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High in the hills of Sri Lanka grows some of the world's best tea which is still hand-picked.

Our passage from Thailand to Sri Lanka was relatively slow - we had very little wind for our first 3 days in the Andaman Sea so we just drifted along at 3 knots - but still it was very pleasant passage.  When we're out here with no real schedule, what's an extra day?  The only real excitement was dodging all the ships, as we were right next to the main shipping lanes that join the Far East and the Middle East/Mediterranean.  Lots of shipping!  Luckily, we'd just installed a new detector for the beacons that all large ships are now obliged to carry, so that made things much safer and easier.

Our course was almost due west, and the winds were all from the north -- light and a bit west of north to start, and then they clocked around behind us to come more from the northeast.

The following are our noon positions and statistics as we sailed from Koh Butang, Thailand to Sri Lanka (wind speeds and directions are apparent, not true):

Totals:  1,135 nautical miles in 9 days and 7.5 hours, for an average speed of 5.1 knots, with a maximum speed of 9.6 knots (says the GPS).  Fairly slow, but nice and comfortable - I don't think we took a reef the whole trip!

The newsletters we sent while on passage are:

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