End of day 2
07 February 2014 | South China Sea
Bill
Well we covered another 119 miles over the last 24 hours so while we aren't zipping along, we are doing just fine out here. We've had winds in the low teens most of the time and they have allowed us to do a good course west till we pass Natuna Island where we will turn more Southwest for Tioman Island. Yesterday, we were shadowed by two military frigates over the course of several hours. We saw the first one(#176) off our starboard side probably 8 miles off early in the morning as we threaded our way past several oil platforms. He stayed with us for several more hours, eventually crossing our stern and then a few hours later crossing our stern again and slowly heading North West. As he left, another frigate(#173) showed up and kept pace with us for a few more hours till she took off for parts unknown. While it was nice having them alongside us, it became a bit unnerving after a while always having them right beside us with their big cannon in the forward deck. Most of the time about 4 miles off our side but that is still close out here. Last night, we again threaded our way past more oil and natural gas wells and now appear to be past most of them. I've no clue as to who they belong to but best guess would be either Brunei or Malaysia. Couldn't make out the flags on either ship to see who was protecting the platforms. During the afternoon after checking emails and doing a post to this blog, I tried to get our AIS system up and running on our chart plotting software. AIS stands for Automatic Identification System. Larger boats are required to have radio transponders on board transmitting information about their boat. Name, identification number, course and speed and if they are going to come close to another boat. It took me a while to get it set up but she is running great. We were just passed by MTM Yangon, a tanker ship. We've seen several of the supply ships that take care of the oil platforms also on the screen. It will be invaluable as we close on Singapore. Last night, the wind slowly decreased and changed direction causing us to gybe at first light(change sail position). It got so light that we finally rolled in the genoa sail on the bow and have started the motor. So right now, we are motor sailing along at about 4.3 knots toward our next way point. Winds are forecast to come back up as the morning passes so we will just glide along under motor recharging our precious batteries again.