Captain Scott ~ Sunday, November 4th, 2007

11:35 PM Monday 2 days out of Galle: As we left the harbor we passed the Swan 53 coming in. She was "Who Dares Wins" the same boat we passed in the Gulf of Aden. She took exactly 5 days longer to get to Galle I guess they didn’t dare enough. So while they were being shaken down by the Navy we sailed east ward along the coast of Sri Lanka. As pretty a coast as there is--tropical, lush,white beaches, palm trees, crashing surf, mountains behind. By nightfall we were at the SE corner of the Island and leaving the shore. The pretty daytime sail turned frustrating---the sea became lumpy in a lot of current, frequent rain squalls returned, 1000 fishing boats knew that we were in the best spot for fish, AND 3 1/2 kts of current against us!! If we sailed at 6kts through the water, our SOG was only 2 1/2! The ETA read out for Phuket was for sometime in 2008. So we had to use the engine to get the boat speed up to 9 kts. Even with this we only covered 120 miles in the first day. Day 2 and 50 miles off the coast. Rain and lighter wind saw us use the engine full time. But now away from fishing boats and the adverse current was down to 2 kts. Monday and the weather cleared and adverse current down to a manageable knot. We are running wing and wing under sunny skies and all is right in the world.