We had expected very little wind on the passage from Sri Lanka to the Maldives.  This had been the pattern for some time, and we couldn't see anything more favourable in the forecasts so decided to leave anyway as we didn't want to spend any more time in the harbour at Galle.  We left the harbour on Friday afternoon and anchored at Jungle Beach in the outer bay for the night.  In the morning Sarah snorkelled around to clean barnacles from the propeller and as much of the hull as she could easily reach, to help us motor and sail more efficiently.

The weather lived up to the forecast, and we sailed for 24 hours in total out of the 4-day passage.  It was a fairly uneventful trip.  We saw a lot of shipping as we were in or close to the main shipping lanes, but none caused as any issue.  For most of the passage we were within fifteen miles of another yacht, Windsong: it can be comforting to see another boat out there and also keeps you on your toes if they appear to be sailing better than you.

At one point we found a number of long net fishing boats in our path.  At nightfall these boats let out long nets marked by buoys with AIS transmitters on them, so they are easy to spot.  They were aligned with the flow of the shipping so were easy to navigate.

Our chart plotter as we negotiated the fishing boats.  Meikyo is just above the cross on the right-hand side.  The green triangles are net buoy markers and the boat shape at the left end of each net is the attendant fishing boat.  The vessels coming towards us between the nets are a fishing boat and a tanker.  There was plenty of space for all of us!

On the final morning, we got enough wind to get the sails out at 0300 and sailed beautifully all the way to the lagoon entrance at Uligan in the Maldives.  We dropped anchor between Ozone and Jamala at around 1100 after a passage of almost exactly four days.

Windsong was about an hour behind us and a fast catamaran had caught us up in the night so we had to wait for both of them to arrive before we could clear in and the authorities came out to us after lunch.  We had arrived in the Maldives