I am looking forward to the end of this passage.  We set out from Thailand at the end of Feb to cross the Indian Ocean and it is 8 long adventurous months later and we have only 480 miles to go. Hopefully we should be in Richard's Bay, South Africa on Sunday.  It looks like the weather will hold to allow us to get there without stopping to hole up.  We have excellent weather coverage, there are 2 radio nets we are listening to and they each are on twice a day so we get very good weather information 4 times a day.  They are all volunteers and will give the cruisers detailed information for just their boat.  At the moment we are aware of 14 boats that are checking  in to the nets so these guys are busy.
It feels like we will have accomplished a lot once we arrive in South Africa. So many cruisers are getting stuck in their round the world trips in Langkawi, Malaysia and Thailand.  They were planning on heading through the Red Sea and now that it is to dangerous to do that they are unwilling to tackle a crossing of the Indian Ocean because of the very bad reputation for horrible weather that surround the Cape of Good Hope.  We are over half way around the world, having past that milestone to the west of Mauritius.  It doesn't seem so far to hop over to Brazil and then through the Panama Canal to cross our path for when we left from Costa Rica,to complete our circumnavigation, way less than half way.
I made a list of all the repairs we have to do once we get to port. It was quite impressive, the most pressing is repainting the bottom.  Most people had it done in Thailand but we felt as we had just had it done in Australia it was not necessary.  In some places along the waterline there is not much paint left from the cleaning I have been doing to keep the green grass from growing there.  Our dodger is wearing out, we have been hand stitching it and now the zippers are going and the clear plastic windows are getting harder and harder to see out of.  It is a very well made piece of equipment and it will be costly and difficult to replace it with the same quality.  The bimini which is the cockpit cover as well as the weather cloths, that hang from the lifelines to cover the sides of the cockpit are all the same age and the material is wearing out, oh for a sewing machine. It will keep us really busy for a number of weeks once we arrive.
I have been posting quite regular position reports so if you are interesting in our path across the Mozambique Channel just click on the link to our position on the right. Drop us a line and tell us what is happening in your lives, I feel like I have lost touch with a lot of you.