08-Feb-2008 Noon Position

Indian Ocean
7'30.4N/92'44.4E

• 92 nm last 24hrs
• 1,181 nm to Maldive Islands
• 300 nm from Similan Islands, Thailand
• Winds E 10 knots
• Seas S 1-2 feet

We are not so much sailing, but more like a controlled drift west. The winds are still 10 knots right off the stern giving us an average of 3 knots with an occasional bust of speed to 4 knots.

We successfully passed through the Nicobar Islands late last night without having cannibals chase us down, or arrows shot at us. We fired up the engine for a few hours to clear the channel. The only traffic were several ships, and another sailboat on the horizon whom we tried to call at sunrise. But we never got an answer back.

Sandpiper is now officially in the Indian Ocean, and will be until we get to the Red Sea.

We have been running our water maker every day. Our daily goal is to make 5 gallons a day. This amount keeps our tanks level without draining our batteries down. Our friends on other boats might have a good chuckle at only 5 gallons a day. They are able to make enough water to supply a small city and to take hot showers daily. 5 gallons a day works perfect for us.

We have a PUR35 water maker that makes 1.5 gallons of fresh water out of seawater per hour. Over the last 2 years we have never really run our water maker daily before because of issues with our DC generator. It would always overheat. The only time we would run the watermaker is when the engine was running. But after fixing the overheating problem in Malaysia, we are now running the generator every day. So we can run the water maker daily and have all the fresh water we want!

More in 24.

Tom and Amy