Tg Tuing to Pekacang Island
November 3rd: Not so early start this morning, up at 5:30am and up anchor at 6:00am, there was a cool breeze of 10 knots which was refreshing. Unfortunately it did not last and as I write this we have 6 knots of wind. (This is practically nothing) Again our sailing buddies are motoring. They hate it but we love it – Southern Star weather. Conditions are perfect – albeit a little too warm, but personally I would rather have calm seas and warmth than the other alternative.
Quiet day, I baked my Banana Bread with no issues like yesterdays! I am out of walnuts though so improvised with flaked almonds and pumpkin seeds and it turned out OK. Had good internet for a while, so caught up on a few emails and jobs. One of which is our boat insurance. Currently insured with Bayley’s in NZ and it expires on 8th December so need to get organised and get some quotes happening. We are hoping that we will have a substantial reduction in our premium this year as we have had no claims and we are now experienced blue water cruisers!
I can’t believe that it is almost 12 months since we started our journey around NZ – on the 16th November 2013. At the time we had Karen and Alan Davidson on board who owned Nordhavn 43 “Opal Lady”. They have since sold her and now own apartments on the NSW coast. We spoke to Karen recently and they are loving their land change!
Soon we will be crossing the equator – about 70 miles to go – apparently we have to make a sacrifice to King Neptune of the most expensive alcohol we have on board! This keeps him happy and us safe! Does not have to be a lot – maybe a shot of Glen Fiddich for him? Of course we also have to celebrate as we are “Equator virgins”! Peter and Heidi have given us a gift of a bottle of bubbly to crack open as we cross. If it’s calm enough we may even raft up together and have a real celebration! (We would have brought our own bubbly if it was possible – but wine is extremely rare, and very expensive in Indonesia – we have hardly seen any at all)
At one stage we contemplated jumping off the boat for a swim it was so flat, but we didn’t. Another yachtie was just telling me the other day they stopped mid passage for a swim as it was so flat, but – there was current of 1 knot and they had to swim hard to catch the boat which was sailing away without them. I always remember the story about the Yacht that was found off the Queensland Coast some years ago, no one on board, the table was set with food and drinks, and nothing was ever found of the people. I have no doubt at some stage we will do it, but it will be with ropes and a fender out the back of the boat, just in case!
It was really hot all day, 36 degrees. We just blobbed in the flybidge. Arrived at Pekacang Island at 3:00pm. What a beautiful location this island is. It’s not a very big island but it is absolutely beautiful. Very high with hardly any flat land, a couple of flat spots with lovely sandy beaches and that’s about it. The island looks deserted, is covered in natural bush with quite a few tall palm trees and some other beautiful deciduous trees with red leaves. There are a couple of houses on the Northern end that we have seen 2 fishing boats coming in and out of.
We got asked over to Bounty, a German Catamaran who are friends of Peter and Heidi. Lovely couple, Lucy is only 29 and full of life and Harry is 70 and also full of life. Harry doesn’t speak any English at all so it’s a bit difficult but Heidi or Peter translate so all is good. Anyway they had trouble with their Generator so wanted Robbie to have a look at it. He was able to get it working again and fixed some damage to their hoses and electrical temperature switch. We had sundowners on Bounty, which is a beautiful 40’ Catamaran, lots of space. Mauskatti, one of the rally yachts arrived so Michele and Mariette came over also, and Another German Yacht had anchored in the bay also, called Rose and Alex also came over for a drink. We felt a bit out of the loop as all the others spoke German, we are learning a few words, and have made up a couple of our own – which I might add causes lots of laughter!
November 4th: Lazy morning, big sleep in until 8:30am. We took the dinghy over and had a walk on the beach. Found some beautiful shells, one big pink stripey cone shell which is a keeper. Also lots of tiny minute shells, all different shapes and colours, much smaller than my little fingernail which are rather gorgeous. There are some mangrove spots at each end of the beach and it looks rather like Crocodile territory but we didn’t see any sign of them and no tracks or slide marks on the beach. Came back and cooked up a Robbie breakfast – bacon, scrambled egg with tomato, mushrooms, hash browns and toast. It was quite late by this stage and Robbie took the duck and went off fishing and I just mucked around doing odd jobs and had a snooze. One of those days where the less you do the less you feel like doing!
We jumped in and had a swim, cleaned the hull of the boat, again – this is a never ending job. The green stuff grows so fast it’s amazing. We only did it a few days ago and it is back already. The warm water obviously encourages the growth. We then swam over to Stormvogel for a cold drink and decided they would come back to Southern Star for a 500 challenge. Swam back (tried not to think of sharks or crocodiles – amazing how quickly I could swim once Robbie was back at the boat and I had a way to go – my speed increased incredibly fast!!) Anyway Peter and I lost, again. Robbie and Heidi are getting so big headed – it’s painful – we need to bring them down a peg or two! Robbie is a bugger at bluffing and Peter hates to pass, so Robbie is having a field day egging him on.
We decided to do sundowners on the ducks. It was glassed out and flat calm so perfect for it. This is where we all go in our ducks and one duck (us) puts down their anchor and the rest of the ducks all raft up to it. We took our new water guns (we gave the others to our guide on the Orangutan tour) and had great fun shooting everyone. Michele from Mauskatti loves it and he gets his oar in the water and proceeds to splash everybody. At least we had the decency to use fresh water, not salt! Michele always has to go one better, on the recent lighthouse trip he was using a 40 litre bucket as opposed to our Tupperware container, excepting that as he was trying to fill the bucket as the boat went along the water tore it out of his hands, so he had to dive in to retrieve the bucket. We sure do have a lot of fun with this lot. Lucy had brought her music box and we were rocking and singing along to Phil Collins, the Beatles and of course Rod Stewart “Sailing”.
Back to the boat and I had to cook the chicken which I had got out of the freezer yesterday and hadn’t cooked and made a coleslaw. Cabbage is so good, it keeps the best out of everything. Well actually the carrots are keeping really well too. It was pretty nice, I had green and purple cabbage, carrots, red and green capsicum, spring onions. I made a big pile and put most of it in a glad bag (without dressing) so we can have it tomorrow again. We have started watching another miniseries, called “Banshee” it’s pretty good so far we have just watched episode 3. Hopefully Sam will come over at Xmas and will bring his external hard drive so he can update ours with all the latest movies and miniseries.
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