I sit here in the cockpit, just before 0500 and look out at the Souther Cross in the sky to my left and the Big Dipper behind me to the right, I look out over an empty sea. Not a ship to be seen but an almost full Moon working it's way toward the horizon. I watched it come up last evening and I'll watch it set this morning. This is the way of cruising long distances. Living in shifts at night and catching the odd nap during the day. Changing the sails if the wind changes or changing the direction of the boat if the wind changed it's direction. We left Thailand on Monday of last week which makes us moving for the last nine days. In that time, we've traveled 964 miles on the chart plotter but in reality, only 864 miles toward our destination, the Maldives. The constant jockeying to get the most distance out of our trip at the best speed given the lack of wind, has forced us to zig and zag, especially over the last three days. We travel Northwest for hours and then shift to Southwest for more hours because the wind forces us to. Right now, we are traveling at 238 degrees on the compass. We really need to be heading about 260 to take us toward the south point on Sri Lanka but the direction of the wind forbids it. So we go where the wind allows us and try and make the best of it. Last evening, we shifted the sails to make us got Northwest, primarily because we had ventured to far South and had gotten to close to the shipping lanes. Huge container ships and tankers were close on the horizon, maybe three miles away and with the Sun about to set, we didn't want to cross the shipping lanes in the dark. When I came on watch at 0300, we again changed the sails back to what they had been eight hours before. Back and forth, over and over again. Never a straight line to where we need to go.