First Leg of Passage

We wish we had delightful news to share but not this time. The voyage from the Andaman Islands south of Sri Lanka was most uncomfortable but not to the point of dangerous. Most of it was spent in a weather low pressure system that moved west with us making for weird choppy seas and westerly winds to beat into. Beating is sailing close into the wind and we got lots of smashes slapping into the bow and we took on more salt water all over the boat than any other trip....makes for a mess to clean up now we have arrived in the Maldives...actually Ulagamu in the north of the chain.

One really nice thing cheered us. A huge ship passed us and sent us a message on our AIS device [this tracks ships for us and sends a signal about us to them]. They said,"Ahoy brave sailors, Bon Voyage!". We didn't even know we could get messages over the AIS screen and our unit isn't fancy enough to send one. We had 2 ships that were happy to change their course and go behind us when we asked them. Amazing to see this 1/5 mile long vessel alter course just for us.

Here in Ulagamu it's quite remarkable...a school of squid have circled the boat all morning and we see manta rays and porpoises every time we go outside. 19 boats here are in somewhat of an uproar changing plans to avoid the expanded pirate areas. Many...maybe half are going back east or going 1000 miles north to Pakistan or paying $30,000 plus to have their boat shipped from here by a contracted ship. There are still those of us who will go ahead with our plans and take the direct route to the Red Sea stopping in Aden if we need fuel which we probably will. This leg that we depart on Monday Feb 14th will take 2 1/2 to 3 weeks.

Now is time we need prayers. This is the biggest risk we have taken but we have a pod of 4-6 boat that will remain in radio contact but we will not be in sight but rather on our own for the most part.

We would love to hear from folks but our sailmail email isn't coming through so if folks write us there we will write when we can get it.

We are very busy fixing small, inconvenient breakdowns around the boat and lots of mildew!!! Please keep us in mind...

Lynn and Chuck on CYAN