Tag Archives: Humayun Qureshi

Sailing from Karachi to Chuta Churna and beyond

This is the second edition of my adventurous sailing. After the last trip we had become a little more adventurous and less fearful, which is not exactly very good! We had been planning to look for a couple of day’s holidays so that we could move onwards to the coastal areas where we had not been before. The good part is that now that we have reached the beginning of March, the water has started becoming warmer so capsizing is not a real problem. However, at the same time, the danger of wind picking up has increased – a phenomenon quite prevalent in this part of the world being in the monsoon belt.

<GPS and tacked now for Gaddani. Ten minutes into the tack the wind started dying down we knew that this would be a wind shift and there would be a south-westerly starting. However the wind shift took much longer time then we expected. We were almost doing nothing for the next hour and half just hoping that wind would pickup so that we do not spend too much time and be able to make to the land/destination.

Yesterday while sailing to this point we met our diving buddies Asif Chaudhry and Dr. Sohail Tabani who told us that they will be at Churna Island again the next day but as luck would have it they weren’t there till the wind came back which was around 10:30 (this is normal for the wind shift in middle to late Feb).

While lying at rest next to Churna Island we discovered how the Churna Island resembles the Turtle. Next time somebody visits this place please look carefully—it is a replica of a turtle when you arrive from Mubarik Village, the body, tail even the small head and eyes of turtle. Somebody has to be blind not to see the huge turtle sitting in the sea. We just wondered why somebody not named it the Turtle Island.

Now the wind was picking up again and it was a fine reach. We put up the spinnaker, in approximately an hour we had a good strong breeze, and we were skimming the waters towards the one of the world’s largest graveyard for ships, Gaddani.

We had asked our driver to meet us at Gaddani. Gaddani is longer then one would expect. We got to Gaddani by 12 in the afternoon but that was just the beginning. We went along the complete shore line of Gaddani looking at the various ships being scrapped and being torn apart and we finally came on this beautiful huge oil tanker sitting on top of the water the Tasman Spirit which had just drowned in the harbor channel of Karachi harbor, a cruel accident which left many sea lives dead. But seeing the huge vessel recovered from bottom of sea sitting at Gaddani was a sight, of mankind’s control over the sea. Before sailing around the Tasman Spirit we noticed another island which is commonly known by fishermen as ‘Chota Churna’. This sits directly opposite Gaddani or really center of Gaddani.

Not totally ready to land on the beach here we kept on going till Gaddani finished and headed another hour away to the jetty for the fishermen at Gaddani.

I am mailing this adventurous expedition to you hoping that some of you might try it possibly once in your lifetime or at least a part of it. I do not wish to put in any more details as far as the sailing terminology is concerned which might suffocate those who are not sailors since this log is not only meant for sailors but also for my friends, well wishers and power boat enthusiasts.

Please look at the chart which shows our path.

Good luck, happy sailing.