Traveler to Sri Lanka
Hi Everyone,
It feels good to be on a long passage again. We departed Thailand’s Patong Beach at sunrise this morning and are headed for Galle, Sri Lanka, 1080 nautical miles almost due west. Our passage should take about seven days and will take us across the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal and through the Nicobar Islands. The weather forecast is for favorable winds, generally 12 to 18 knots out of the NNE. But right now it is still mid-morning and the winds are light, so we are motor sailing with a knot of favorable current. The temperature is a very nice 85. We are already 25 miles offshore and, for the first time in months, there is no land and not another boat in sight. Since we arrived in Indonesian waters, and in particularly around Singapore, we have been surrounded by fishing boats and ships of all sizes, at times more than 50 vessels within just a mile or two of us.
The engine is working very well (hurrah!) and we love the new anchor windlass. The sails are re-stitched and should be good for the rest of our voyage. Everything is in good shape and working well (knock of wood.) We have enough provisions to get us to the Red Sea, although we will buy fresh produce, fruit, bread and meat at each of our ports of call along the way. And we hope to catch a fish every three or four days to rotate into our dinners. We usually troll a lure or two and have been fairly lucky at fishing.
Last night in Patong, Barbara and I had a nice romantic dinner at Coyote’s Mexican restaurant for Valentines Day. Even though it was our last night in Thailand, so it was our last chance for Pad Thai or other great local dishes, we were both craving fajitas and margaritas, and it will be quite awhile before we can find another Mexican restaurant in this part of the world.
Brian and Brandon are both having a great time and are a big help to us on the boat–especially on the longer passages for the watch schedules, so we all get a little more, and better, sleep.
We’ve been following the civil war in Sri Lanka closely and it looks to be over now, so there should be a feeling of relief and celebration in that country. The fighting was almost entirely in the northern end of the island, and we will limit our visit to the southern tip, in and around the old harbor town of Galle.
All’s well onboard Traveler.
Position at 0420 utc on 15 Feb:
07 53 N, 098 16 E
Heading 263 at 7.9 knots
Michael and Barbara
Hey guys. Hope you are doing okay now after all your most recent problems. It sounds like, even with the problems,you’re having a great time “livin’ the dream”. I worked all week-end (5 day) on working on putting Tahiti photos into albums and writing the “labels” for each photo. We had almost 3,000 photos so you can see it’s a HUGE project. I got them all organized (that took a day) very accurately. Now I am putting them in books, I haven’t even gotten us off of Huahine yet and I have 3 overstuff albums. Of course, you guys were a big part of that, our time with you on Huahine. God, it almost made me cry to see all that, I want it again SO bad. It was surely one of the definite highlights of my life, that whole vacation. I had some great photos of the four of us, and aboard Traveler. I had some good ones, too, Barbara, of Melissa coloring your hair on our lanai. HaHaHa. Anyway, you guys are on our minds a lot, wondering where you are, what wonderful thigns you’re experiencing, and wondering if things are going okay. We’re praying for you that you’ll have safe passage through the priate zone; we’re glad you have the boys with you, too, which will hopefully make that whole thing less scary. Safety in numbers, you know. We’ll it is snowing here, very cold, and the storm has been here since mid-week last week and is sticking around for a while longer. So, envey you in the 85 degree weather? We sure do!!!! Take a nice dip in the ocean for us. Have a great time. We’re thinking of you. Bruce and Denise
Comment by Bruce and Denise Stelzer — February 17, 2009 @ 8:37 am