We're definitely on the homeward leg now with less than 200 miles to go.
If you've been looking at our track over the last 24 hours, you might be wondering what on earth we were doing. I was thinking yesterday after we left the TSS it might be worth heading back and sticking close to the unofficial shipping lanes would probably offer a bit of protection from fishing boats and the more creative navigation styles you encounter out here. It didn't. So we made a course change direct to Phuket.
We ended up making several further course changes to avoid large concentrations of fishing boats and then, just as things were settling down, a cable-laying ship called us on the VHF and asked if we'd alter 20 degrees to port and give them a wide berth. Fair enough—it's easier for us to move than them—but it added another little kink to the track.
The biggest surprise of the day, though, was seeing some of the worst FADs I've ever come across.
Most of the Indonesian ones at least had a bamboo structure sticking out of the water. They weren't exactly obvious, but they gave enough of a radar return to let you know something was there.
These were different.
Imagine a large lump of polystyrene floating just at the surface. Now tie several more large lumps of polystyrene behind it with rope so the whole floating contraption is about twenty meters long. No bamboo. No radar target worth talking about. Just a collection of floating white debris waiting for someone to find it the expensive way.
What you can't see, of course, is what is hanging underneath. I can just picture lengths of nylon line trailing through the water, waiting to wrap themselves around a propeller at two o'clock in the morning.
That was enough to convince me to slow down again last night. Losing an hour is far preferable to spending the next day trying to explain why you've become permanently attached to somebody's floating pile of rubbish.
Less than 200 miles to go now. Singapore is behind us, Phuket is getting closer, and with a bit of luck the Java Sea and Malacca Strait has played all of its tricks for this trip. Experience suggests that's probably an optimistic assumption, but it's a nice thought nonetheless.