The chairman of Kraken Yachts and his team of four crewplan to sail to Indonesia, Bali, Christmas Island, across The Indian Ocean to Madagascar, on to Cape Town and complete their voyage in the Mediterranean.

They weighed anchor in Hong Kong’s Gold Coast Marina and have sailed Subic Bay in the Philippines, on to Coron Bay for three days of wreck diving, continued to Puerto Princesa and have now reached Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia.

In his log blog, Beaumont reported on their first leg. ​“Our first leg was Hong Kong to Subic in the Philippines. The weather files were showing perfect 17-20kn SE winds for the first two days but this stretch of the South China Sea is notorious for testing fresh crews with stronger winds than forecast. So no one was surprised when the wind built to 25 knots during the first few hours then steadily increased to 30 to 35 knots on the beam. We reefed down for the first night but still made 8-8.5kn through 3-4m seas,” he writes.

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Fortunately, provisioning has been well planned with Beaumont writing that two Kraken members packed the team off with “a huge pack of 1000 PG Tips tea bags from the UK. So a good cup of tea will be assured for a good while!”