Sam Holmes Sailingvideo

Venomous snake onboard! We hit a reef exploring the Andaman Islands & Scuba on a giant shipwreck

22 March 2026 · 35 min · 73K views · Havelock Island

Sea snake coils on catamaran deck near Andaman Islands

What this video covers

Sailing a Seawind 1000 catamaran, Sam Holmes and Arlene depart Port Blair under sail, beating upwind for roughly five hours toward Havelock Island in the Andaman Islands.Watch While navigating near a reef, the boat strikes an unmarked shoal that charts showed as 18 feet deep but was actually less than a foot below the surface.6:14 Holmes puts the boat in reverse immediately after the depth sounder alarm triggers, and the crew drags an anchor off the stern to pull free.8:11 Post-grounding inspection finds only scrapes on the starboard rudder, skeg, and hull bottom — no fiberglass penetration, no water intrusion into the balsa core.5:35 Holmes notes the forward-facing sonar is missing parts and resolves to cross-reference satellite imagery against charts going forward, calling Andaman chart accuracy severely unreliable.7:55 A sea snake found aboard the boat is identified as venomous but non-aggressive and removed.3:42 The crew dives the wreck of the Inchkeith, sunk in 1955, tying the dinghy anchor to the wreckage in open-water conditions.22:26 A broken shear pin in the electric winch motor is repaired temporarily with 3M bolts and epoxy, with load limits reduced on the control panel to protect the fix.19:31 Holmes also launches a parasailor without running backstays, using a tight topping lift and mainsheet to support the mast.20:19

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More from Sam Holmes Sailing

Hundreds of miles of rough sailing only to be turned away from our dream destinationOct 2026Making big miles offshore sailing through IndonesiaSept 2026Orca sighting! we repair one daggerboard only to break another oneSept 2026Sailing to Maratua, a rarely visited Indonesian island Sept 2026

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