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We've been out sailing every month except when Ian was in Europe . Every day for breakfast , lunch , and dinner we had curry dishes , usually quite mild and never very spicy . The trunks were deposited into great trucks . Six and a half weeks away , seven separate visits to London airports , fourteen flights , plus trips by train , hired car , long-distance bus - - has to be some kind of a ghastly record . She is now by far the most cultured among us . Pipped at the post ; c'est la vie . We saved them from the cat and the dog . There were four of us : three-hour watches , with a communal watch from three to six in the afternoon so that watch times rotated every day . Almost always we stay overnight , or for a long weekend , and on one occasion Ian was on board for nearly a week . - - that word again ) live performance of Carnatic music , for Chennai hosts a music and dance festival every December . Many years ago an out-of-commission cargo ship was towed there and sunk deliberately to form a cheap breakwater that sheltered the bay , but the operation was not a great success because the hulk shifted as it settled , making the protected area too small to be of much use . After one of those trips from hell where you find yourself stranded in the US , wearing only shorts , T-shirt and sandals , carrying only a computer ( no toothbrush , sweater , or clean undies ) , at an airport thousands of miles from anywhere on your itinerary , getting to a hotel at 1 AM ( after a long argy-bargy with airline officials ) and being collected from it at 4 AM , with a dinner voucher and a breakfast voucher ( only to be used on that day , at that hotel ) , he eventually arrived at Calgary and set off in search of Anna . The visitors take this as a Very Good Sign , as every other yacht appears to be motoring . Sari-clad Indian maidens stood squealing and giggling in the sea , getting knocked about by the waves ; families lounged around ; hawkers wheeled their barrows ; the odd cow strolled idly by . Buffaloes , like cows , grow long horns - - they are evidently not cut as they are in the west - - which are often decorated with bright paint , or bells .