Enroute Maldives - Day 3 and 4

Day 3 was a mostly slow day with a noon to noon run of 146 nm.
We did have an interesting encounter with a fishing boat. On the AIS I saw an 85 ft fishing vessel on a course that would take us less than 1/2 mile apart, a little too close for comfort. Watching them for awhile I could see their course was wavering a bit. Five minutes latter I hear a call on he VHF radio from Mountmary An to Georgia. Once I figured out that he was calling us, I responded. His first response to me was "No English, Hindi". I could tell his was going to be a difficult conversation. After a half dozen interactions I heard someone in the background say "Fishing line in water". Which could mean pretty much anything, including we have two miles of long-lines off our stern. We finally agreed to Georgia turning hard to starboard. About 4.5 miles latter we picked up a second AIS that was named Mountmary An Net. Most likely one end of a miles long drift name from the same boat.

Next day was fairly light winds in the morning. This caused us to have turn further north to keep he boat sailing. To deal with this we decided to put the whisker pole up and sail wing-on-wing more closely in the right direction. Lets just say the setting of the pole was typical of a speedy, efficient and graceful foredeck crew on a race boat. After getting it set things ran well for a couple of hours. Then the pole attracted a nasty squall. In came he head sail, reef in the main. Buckets of downpour - you could even call it a Monsoon rain. Winds in the low 30kts.
Squals over, genoa out on the pole again. Sailing well at our destination for a couple more hour. Then a thump and the jam cleat on the pole hat sets the extension length gave way. Roll it in.

Fortunately the winds picked up and turn further north, giving a fast run in the right direction overnight.
Noon-to-noon run 190 nm
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Enroute Maldives - Day 2

The winds lightened up last night, making for a slower passage with a better off-watch sleep. We made 135nm noon to noon. Currently we are about 60 miles north of Sumatra. This end of the long island is Aceh Province. Known for it conservative Islam and he devastation from the tsunami a few years back. We are also about 40 miles from Great Necobar Island, the southern most part of the Andaman Islands. Sometime this evening we will leave the Andaman Sea and move into the north Indian Ocean.

Yesterday I took a look on the deck and saw that our port side jack line had chafed all the way through. The jack line is used to clip on our saftey harness if need to go on deck and move forward. he forensic sailing committee is still not sure how this happened.


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Enroute Maldive, Day 1

We left Langkawi at 9:30am and motored for an hour and half to get in some decent wind. The winds stayed NE all day at 15kts or so, then picked up most of the night to 15-20 kts. It got pretty rolly last night, offering us a crappy off-watch sleep. We are settling in for the long haul.
A few fishing boats offshore along with some commercial shipping, but not much.

Our fiends on Time Bandit are on the same passage with us. We are talking with them on HF radio in the evening. They are a go fast catamaran, an Outremere 51ft. so they will do a horizon job on us soon.

Noon to noon run 162 nm

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