As I wrote this blog, it was becoming longer and longer – you wouldn’t think there would be much to say about a passage! I thought it might be useful to split it up into a passage overview for those of you who don’t want to plough through a day by day description of the passage, and then a second installment being the daily blog of the passage itself. So here’s the overview.

The passage from Phuket, Thailand to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka is the first leg of our Indian Ocean crossing. We had decided not to go to Galle, on the south west of Sri Lanka, even though it has been the most favoured port by sailing vessels. We had read reports from other cruisers that it is not an easy port – the berthing facilities are rough on the boats, dust from a nearby cement factory gets blown over the boats, fresh water is not readily accessible, and any provisions have to be carried in from the port gates, where they often get inspected by the authorities. Trincomalee on the north east coast, on the other hand, is renown to be a very well protected harbour, anchoring is permissible, and there is a good dinghy dock which is very secure. The town has about 100,000 inhabitants and so has all the services that we would need. It has really only opened up to sailing vessels since 2015, following the civil war. Reports from boats going their last season were very favourable, so we decided to make that our base in Sri Lanka.

The passage was 1053 nm to the Trincomalee Harbour entrance, which is about 1,950 kms and about equivalent to driving from Melbourne to Bundaberg in Queensland. We had wanted to leave Thailand no later than the end of February, and so with the new motor installed and commissioned by 13^th February, we were free to do the final provisioning and start watching the weather. The forecast was looking promising from about 20^th Feb. There would be light wind early on but then it was forecast to increase and be a steady 15 knots or so from the NE – perfect.

Overall the forecast turned out to be correct. The wind ranged from 0-30 knots, mostly from the NE, and most of the time it was 15-20 knots. We were surprised by the number of squalls that were around. Most days there was one or more hovering on the horizon and sometimes a bit closer. Lightening was often associated with them. A few of these passed over us and generally there was not much in them. The wind strength would pick up for a while and then settled back down, and sometimes there was a bit of rain. We had one on the last night though that brought very fickle wind – it was all over the place – and a lot more rain, which made that night a bit miserable.

We settled into our passage routine of me taking the watch from 7pm-12 midnight (Phil didn’t always stay asleep for that long though), and then again from 5am until around 8am when Phil woke up. I would then have another sleep in the afternoon. We supplemented our sleep with additional naps as each of us felt the need. A boat on passage becomes alive- a seemingly living creature moving and groaning as the wind and sea affects it, and then getting to a whole extra level when sails need to be adjusted. The winches and pulleys creak and groan, sails flap, woodwork creaks, the sink in the galley gurgles (have to remember to put the plugs in), and anything loose in the lockers can rattle away. This can make sleeping a bit of a challenge at times. Sometimes we would have to try out a couple of different sleeping options until we found the least noisy one for that particular time. We did find the routine to be a bit of a grind- it felt like we were continually going to sleep and waking up and not doing too much else, except eating!

I had prepared a large batch each of chicken curry, and a tomato and vegetable sauce (for use with pasta, tinned tuna, or kidney beans) which really minimised the time required in the galley. We were very glad to have done that, since even though the boat was not on much of a lean, it certainly made preparing meals much easier, especially when you are already tired. Phil caught a tuna on about day 2, so that really supplemented our menu.

The first day was very pleasant sailing, with good wind. This was followed by two very frustrating days with light winds, and 7 hours and 18 hours of motoring respectively. Fortunately, the wind returned (and we headed a bit further north in the hope of finding more) and we made good progress without the motor for the remainder of the passage. I guess the up side of the many hours motoring is that the new engine had a good work out, and is ready for its first service while we are here in Sri Lanka. Our distance covered in 24 hours ranged from 123 to 172nm.

We were surprised that when we arrived at Trincomalee harbour that we were not more excited. Have we already become accustomed to the novelty of sailing to new countries? I hope not – maybe we were just tired, and glad and relieved to have made our destination with relatively few issues during the passage. It was great though to get ashore and start to our Sri Lankan experience.