Sailing Steel Sapphire

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A Momentous Day

Sri Lanka to Maldives - Day 3

We’re on a heading of 270*, about half way between Trincomalee, Sri Lanka and Ulgian, Maldives, and today marks a momentous day.

Not just because I’m trying out this micro-blogging feature on PredictWind for the first time, but also because this is the last day for several years where we’ll literally be sailing into the sunset.

One of my favourite things about the “West-about Circumnavigation” route is that each day sees the sun rise over your shoulder, and you then “sail into the sunset” each day. For the purposes of last night and again tonight, it’s literally, as we’re heading due west. But after tonight, we’ll turn NW for Uligan, and once we get there, we’ll be heading mostly south through the Maldives, BIOT, the Mascarene Islands, and then Madagascar and South Africa.

After that, it will mostly be north through the South and North Atlantic oceans, then a six months to a year in the UK, some time in Scandanavia and the Med, and then finally, in 2023 or therabouts, we’ll reusme heading westwards sailing from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean.

I wouldn’t want to wish the intervening time away, as these are going to be some amazing years, but I really will miss sipping a cold beer at sunset as we sail directly towards that glowing orb.