Escorted by Sodré's patrol, Gama had returned to Cochin after the ambush.

Although the Portuguese are aware that the Zamorin had ordered his Malabari vassals to assemble an armada in Calicut, Gama seems to have been confident that the coastal patrol is keeping a lid on it, perhaps not quite realizing that smaller ships throughout the region can make their way to Calicut unmolested via the Kerala backwaters.

The Trimumpara Raja of Cochin relays the news that the Zamorin has hired the services of a Red Sea Arab privateer, Khoja Ambar, and several large ships have slipped past the Portuguese blockade and are now in Calicut, joining the fighting fleet under the command of Calicut admiral Khoja Kassein).

The assembled Calicut fleet is estimated at twenty large ships, forty gun-mounted sambuks (large dhows) and an innumerable number of smaller oar-powered paraus, carrying several thousand armed men.

Although a large Calicut fleet had failed against the much smaller Third Armada of João da Nova the previous year, the Zamorin might have calculated that the addition of the large ships and more experienced captains might tip the balance, particularly against the heavily loaded and less-maneuverable large naus of the Fourth Armada.

The Trimumpara Raja of Cochin urges Gama to avoid the fleet and just set sail for Portugal at once, but Gama refuses to revise his plans.

He needs to return to Cannanore to deposit the factor Barbosa there and pick up a cargo of ginger he had ordered, and is burning for revenge for the ambush.

After a final audience with Raja Trimumpara in early February, 1502, Gama's fleet of around ten fully laden ships finally leaves Cochin.

Gama has taken aboard his ambassador to the Lisbon court, leaving Diogo Fernandes Correia as factor in Cochin, and has taken Cabral's old factor Gonçalo Gil Barbosa, to serve as factor in Cannanore.

They are soon joined by Sodré's caravel squadron, and set sail warily towards Cannanore, guns ready for the Calicut ambush.