Fortunately, after a great day of sailing yesterday, we sailed through most of the night too, with the exception of a few hours just after dark when the winds died down and we had to motor-sail.

This morning we had white, puffy clouds around, after a completely clear blue sky yesterday, but the winds remained, thankfully. With winds out of the east of 13 to 14 Knots, we enjoyed a SOG (Speed Over Ground) of 6.5 to 7.0 Kts on headsail alone, approaching the Great Channel south of Great Nicobar Island and expect to exit the Andaman Sea into the Bay of Bengal tonight. What we weren’t expecting, though, not only the number of cargo ships we have encountered, but also the streams of garbage floating passed us; ropes, nets, plastic waste, specifically plastic bottles and plastic wrappers, flip-flops, logs, cooler boxes, even a plastic chair! Just terrible!

After Elaine had caught up on her sleep after breakfast, to pass the time while Roy caught up on his sleep, she baked a banana loaf using a recipe she got from Paul’s mom a few years ago on one of the occasions when Justine and Paul were visiting us on Paw Paw; an unplanned event, but what do you do when all your green bananas ripen at once, because we were foolish enough to stow them differently to what we’ve done in the past! Oh the joys!

The good news from the SSB/HF radio net, though, was that Golden Spirit (Caroline and Michael) and Talulah Ruby III (Andy and Paul) were, like ourselves, converging on the Great Channel tonight too. Should be a good “race” to the Maldives!