Late last night while one of the watches was putting in the third reef, one of the older blocks on board split and ripped the reefing sheet into two pieces, no real drama the reef was put in manually and most of this morning I spent running a new reefing line using the spare sheet we had on board. We are well and truely into the Trade winds now and are starting to rattle off the mileage to our next stop namely Males in the Maldives group of islands. Males is infact only 5 to 6 days away at the current pace, where we will have to take on board a fair ammout of diesel given the lack of wind from Aden to Suqutra, also we will have time to tackle a few little problems that have occured that need the help of an sewing machine. Apart form that the main purpose of the stop is to get a little R & R before we set off to Langkawai. I'll probably let you have my next up date in a couple of days. Mark