is closest to their home and that produces the specific experience of the Indian Ocean world in the form that no resort or cruise ship or day boat provides in the same quality.
The dream of the Maldives is not a European dream. It is the dream of anyone who has seen the photograph of the turquoise atoll and understood that the photograph was pointing toward something real. The Naora circumnavigation reaches the real thing. The member who reaches it with us does not need to be European to have the dream or to deserve the access. They need to be ready for the offshore sailing life in the outer atoll. The rest is a flight to Galle.
