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With Christmas and Tracey's visit saddly behind us it was now time to get to Thailand in a hurry to meet Paul's parents who were flying out to stay with us there. We had managed to make it through one of the busiest shipping ports in the world (Singapore), now The Malacca Straights had to be conquered! We decided to do the passage in one hit and do a four day and night passage straight to Lankawi leaving only an overnighter to Phuket. The Malacca Straights 8th to 12th Jan 2011 The Malacca Straights is basically a freeway of tankers with, northbound and southbound "lanes", on either side you have Indonesia and Malaysia and just meters outside the lanes all the way to each coast the water is full of fishing nets and fishing trawlers. We decided to take the edge of the shipping lane in order to avoid the nets and fishing trawlers which move around very unpredictably and held a consistent course so as not to get in the way of any tankers. It was actually one of the easiest four night passages we have done. All the tankers were on full alert because it is so busy and the water was free of all the other stuff we usually have to dart all over the place to avoid. We even got quite a bit of sailing in! Phuket to Maldives to Chagos Byamee is stocked to the gunnels with food, fuel and water. The weather is fine with a nice
southerly at 15 knots and there is no longer any reason to hang around. We weigh anchor at 10am and motor out of A.O.Chalong,
Phuket and set a course for Chagos. The wind is perfect, we hoist the sails and switch off the motor, set the autopilot and
pray that this is what conditions will be like all the way to Chagos. We have done
many long passages Sulu sea, South China sea, Cairns to P.N.G. But this is our first real ocean crossing and I can sense
we are a little nervous.
By morning we had not only damaged our genoa but also had a large split in our main. I could feel what Joyce was thinking, here we are 100nm into a 1800nm passage and we have damage to both our sails, should we consider turning back? The swell had increased and the wind was still blowing about 20 knots. Neither of us had had any real sleep so we decided to take down the sails turn on the motor and try and get some rest.
Ships log 10/3/2011 Day 2
Yesterday and today have been very wet, have not seen the sun at all today and the swell is still coming at us from the side making everything very uncomfortable. Darien has kept below decks after discovering that we have over 100 new kids movies on the hard drive. She is determined to have watched all of them by the time we reach Chagos. Joyce has still got the "Why the hell are we doing this look on her face"
Things have gone from better
to bad to worse and we are now seriously contemplating turning around and aborting the trip. We took down the main today which
is not an easy task with in mast furling and repaired the tear using sail tape. Things are starting to look up again and we
are now doing 5 knots under main and genoa ya hoo!. Early afternoon the wind dies off to 4 knots, I pull in the genoa
and furl in the main...Disaster, the wire halyard for the trisail gets caught in the furler jamming the sail, tearing off
the sail tape. The main is firmly jammed in the mast, we take turns in going up the mast to try and pull it out but with the
boat lurching around so much it is a terrifying job and one that will have to wait till we are at anchor . We are now once agian without a mainsail. We decide to switch on the motor and think about things. I notice at 2000rpm
we are only doing 3.8 knots something is wrong. We stop the motor and I dive over the side to find that the prop is covered
in fishing net. I spend the next hour cutting it away. The water is a beautiful deep blue and warm and just as I am finishing
the job a pod of dolphins arrive. I appear to have now fixed the problem as we are motoring again at a respectable 6 knots.
We are both physically and mentally exhausted and go below to have a beer and some dinner. We decide that under the circumstances we should head for Galle harbour in Sri Lanka. It's on the way and we can hopefully sort out the mainsail problem while anchored in a sheltered harbour. We don't know much about Galle other than there could be a bit of officialdome with clearing in.
Another day, wind blowing from the east which is nice except that it is only 3-5 knots. We get the spinnaker up and average 3 knots for the next four hours until it starts to collapse from lack of wind. It is such a pitty if only we had another 3-4 knots we would be doing 5 sailling under spinnaker. We spend the rest of the day motoring.
The motor has been running all night and we have done 87 nautical miles in the last 24 hours which is terrible. Worst still is that we now have 11 knots of wind on the nose from the west. What is going on!!! This is supposed to be beautiful trade wind sailing - it's crap! Joyce gets on the HF and requrests a weather report from buoy weather. 10 minutes later it comes through, SSE 2-3 knots, turning S 5-7 knots. I look at our wind indicator which is now reading 22 knots from the west and to think we just renewed our $75 subscription to buoy weather. There is a spec of good news in that after doing some fuel calculations it appears theYanmar is only using 2.6 litres per hour at 1,600 rpm which means if necessary we could motor all the way to Galle.
