North to Nongsa

Much as I have always hated retracting a route it seems we're getting a lot of it in South East Asia. At least this run from Belitung back up to Nongsa is a nice sail. We departed yesterday about 0830 and should have a 170nm day behind us even with a few hours of 3-5 knt light air sailing. Most of it has been wing on wing moving very nicely, 8.75 knt the highest I have seen on the trusty speedo.

Scott comes on deck

So we're sailing dead down with the Hydrovane steering fairly well and a 2-4' "swell" behind us in about 15 knts of wind. The boat has always moved very well in these conditions, right now we're doing 7.5 knots, but that means the Kiss wind generator doesn't have enough relative wind to be effective so I'll have to generate some amps this morning.

A little basic navigation

We may just head right on through to Nongsa, we may stop somewhere for a night. Right now we're approaching the equator one more time and conditions are very comfortable, why stop?

Whadda we do with this stuff?

Oh yeah, the lower end drive unit of our dinghy outboard seems to have shelled out. Hopefully we can get that fixed around Nongsa but at least we won't have to deal with it in Cocos-Keeling.

Love to all,
Bill, Janet and Scott

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