Sunday 2 November – moving on to Fam island

We left around 9am as we had a couple of hours motoring to do, about 10 miles. The wind was in completely the wrong direction for us which is very sad, as it was a perfect strength around 12 knots, we haven’t had much wind at all. We had quite a time getting off out mooring ball, somehow we had got tangled up with two other leashes on another ball. It meant Rowan had to jump in and get the rope off, in the process he got covered in coral scratches, the ball and leash were covered in sharp bits of coral. We had a slow motor across to Fam islands.

Just before entering the anchorage, we were escorted in by loads of dolphins, this lot were enjoying our bow wave. We got into the anchorage around lunch time, we had to cross over some shallow coral, in one section only 5ms deep. The colour of the water was absolutely stunning and beautiful white beaches. We had a little relax in the heat of the afternoon, just after 5pm, when it was cooling down we swam with flippers to shore. We didn’t want to take the dinghy in as there is a reef at the shore plus a little breaking wave. We got to the beach and had a very good walk as far as we could go. Some amazing deep little limestone gorges and caves, it was so sad we had no camera. We came to a big rocky outcrop that did not look very nice to swim around and found a path inland behind the big rock. Someone had thoughtfully left a pair of mismatched washed up flip flops, that I used to cross behind the rock, it was very stony. The beach was stunning the other side, obviously receding as huge palms were upended on the beach with large logs drifting about in the little bay. The only sadness was the volume of rubbish, so much plastic, but it did mean that both Rowan and Alex found enough flip flops to wear on our return behind the rock! It is so hard to believe so many shoes could be washed up on this totally remote spot. It felt very good to do some exercise again.

Back at the boat Alex cooked us another amazing Indonesian style dish with more tempeh from the market. This time we had frozen it, so it had not gone off.