We have had a good 24
hours clocking 108 nm all sailing except for a few hours of motorsailing. After doing some fuel calculations it looks like
we can now stick to our original plan and go directly to Gan in the Maldives to refuel before doing the final leg to Chagos.
This is much better as it would ensure us arriving in Chagos with almost full fuel tanks. We also know that we can obtain
a free 72hr transit visa there. We are now into our seventh day at sea this is the
longest time we have ever spent on passage. At our average speed of about 4.5 knots we are still looking at another 8-9 days
to Gan. Our days vary onboard largely determined by the roll factor, a lot of roll means we dont move about the boat so much.
Our only real routine is Dariens schoolwork which we take in turns to be teacher. We are using the Sydney distance education
program who have been very accomadating with our Chagos trip re posting us all the materials we will need for the next 3 months. We have no real rigid watch system but try to maintaina 3 hours on 3 hours off. Sometimes
like last night with the large rolly swell it is impossible to sleep so during the day we are all feel a little listless.
We have got into the habit of having a drink and talk in the cockpit at around 6pm because of having to keep watch and one
of us been asleep it seems to be the only time we are all together. Last night quiet a bad squall came which lasted for over an hour. We all sat huddled up below watching Sienfield dvds and listening to the wind howl outside...it was kinda cool.
We have
had a great 30 hours of sailing, wind has been consistent 15-20 knots from the north west and we clocked 130 nm for the last
24 hours. It is still very rolly as the swell is on the back quarter making it difficult to get around the boat. There are
2 boats in front of us a 62 foot aluminium sloop and a 47 foot catermaran. The cat left a day before us but is already nearly
400 nm in front of us. It would be great to be able to do those speeds pity they are so exspensive. I put out a fishing line today, see how we go a bit of fresh sushi would be nice. All in all things have improved dramaticaly from the first few days, just hope this wind stays with us.
Ships log 19/3/2011 Day 11 Out of no where we just had a fishing boat come and visit us. About 30 foot long with a very old wooden flybridge that looked like it was about to fall down. There were 6 young Sri Lankans on board the oldest would of been 20 something all laughing and smiling. They wanted some cigerettes so we slung them a packet of Malboros and a couple of cold cokes, they gave us two small tuna in return. As quickly as they arrived they left. What a friendly bunch of guys. Ships log 20/3/11. Day 12 There has been no wind now for the
last 24 hours and there is none forecast for at least another week {although this can change}. My fuel calculations tell me
that we are about 50 litres short of been able to reach Gan under motor. We don't have fuel gauges on the tanks so I
rely on engine hours to calculate remaining fuel. I'm working on 2.8 litres fuel used per hour. Being 50 litres short
means we could be drifting out here for days waiting for some wind. Its time to dip the fuel tanks and find out what we really
have left. Dipping the tanks is not that straight forward. First we have to remove
the floorboards in the saloon then unscrew the dipping hole in each tank {there are 3 bilge tanks} and insert a long metal
rod into the tank this gives us a fairly accurate idea of whats in each tank. Performing this task whilst underway with 3
months of provisions on board is not that easy. The floorboards are heavy and need to be handled carefully, drop one on your
toe and thats the end of your footsie. The good news is that we have 70 litres more
then I thought, we must be using closer to 2 lph.
Ships Log. 21/3/11 Day 13 Another night of no wind, and the
drone of the Yanmar. Joyce made Tacos last night with real sour cream , tomatoes and the last of our fresh lettuce, we washed
that down with a couple of icy cold tiger beers. All three of us sat in the cockpit and watched the sun go down. Or so we
thought, it was in actual fact the moon coming up from the horizon it was blood red I have never seen anything quite
like it. The moon is full at the moment and ignites the sky like a floodlight, on watch last night I was able to read without
the cockpit light on. Have had the fishing line out for 3 days now and not so much
as a niggle, Joyce reakons its the crap lure I swaped for a bottle of wine in P.N.G. Dariens schoolwork now takes up a good
3 hours everyday it keeps her from getting bored and she looks forward to it. She seems to have a leaning towards numbers
and like her mother will probably be good at maths. Just before lunch we decided to
stop the boat and have a swim, well me and Darien did Joyce stayed on board and took some pictures. It was pretty amazing
the water is this deep aqua blue very salty and warm I put on the mask and looked downwards into the bottomless blue
ocean thinking how lucky I am how many people get to do this. Thirteen days at sea
now and I think we are all ready to get off the boat and stretch our legs, at our current speed of 5 knots we will arrive
in Gan Thursday morning.
