We sailed back down to Port Louis to that we could check out of the country. They were closed by the time we arrived so we spent a night tied up to the customs dock, then checked out in the morning. The authorities in Mauritius are extremely slow and frustrating and we weren’t actually able to start our passage until 11:30 AM. The two French guys who sailed with us from Rodrigues wanted a ride to Reunion as well, so we had a full boat with 6 people on board. The French guys are both prone to seasickness, and it was the girls first passage, so there was potential for a very rough passage. Fortunately it’s short, only 135 miles, and we arrived almost exactly 24 hours after we left without incident or vomit.
La Reunion from the south
Approaching an island with such massive mountains is super exciting and we were able to see it clearly as the sun came up. The winds were blowing very hard, around 25 knots, as we made the entrance in to the marina, but the entrance was well marked and we had no trouble at all. We tied up to the wall at 11AM on the 18th and officially arrived in France and entered the EU, even though we were much closer to Africa than we were to Europe.