It's been a perfect day's sailing. Decent wind, with an accompanying moderate sea; perhaps the much anticipated Indian Ocean "pleasant passage making" conditions have arrived unannounced. We caught a decent sized mahi-mahi in time for supper, my first mahi-mahi since crossing the coral sea to Australia. Supper was a real treat; fresh fish, accompanied by coleslaw and lightly fried potatoes. We have the ocean to ourselves, no fishing boats and the radar detector has remained quiet.
I spent the day researching and preparing for our landfall. We have a freshly painted Maldivian flag ready for hoisting, and some idea of the check-in procedure. Anchoring off Male' for check-in appears problematic with 50m depths. The trick seems to be to anchor off the west side on a coral head in 15m making sure the anchor has a tripping line attached. We'll see... We're hoping to arrive just before midday tomorrow. The Male' check-in sounds a little bureaucratic with most boats avoiding Male' and stopping instead at Uligamu in the north which appears to have stream-lined its procedures. We've been told we need to provide seven copies of the crew list. I naively thought the ten copies I made in Phuket would last me into the Mediterranean...
It's becoming harder to make a decent connection for sending and receiving emails. We're moving out of range of the station in Brunei 2108 miles east and the Red Sea station 2930 miles WNW isn't yet close enough. I guess it's not going to get any easier for the next 500 miles or so...
Position @ 23:00 (GMT +5) 21/1/2008: N4deg 24.4' E74deg 48.6'
Distance to Maldives: 78
Daily run: 154
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