TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

I was significantly tired and listless yesterday. It took a long time to do things and the idea of “attaching the spinnaker pole to the headsail” was tiring before I actually did it! It must have taken me about half an hour to crank up the energy to do it. I was certainly in “true Zombie Mode.” Slowly, however, things were done and I just had to be careful and as thoughtful as possible. In between I slept and dragged myself up to look around for hazards, fishing vessels and more of the polystyrene “chicken rice or noodles?” packs – an upside down foam surfboard(the fin had me excited there for a moment!) and Caterer’s sized Satay Sauce containers.

At one stage I was in the cockpit and I realised when I woke up that my mouth was wide open. Hey, it took too much effort to close it! (I’ll insert a space there for some of my witty readers to interpolate!__) Mouth Wide Open is now potentially hazardous as I have noticed two flies on board. The “Geraldton Blue” (that’s the fly swat that was bought in Geraldton for a dollar…

“Can I have the receipt as if it doesn’t work I’m bringing it back!” (The checkout person did a double take and got the joke.)

.. as I knew it would be needed at some stage) is now in STANDBY mode ready for Instant Operation.

Fly swats are always laughingly associated with my dear friend Marny who says “two shillings in cash to the person who gets that fly!”

After some good sleeping time I am now ready today to make four shillings – in cash – and a few more miles as well!

Although the winds are light, too light for the ARIES windvane so the Autopilot is in use, I am slowly making progress. There are 2 legs each of around 200 miles of this part of the journey to do. The current leg is from Selat Sunda to Macclesfield Channel which is between two islands: LEPAR and LIAT.

To the North is BANGKA and there is a passage to the West between the island and Sumatra. It’s a shorter route but I have chosen to travel the longer route to the East as it is more open, requiring less attention to navigation and position requirements and gives me a chance to balance sailing and sleeping time. It also gives me more space to accomodate for wind changes.

Position at 1015 hours Wednesday 18th July, 2012.

Course 018 degrees, 4.4kts.

Trip meter reads 1423nm (Travelled 84 miles in the last 24hr period)

Currently overcast, temp of 28.2C, Wind SW 6-8kts max.