Day 89 : Sea Day – Crossing The Arabian Sea

I need to catch up on the blog posts. Partly because we're busy skipping from port to port, but mainly because of painfully slow internet access and some issues with satellite access. Once we leave Dubai (again), we have a host of sea days, so hopefully, I will catch up. Meanwhile, I know many of you are out there reading this, as I can see the stats, so please leave a comment, even though it may be anonymous.

So - we've completed sailing across the Arabian Sea, that's 857 nautical miles from Mumbai, India, to Muscat, Oman. The Arabian Sea is tucked away north of the Indian Ocean, bounded by the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Pakistan, and the Gulf of Oman, with India on its western side. It's been an important trade route since 300 BC, and by the time of Julius Caesar, many of the land-sea trade routes depended on boats to get them around the inhospitable inland terrain. (We think it's all desert, but that's not true. Some mighty big cliffs, hills, and even mountains are around the area. Oman has an almost 10,000 ft mountain not far inland!). There were also, apparently, hungry wildlife just waiting for humans to set foot ashore. 


When you look at the geography (see visual), there are two major inlets off the
Arabian Sea. We're currently in one, which takes us up into the Persian Gulf through the now-infamous Straits of Hormuz. The second is the Gulf of Aden, which links to the Red Sea and the modern-day Suez Canal. For obvious reasons, we are now routed around Africa instead. 


One sad note is that this is the site of an OMZ—an Oxygen Minimum Zone—especially in the Gulf of Oman. It's caused by sewage runoff and the high temperatures in India, which impact the winds and currents. In winter, low-oxygen-loving phytoplankton turn the area bright green. We saw some very yellow areas sailing into the Gulf of Oman. 

Tomorrow is Oman. We're taking a snorkeling and dolphin day after seemingly a few hundred temples, mosques, and markets. We're going by speedboat to an area south of Muscat known for spinner dolphins and snorkeling with turtles.

Stay tuned. 

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