Indian Ocean: Day 4
19 March 2014 | 80 nautical miles west of Great Nicobar Island
Time: 11am Wednesday, March 19 (10 pm, Tuesday, March 18 in Canada) Destination: Sri Lanka; 693 miles to go, ETA 24MAR14 (about 6 days). The ETA is estimated by our chart plotter, so changes continually as our speed changes.
Conditions: clear sky, wind from the NNW at 10 knots (just forward of the starboard beam), long easy swell from the south, flying spinnaker only - on the port side, boat speed 5.8 knots - very respectable for a 10-12 knot breeze!
The first 230 miles, from Phuket to Great Nicobar Island, was a time of adjustment. We were adjusting to being on passage, adjusting to the movement and the rhythms of watch keeping, cooking and eating while underway, and adjusting to modified sleep. This adjustment usually takes about 3 days. Now we have turned the corner, literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, around 8 pm last night we began, after a straight line from Phuket, to turn westward around the bottom of Great Nicobar Island toward Sri Lanka. In the figurative sense, we've turned the corner on our adjustment. The first few days were mostly, for the kids, lying down, sleeping and feeling out-of-sorts. Now we are back in the swing with more energy and activity.
The ocean is beautiful, calm at present, and gentle. The beauty will remain and we really hope its calm and gentleness remain, too! We've been dragging fishing lines, but so far, nothing! I'm going to talk to the fishermen to see what can be done.
So, in light of our 'adjustments', today will be back to school for Maia and Liam. Zoe has been working hard throughout, so the school adjustment will be only for Maia and Liam!
We've been having trouble connecting to the HAM radio stations, so communications have been sporadic. Don't worry if you don't hear from us - blame it on the connectivity. I used to be able to send position reports to sailblogs and have them show up on a world map in the sidebar, but that doesn't seem to be working (I'll check into it when we have internet again). So, if you'd like to see us on a map, go to winlink.org, look at 'user positions' or members, or something like that and enter our call sign: VE3MZL.