Transiting From the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea – Days 3 & 4

Yesterday morning we rolled up 3,000 hours on the engine. That is 125 days of sea time. 89% of those hours have been put on the engine since leaving for this around the world journey. We calculated the fuel burn so far on this passage. We are getting the worst fuel burn we have ever gotten at 1.7 miles to the gallon. That is what happens when you run consistently at 1900 RPM. We feel moving fast through the dangerous area is worth the cost of the fuel.

We heard on the BBC that the French Navy has been following the captured yacht for 600 kilometers, and that the crew and yacht all seem to be safe. Eric did the unthinkable and talked on the VHF to another yacht. The other guy was a part of the radio net, but we were never able to contact him on the SSB. Eric heard him talking on the VHF, so Eric hailed him, inquiring about what to expect ahead of us, since he was already in the Red Sea. We were already out of the most dangerous part, anyway. The monkey guy is back, terrorizing channel 16. Sigh. Why can’t we get rid of that guy?

The wind continues to be behind us, and we had forgotten how much the autopilot works in following seas. It is definitely substantial, and you can heard the autopilot pump making noise. The ride is OK. We are seeing a lot of ships now. The entrance to the Red Sea is only about 10 miles wide, and only about 5 miles of it is deep enough for these big ships, so all the ships are getting closer together as we near the small funnel of an entrance. Still nowhere near as congested as Singapore.

Today we hit another milestone. We crossed the threshold to The Red Sea at almost exactly 2100. Yay! We made it through the Gulf of Aden! We can now say we have crossed two oceans. We are not sure where the exact line for the Red Sea is, so we picked essentially the narrowest point of all as our marker. Mainland Djibouti (Africa) is 10.5 miles away, mainland Yemen (Arabia) is 5 miles away, and the island of Yemen are only two miles away. Since we are out of the “danger zone” we are running with our navigation lights on again.

Since we were nearing the narrowest portion of the sea, for most of the day today we could see land on both sides of us the peaks of mountains on the Yemen (Arabian) side and the small islands on the Djibouti (African) side.

The seas have also smoothed out, making for a very nice ride. We have been getting great mileage today, most of the day speeds are in the high 7’s and low 8’s, in the late evening increasing to the high 9’s and low 10’s, even getting as high as 10.7 at one point. We have a helpful current with us.

We had a beautiful sunset, which was a nice way to celebrate the transition. There was only the tiniest sliver of a moon, which set early in the evening, so it is another black night.

And onto blog questions:

Q: What is health care like in Southeast Asia?

From what we have gathered, it sounds like Indonesia doesn’t have enough doctors to adequately service the population, nor modern equipment in the hospitals in which to treat illnesses. We are told that the doctors do well with the common problems for the area, such as tropical disease, but that for more specialized issues one should go to Singapore. It sounds like the doctors are all private practice and the locals have a hard time affording health care.

Singapore has excellent quality medical care. In fact, since medical care is ten times cheaper than the United States, many Americans fly to Singapore to have various types of medical and dental work done. Lonely Planet says it is easy to get a quick breast augmentation between shopping and lying out at the pool. The locals have a portion of their health care costs subsidized by the government on a sliding scale.

Malaysia has socialized medicine and we were told by a taxi driver that medical care is good. This driver lived in a few other countries for a few years, including Switzerland and Indonesia, so we know he has seen both extremes of the spectrum and trust his judgment.

Thailand recently introduced socialized health care in the last few years. Some of the locals told it is not very good. However, private care in Thailand is phenomenally good, and like Singapore, many westerners come to Thailand for medical and dental care, especially elective surgeries. Thailand does the most transgender surgeries in the world, which is an interesting claim to fame. The care is incredibly cheap by American standards, but still too pricy for the average Thai to be able to afford. [96-97]

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