September 22nd: Departed at 6.15am for Sumbawa Island, still heading West young man! We had to navigate through the narrow channel between Komodo Island and the smaller island. Peter and Heidi had left just before us and were already half way through by the time we got there. Lucky for us one of the local dive boats that had anchored near us last night passed we and we followed him through. Peter & Heidi had a close call and came very close to the reef and had to reverse back and turn to port. We could see fish and reef as we proceeded through the passage. We met up with Oda and continued our journey West towards Sumbawa Island. For the first time in weeks, there was wind and chop on the seas. Our two sailing buddies were very pleased indeed. We passed a very stunning volcano on the small island of Sangeang and it was simmering with gentle smoke blowing out. Robbie hooked up a fish but once we got it in it was only a Barracuda. We don’t eat these fish however, we have seen them on the menu in a couple of restaurants. We decided to keep it and give it to the locals at our anchorage. It was about 700mm long and maybe about 5 kilos. We checked out the first anchorage we had planned to stop at but it was far too roly and exposed so we continued on. Stormvogel and Oda were both attacked by flying squid, which left very black ink stains on their decks. One almost landed on Heidi.
We anchored at 3:00pm at Ambalawi, a nice bay with fringing reef on each side and lots of palm trees. Robbie dived in to check the anchor and he called over one of the locals who was sitting in his sampan and gave him the Barracuda. Peter picked us and Oda up for anchor schnapps on Stormvogel, which was lovely with Heidi’s homemade Pizza. Per up to his usual tricks had taken a photo of himself naked with a strategically placed cucumber as they were passing the Volcano with a comment about how high things are in Norway. Back to the boat and we watched another episode of “Rome” and had an early night.
Alas the anchor alarm went off at 11.45pm and for the first time Robbie heard it before me, I woke up with a fright as he leaped out of bed and up the stairs. It was no problem we had just edged out of the circle. It’s a good piece of equipment and peace of mind for us but you really need to set the alarm as the anchor hits the bottom and we don’t always manage to do that because I am usually on the bow and Robbie is on the fly bridge, which means that the alarm circle is not always set with the anchor in the middle. So when the tide or the wind turns the boat, we drift out of the allowed distance of the circle, hence the alarm goes off. The anchor has not drifted yet thank goodness and I hope we never do, and certainly not in these locations where there is fringing reef. We have a 70kg Rocna anchor and it holds our 45 tonnes very well.
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