Monday, 13th September 2010
All on board got going early, as we are leaving Bali today. A light breakfast followed by a Hindu blessing of the boats before the trip west to the Cocos Keeling Islands.
Neil had to visit the Yacht Club and have his passport stamped by Customs. We also had to get rid of the Bali currency, as this will not work anywhere else, so Australian or U.S $ will both work in the Cocos.
09.30hrs Thomas Wibberenz called to look over our Parasailor, KITE. Thomas was the person who sold us that wonderful sail in Las Palmas back last November 2009. A little sewing, and repair work and all is well with the sail again.
As we said before, as soon as we repair or renew something, something else goes wrong, now we have a little leak in our Aqua fresh filter, nothing serious, just annoying, however we will look at it later and see what we can do...
10.30hrs We took down our bunting, and generally got the boat ready to go to sea. This is always an exciting time.
11.00hrs We slipped our shore lines and motored out with the rest of the fleet to the start area. A couple of things were very obvious: * The amount of parasailors on the water was amazing, being towed along behind big fast motor boats, we were amused that there were no collisions, with the amount of activity on the water, boats everywhere and the sky full of parachutes; * The water pollution, the amount of dirt and rubbish floating around was frightening, many of our fleet had their water inlets blocked with semi submerged plastic bags and old clothes, plus tons of other things. Disgusting! It is obvious that these lovely people use the sea as one big garbage dump. How anyone uses it for swimming or other water activities is beyond us, and they still have huge tourism, mainly because its cheep and cheerful.
12.00hrs The fleet all sailed North/South over the starting line and we were off once more. The wind was ESE at 10 knots, so it was fine on our port bow, and the weather was good, with plenty of sunshine. Lady Lisa took off like a shot out of a gun, and showed the fleet a clean pair of heels. We just about held our own. It took us about 3 hours to clear the island of Bali, before we adjusted our course to a WSW direction.
We made a decision to go well south of the rum line, to avoid being close to Java and also Bruce said thats where the wind will be, so lets see. Only time will tell now.
14.00hrs We had a salad lunch, and then we dug out the blue spinnaker from the Stb cabin, set it all up, and eventually hauled it aloft. It set nicely and off we went merrily bobbing along.
Later, as dusk set in, the wind increased to 20/25 knots and the sea got quite rough, so we dropped the spinnaker again and set the geneo and so we white sailed for the rest of the night. Going more and more south of the rum line. As darkness set in properly, Kalliope III sent the fleet a call, concerned that they were being tailed, so the fleet, or rather the closest boats to them closer ranks and joined Kalliope, this ended the incident and every one was happy again.
We skipped dinner, it was so rough, that no one was hungry (with the exception of Neil) so he grabbed himself a sandwich.
Night watches :- 10.00 hrs / 00.00hrs...................... Aileen
00.00hrs / 02.00hrs........................Stephen
02.00hrs / 04.00hrs........................Neil
04.00hrs / 06.00hrs........................Terry
06.00hrs / 08.00hrs ......................Aileen ( birthday girl )
00.00hrs We had traveled 91 miles, an average of 7.58 knots.
Did you know, King George of England could not speak much english, so anyone who wanted a favor from George had to go through one of his two mistresses. One of these was very heavy, and the other was very slim. It became known as having to go through "Thick and Thin" to get at George. The expression still holds today .................................................................. Just thought we would share that bit of information.
That's all for now.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)