POSITION REPORT ON MONDAY 23 JANUARY 2017 AT 0700

08:20S   135:08E

So far we've done 268 miles with 137 miles to go. We did 157 miles in the last 24 hours.  We’ve got 80% clouds and 20 knot ENE winds.  We’re on a starboard reach with 2 metre seas.   We beat our predicted position this morning, so the Boat Polar isn’t too bad – we’ll probably have to slow down tonight to make sure that we arrive in Port Blair at dawn.  Here's what we did yesterday and overnight.

22 January 2017 Nai Harn Bay Phuket to Port Blair, Andaman Islands (Day 2)

We had nice sunny conditions for most of the day, although the wind was very frustrating in the late morning – varying in strength between 8-15 knots and veering about 40 degrees.  This meant that we had to keep gybing the genoa because the sails kept slating. 

A long cloud lane was building up to the north of us, which seemed to be causing the fickle conditions, so I changed course 40 degrees and sailed underneath it.  This seemed to put us in a more constant wind stream and we were back to 5.5 – 6 knots, without the sails banging.

The seas are steadily getting bigger and the endless rolling is starting to get very wearing, but we're getting into the routine of our three hour night watches – 7-10; 10-1; 1-4; 4-7. 

When I got up this morning, we had breakfast and then Glenys went to bed for a few hours. Meanwhile, I downloaded some new GRIB files and recalculated our route using qtVlm.  The route wasn’t much different, but it showed that we would get to our destination at 08:00 on the 24^th.  After lunch, I went to bed for a few hours.  These “day naps” allow us to catch up on sleep and breaks the monotony of sitting in the cockpit staring at the sea and sky.

So far, the sunsets and sunrises have been rubbish and last night was really dark because we had total cloud cover and only a quarter moon.