2008-Mar-10 Noon Position

Indian Ocean

106 nm last 24 hrs
622 nm to Salalah, Oman
632 nm from Uligamu, Maldives
Winds N 5-10 knots
Seas N 1-2 feet

Half Way!! We are over the hump and are half way from the Maldives to Oman. The wind has been really light the last 24 hours. Yesterday at 3pm it died out altogether. We tried everything to sail, but no luck. We were drifting around in circles at 1 knot. So we lit off 38 hp of Volvo motoring through the night and started sailing again at 6am when the winds came back up from the north.

The nights are very calm out here. The stars reflecting right off the water making it hard to see where the horizon is. Sometimes the stars reflecting off the ocean look like boats coming over the horizon. The only traffic in the last 24 hours was a large fishing vessel that crossed our bow 2 miles off at 1am.

We are trying to catch a tuna. But since we are sailing sooooo slow the only fish that might bite our lure would have to be pretty lazy. Yesterday we were going so slow I was afraid the lure was going to get caught in the prop.

S/V Shiraz is doing much better than us. They are 120 nm ahead of us as of 1800h last night.

Pray to the wind gods for us so we do not have to buy massive amounts of diesel in Oman.

More in 24,
Tom and Amy