Position           06:09.95 N 094:19.13 E

Date                 1200 (UTC+7) Monday 23 February 2016

Distance run    in 24hrs 149nm over the ground, 114nm through the water

Trip total         324nm over the ground, 259nm through the water

To go to          Uligan, Maldives Indonesia 1,285nm – 1,605 total route distance

It has been a very busy 24 hours as we rounded the north of Sumatra and found ourselves in half the world’s maritime traffic going from the south of India to the Malacca Straits or vice versa.  The ships are calling regularly to each other to take avoiding action and we added to the mix.  The plot below shows Maersk Semakau altering course to go around us and avoid Holstatia at the same time.  Semakau is 330 metres long and doing 22 knots and Holstatia 250 metres and 15 knots.  It makes us at 17 metres and 7 knots seem very small.

Entering the Indian Ocean has a good sound to it and we had the fascination of going through lines of broken water, about 200 metres wide, where the current coming up the west coast of Sumatra met the current coming up the east side out of the Malacca Straits.  We ae a little slower than Flomaida who carry less “cargo” and have had a recent bottom paint and by this morning we had dropped back about 8 miles.  A couple of hours motoring in very light winds helped catch up and by noon we were trailing by only2 miles.

Last night we had two very good Beef Rendang pies from the Sailors (South African) shop in Langkawi and this morning we celebrated Elizabeth’s ?? birthday.  The champagne will have to wait until we get to the Maldives as it is not conducive to staying awake on watch.