Sri Lanka to Chagos - Day 1
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 24 Mar 2012 06:49
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4:40.196N 78:58.131E
March 24, 2012
All is well so far after completing our first 24 hours.
We were able to sail for about 12 hours after leaving Sri Lanka. Of
course, the direction wasn't quite right (more south than we would have liked),
but hey, we were sailing. We didn't have any trouble with fishing boats,
but had to thread our way through the east/west ship traffic. We had
to tack once to avoid hitting a ship, but we never take moves like that
personally (and I don't mean to imply we had to make an emergency tack - we
always know well in advance whether evasive maneuvers will
be needed to avoid a ship). It's a lot easier for us to maneuver than
them, and when a 835 foot cargo ship is headed our way, an extra turn or two doesn't seem too much to ask. Many
west-going cargo ships were parked 10-20 miles off the Sri Lankan coast, waiting
for their security marshals and weapons to be delivered before carrying on
through pirate territory to the Red Sea. These transactions take place
off-shore, but the boats delivering the men and weapons are based in Galle where
we were moored. We don't envy any of them (ships or marshals) the trip to
the Red Sea, and are very glad we've turned southwest and are far away from any
of that mess.
We are motoring southwest at the moment and expect to be doing
so for the next 48 hours. After that Bruce says there might be some
wind. The good news is we have a favorable current pushing us along
nicely. As I type, Don is working feverishly on deck to get rid of all the
grime collected in Sri Lanka. The lack of rain meant our decks
were coated with cement powder dust mixed with bird poop. A unique
and particularly nasty combination. The Galle harbor was so dirty, grime
not only attacked us by air, but by sea as well. The six lines we used to
secure Harmonie to the dock and to shore spent a lot of time in the Galle harbor
water. Not nice. Imagine our disgust as we pulled in our lines while
happily exiting the mooring area, and found our fingers squishing down
into brown slimy muck. Ugh! Don't even want to think about what was
lurking in that slime. Before scrubbing the decks this morning, Don did
his best to soak the slime off the lines. He even resorted to trailing
them behind the boat in hopes the slime would slide off. I'm not sure
it worked, but haven't gone out of my way to look at the lines. It's
amazing what you can successfully avoid looking at while living on a relatively
small boat.
More tomorrow -
Anne
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