Sailing from Thailand to Maldives, Sunday 16th of Januari - Thursday 27th of Januari (1519 Nm, 11 days & 5,5 hours)

Motoring 1050 Nm (6 days in a row, never happened before in 8 years circumnavigating)

Day 1   Well it started so perfect. The wind was so good, easterly 15-16 knots!! We made 7-9 knots, whaoo this is going to be a perfect crossing! Wing on wing.

At noon the wind died!! No wind at all. Now it’s six o’clock and we are are still not moving!! Will we ever reach the Maldives. What a day, we have never ever had such bad winds! What is happening?? 

At the moment we have 6.2 knots wind from the north?? Our speed is 2 knots!!

Now we have been on our way for 24 hours. The wind is still comming from the north! What happen to the easterly tradewinds? We have made 92,6 NM, normally in 24 hours we do 120-140 NM. Average speed 3,9 knots!?

Day 2   During the night we sailed with main, cutter and the two yankees. Now, after the wind has turned more easterly, we are back to wing on wing. The wind is between 9-12 knots and our speed is mostly between 4-5 knots.

The sun is shining and the temprature is pleasent. The sea is nice to us so far. But we need some stronger winds in order to move. Sans Peur is a heavy lady and need wind!

Day 3  Stronger winds during the night.

Still we do not have any good speed.

A little tired bird (not a sea bird) landed in the fruit net late afternoon. What is this little guy doing out here? He must have been a blind passager on one of the tankers or cargo ships. In the morning he was gone again? Where? We would have taken good care of him.

Day 4  No wind. We are hardly moving! What is wrong? The Indian navy called us on the VHF and asked for last call of port and next country and port. Very indian/english haha, difficult to understand. In the afternoon the wind picked up a little bit so now we do 3,5-4 knots, amazing!!

The wind is mostly easterly and we sail wing on wing which give us a little better speed.

Day 5  Suddenly early this morning the wind turned around and is now comming from the south?? Stranges, that is absolutly not what is predicted? And still 5-6 knots most of the time. It hits 8 knots somethimes but only for a short time. This is so frustrating we are not getting any where.

To add some more positive things, we have 1-2 knots of current against us most of the time.

The good old Mr Moon is our company during nights, that is always nice. Sunrice and sunset are beautiful.

At 9 o’clock we start the motor, we are not moving. Mr Perkins need to do some work now.

Day 6  It is now 06.40 and the motor is still running. Yesterday we were in contact (sms) with Karolina our daughter i Perth. She will be our future weather guru. She told us that the winds will be back again on Saturday, with speed up 15 knots. Yes!

The generator is running for one hour. After the fourth try is started pjuu…! We have not used it for a long time. 

Day 7  Our weather guru predict winds on Sunday, not today. Mr Perkins is still working and in 12 hours we are half way!

During the days we read a lot, thank God for all our good books. ”Happy Hour” is at 15.00 and we drink a GT or a SamSong, (SS is a Thai ”rum” if you can call it that, not bad, mixed with soda-water and Sprite).

During our night watch we watch movies. Times is running and it keeps you awake, much better than reading. 

Night watch is, F 20-23 , G 23-02, F 02-04, G 04-06. It works very well.

Day 8  Everything is pretty much the same. It’s Sans Peur time onboard, which means Thai time. So onboard the time is right now 15.30. In Maldives it’s 13.30. From today we changes night watch times, Fred will start his watch 21.00, so it will be daylight whan he wake up in the morning.

Last night and today we have had lots of ships around us, tankers, cargo ships, container ships and some of these speciel looking ships that transport cars. No problems, everything has been going very smooth. 

Still to little wind to sail but we have good speed, finally we have some current with us. The weather guru predict NNE winds 8-15 knots Monday and Tuesday.

Day 9  NO! I have to write the same words again, NO WIND!!! The Indian Ocean is like a mirror???

Well, today we topped up with diesel. 93 hours of motoring. We topp up with 280 liter. That means we have used 3.06 liter per hour!! That is very good!!

Long way to go. Mr Perkins is our best friend, he newer let us down.

Then today we had some issues! Fishingboats approching us and no AIS, no VHF, so what?? Are they pirates?? We dont no! It’s always a bit scarring when boats are just turning, changes their course and heading strait towards you. They were just behind us, waving and shouted stop! No way you stop and talk to people in the middle  of the Indean Ocean. They left, we hope they just wanted to do some deals with us, trading fish for cigarettes?? Who knows? 

Then again we had two fishingboats ahead, starboard and portside. No way to avoid them. The one from starboard vent directly towards us. Came up very close and then vent away???

We reported the issue to UKMTO. They were very helpful and of course we informed our sailing friends, Dr No, Nadine and Ruach.

A very calm day again on the Indian Ocean.

Day 10  Still calm waters and no wind.

Today we saw turtels passing the boat. Some were totally still in the water. Some were moving a litlle. 

Do turtles sleep on the surface? What are they doing out here? The depth is 4000 meters! What do they eat out  here? We vonder if they have been hit by boat motors? We saw seven and only two was moving?

Day 11  Hopefully it will be our last day at sea!!

Not much to tell. We spent some hours repairing the Swedish and the Danish flaggs. They look like they been in a storm war! 

Feels crazy that we will be in Male tomorrow!! If everything is going well!

We were working, in here on the island  Meeru Fenfushi in Male atoll, 1980-1981.

That is 41 years ago. How is it now?? Our agent, Assad promised us that we will be able to visit Meeru again!

Day 12  We are here!! Arrived at Male local time 10.30. What a horrible crossing! But now we are here!!!! And the clearence went very well, the guys were very helpfull. A lot of boat stamps and signatures.