Ships log 23/3/11 Day 15 No wind all day yesterday, but I woke
up this morning to find that Joyce had the motor off and was sailing. The wind was coming from the south west at about 9 knots
and we are making 3 knots under genoa. We had a good 24 hours {under motor}clocking 132nm and are now just 80 nm from Gan,
we do a few calculations and decide that by motorsailing we can reach Gan by 6am tomorrow morning, so back on goes the motor
and with the help of the headsail we are doing a brisk 6.5 knots.
It's 3am and we
are 5nm off the Maldives. We decide to hove to and wait for first light before entering the lagoon. Hove to does not work
as you actualy need some wind to hove to, so we take down the sails switch off the motor and just drift. I have the first
watch and set the timer for 15 minutes I lay back in the cockpit savouring the lights of Gan, after a few minutes the dolphins
come at first its just the sounds of them breaking the water, then they come closer to the boat, I can see the luminous as
they break the surface they are now at arms lenght ... Its a special moment Byamee drifting in the full moon being seranaded by Dolphins as we wait for first light. Not satisfied I grab the torch to get a better look, the minute the light hits the water they flee...... We are never happy always wanting a little more.  Maldives 27th March 2011 The islands are very quiet, not many cars, more motor bikes but not too many of those either. The pace here is very
very slow. After anchoring we waited 10 hours for the customs officials to come to the boat and clear us in. A whole boat
load of officials arrived. They tied up along side Byamee and within a couple of seconds there were six men huddled around
our table with more bundles of paper than you would have thought possible. They wanted papers from us which we obliged then
they all had to be stamped and signed by us and them, there were forms to fill in which covered everything down to the state
of the cooking utensils on board??? Strange we thought. Anyway everyone was very friendly and bits of paper flew around the
boat for around half an hour then they were off and we were finally free to set foot on land. The community is very Muslim and everyone we met very polite and friendly. Most tourists go straight to the resorts stay there, go on dive trips then go back to the airport and fly home. There a not many tourists wandering the streets. The streets are a dusty coral sand and the houses that line the streets are all brick and have quite high brick fences that come right to the street edge. There are a lot of houses that have not been finished and don’t look like they ever will be. I guess the money must have run out. Things are around Australian prices and both ATM machines are broken. We manage to get our debit card to work at a supermarket and convince the lady to give us some cash out. We arrange fuel with a very kind man who delivered it to a jetty by truck and we pumped it straight into the boat which is nice even though we had no money to pay him. He said we will work something out. I can’t imagine that happening in Sydney since we took on around $600 worth of diesel. Paul is off at the bank trying to get some money for him and failing that we will try the supermarket again. 
We have eaten out a couple of times and had beautiful meals but they take so long to come you really
need to order before you even think you are hungry. One dinner Darien was asleep before the meal came. The same particular
dinner we ordered whole fish amongst other things. After some time the waiter came back holding a giant trevally the size
of Darien and said “nice fish” we said yes then he took off to the kitchen. We looked at each other and thought
surely they are not going to cook that for us. They were! - we clarified that we only wanted a small fish and the meal was
beautiful when two smaller fish finally arrived. Paul happened to be passing the
harbour when the tuna boat was in so we got to enjoy yellow fin tuna caught that morning. We had some sashimi for lunch then
steaks for dinner - just delicious. Anyway three days here have been enough as we
really just want fuel and a few fresh veggies. We clear out today and set sail for Chagos in the morning.
When you don't drink you come up with all sorts of things
to amuse yourself. This is a game played by the women, where a server sends a tennis ball over the net (backwards I should
add - as if serving wasn't hard enough already) and the other team has to catch the ball. As this is a game played by
muslim women everyone is wearing a burka and fully clothed . Once the ball is caught the server is out and the next team member
serves sorta like cricket but on a tennis court.
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