Sophie hit the halfway point between Phuket and the Maldives at 3:30 this morning, having covered 770 miles in exactly 4 and a half days at an average speed at a scooch over 7 knots for the entire distance. We have 750 to go. Kate, Rich, Nic, and I celebrated with a shared can of Coke while looking to see if a certain Journey song was on the flybridge music player. It wasn’t, so we had to sing a cappella.

Sophie’s current position is 06 15.572n, 085.51.538e. We are sailing on a course of 163m at a speed of 7 knots on a beam reach with a 10 knot apparent breeze. We have the jib out and a reef in the main. Sophie covered 164 miles in yesterday’s noon to noon run, but given our current speed, I assume we will beat that number today. We once again had the gennaker and full main out all day yesterday and then switched to the jib and reefed main for the night. We seem to have developed a pattern. We have motorsailed for less than 10 hours for the entire passage. This steady northerly simply doesn’t want to go away.

Kate and Nic did a watch together tonight, and they did quite well. Except for the fact that that they convinced themselves that the ships appearing and then disappearing on the screen 15 miles south of us were stealth pirate ships coming to get us. I explained that we were just north of the shipping lane between the Suez Canal and Singapore and that hundreds of ships were passing 50 miles south of us. They remained unconvinced, arguing that perhaps they were seeing pirate submarines instead.

We are just 240 miles from Sri Lanka. I can already sense the wild elephants, especially the baby ones. We will pass the southern coast of Sri Lanka on Sunday during the day, missing it by 40 miles. I doubt we will see it. Life is a series of tradeoffs.

The fishing program finally got in gear yesterday! We hooked our first mahi mahi, using a yellow hoochi lure on the rod with the reel that our friend Bill Walker gave us over the holidays. Unfortunately the fish was the size of Hazel’s forearm, so we let him go. Later that evening we pulled in our meatlines for the night and saw that something had crushed one of my new cedar tuna plugs. They are out there.

Rich and Nic saw a whale spout a few hundred meters from us. There are lots of flying fish. We haven’t seen a bird in four days. I assume that will change soon.

We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and for Friday Family Movie Night the kiddies watched a Lego documentary that their sister/future sister-in-law. Tonight we will barbecue pork loin on the grill. Yes, it’s that kind of passage.

Talk to you tomorrow.