February 2, 2007 - Andamans to Maldives, Day 3
by George & Merima

Hi Everyone!

The past 24 hours have been a bit more mellow than the day before. The winds have a bit more east in them than the forecasts have shown, but we gybed over to port and are now more or less on a direct course to our waypoint off the south end of Sri Lanka. If the winds hold steady at 15-20 knots, we should be half way between the Andamans and Sri Lanka by the time the dinner dishes are put away this evening.

The only excitement to report are four flying fish who ended up on our deck in suicide missions. I think this might be a record, but there are heaps of them out here.

The other situation was getting into a bit of a tangle with a small ship last evening. We were under sail with preventer on the main boom and a pole braced to windward holding out the genoa. This configuration allows us to sail nearly dead down wind. For the non-sailors out there, all this helps us to go "fast forward," but makes it extremely difficult to change direction on short notice without a lot of ripping, tearing, snapping and breaking of all that stuff sticking up in the air catching wind. The ship had been on a collision course with us since I spotted it on radar about 8 miles off our stern quarter. When it was about a mile off and clear that he didn't see our lights or sails (the moon was nearly full last evening), I called him on the VHF radio. After three attempts, I think I finally woke someone up. I requested that they alter course slightly to port and pass us, and he agreed. Well, all they did was slow down and maintain a collision course towards us. The object just got bigger and we could smell exhaust fumes. Then the guy comes on the radio with panic in his voice and demands that WE alter course to starboard. Based on relative tonnage, I was in no position to argue, but doing so put sails and spars at risk. As I altered course I reminded him that he was a power vessel overtaking a sailing vessel under sail -clearly the one who should be altering course and giving way. The %#@&*! on watch obviously didn't know how to operate the autopilot or steer the ship properly. By the time we furled the headsail and got Moonshadow back under control, they were now directly in our path. I asked him to speed up as he was now impeding our progress. There was no response nor any apology offered. It's hard to believe that there are people out there operating commercial ships on the high seas with such poor training, ignorance of rules of the road and just plain bad etiquette.

Sailing throughout the night was fast, if not a bit lumpy. Since noon yesterday, we made good (miles towards our destination) 171 miles.

Cheers, George, Merima, Thane and Graham