Bali draws near

Digiboat's "Product Testing"
Simon Blundell
Tue 8 Mar 2011 18:56
08:32.17S   111:09.03E
 
An eventful day!!  Caught the first fish of the trip!!  OK, it was a bit small but the Burmese boys cooked themselves a fabulous meal of it with loads of chilli and tomatos on rice.  Tim prepared us a lovely ragout with pork..
 
We had a good 15kn breeze for most of the day allowing us to average nearly 8kn thus making nearly 200 miles for the 24 hours.  We can now see Bali on the same chart as the boat so the excitement is mounting as the miles count down.  As I write we have 235nm to go.  At our current speed of 8kn this gives us an ETA at the anchorage of Thursday arfternoon..
 
The Scrabble battle continues!  Bar and I had a convincing win today to bring the score to 3 games all.  Tim and Al were most gracious in defeat!  I must say the pairs game is great fun with each player utilising their tiles to the best advantage for the team.  Thus it allows the first partner to play in such a way as to set up the second partner for a higher score.  So it looks like tomorrow's game will now be the decider with the books at even money for each team.  There could be blood on the decks!
 
MC
8/1815z
 
15-20kn WNW-WSW winds continued through most of last night and into early part of today, before dropping off to <5kn for remainder of today and continuing into tonight. Both diesel sails set and drawing nicely as need to maintian >7.5kn average to arrive daylight hours at Gili-T on Thursday. Tim's requested a sail past along Kuta beach en route. We should be there daylight on Thursday morning but will delay our arrival at anchorage by an hour or two...
Spent most of today motoring through a very depressing rubbish slick several miles wide and countless miles long. Unique in that this was purely a collection of plastic rubbish. Every piece of plastic ever used by consumerism - lolly wrappers, shopping bags, glad wraps, drink bottles, food wrappers. From old to new it appeared as if this items had been congealing into the slick for many many years. Of course this created many false alarms on the fishing rod as the next wrapper was hooked and the line runs out.
 
SJB
8/2000z