At about 3 am last night we officially exited the structured anarchy of the Malacca Strait Traffic Separation Scheme and entered the marine equivalent of the Wild West, where might is right and the law of tonnage is king.
The TSS at least had rules. Sure, not everyone followed them, and there were plenty of times I found myself shaking my head wondering what the heck they were thinking. One ship of about 600 feet decided he'd drive the wrong way between the streams of traffic, managing to be port-to-port with one ship while simultaneously starboard-to-starboard with another. Surely it would have been easier to cross over to the correct side and drive the right way, but apparently that was asking too much.
Now we've left all that behind.
Out here there are no nice orderly lanes. Ships are going in every conceivable direction and the rules don't so much get ignored as simply not turn up. We've got about another 300 miles of this before we reach the relative safety of Phuket.
It got me thinking during the night watch. This shows how old I am, but back in the day we used to make passages like this with paper charts. No AIS. No chartplotter. No electronic charts showing every ship for twenty miles. You looked out from the cockpit had a quick look at the chart, and convinced yourself you knew what was going on. I must have been mad. I do remember moments of terror! I remember thinking it was perfectly normal.
All is well onboard and we are making steady progress even if its not as fast as I would like.