Singapore to KK
Digiboat's "Product Testing"
Simon Blundell
Tue 20 Sep 2011 07:50
01°47.9838N 105°51.0613E
Tue 20/9
1430
Busy week stop
over at Raffles Marina in Singapore to change the battery bank and embark the
new Burmese crew. Evan rejoins after 9 months at home in his village, and Han
Thaung the shipyard's gun varnisher who has quite some work to do onboard. Also
joining are two Myanmar Sea Cadets, Win and Vickie, for their first onboard
practical experience and training.
And Klara, the
Czech dive instructor that sailed up with us from Indonesia has decided to sail
to Borneo rather than fly!
A good couple
of knots of friendly current helped us out and clear of Singapore into the China
Sea last night. A light favourable breeze developed in the early hours so we did
some sailing briefly, then motor-sailed till sunrise when the wind filled in
some more. Been under full sail, including our "Monkey" which is somewhere
between a mizzen staysail and mizzen spinnaker, in a variable 10-15kn just aft
abeam but cruising nicely at around 7.5kn.
GRIB forecast
is for similar wind conditions for next few days, by then we should be off the
Sarawak coast and hoping for some land breeze to push us up to
Sabah.
The three new
Myanmar are a little off colour this morning and also been hit by, what I call,
the Burmese Sleeping Sickness - if they stop for too long in one place they fall
asleep. Anyway they are certainly not violently sick so suspect they are just
adjusting and getting their sea-legs. But if they go more than two or three
meals without rice I'll probably start to worry!
Evan, our 1st
Mate, introduced Win to helming this morning. After a 30 minute stint on the
wheel Evan realised he hadn't turned off the autopilot. Not sure if Win knows,
but anyway a good way to build confidence I guess!
Towing a few
fake rubber pink squids and hoping the fish are stupid enough to mistake these
for food. Caught some big Spanish Mackerels on this leg last year so expecting
some degree of success.
SJB