Friday 12 December – back to Sorong marina to pick Phoebs up.

Wix, the Australian eighty something year old, married to a local lady, runs the marina. We didn’t meet him last time as he was away on holiday, we just met his very friendly helpful staff. The marina is full and we only got a message this morning to say we had a spot, same as last time and Wix would be around to help us. It took most of the morning to get there, around 3pm we finally got in, it was sweltering hot in the very tiny protected marina. We were in the same spot with Wix there to help us, we were next to the same annoying boat that has anchor lines going out at an angle on either side of it that we have to navigate around. We put the anchor down, a huge hoop developed as we didn’t go back fast enough, then we got too close to the anchor rope of the next door rope and snagged that, luckily it didn’t go around the prop so we got off it ok. Only to then snag our dagger board, so that took some sorting as we could not lift it as it was jammed by one of our safety lines running along the deck. Ugh it was all going wrong, as we reversed back the anchor was behaving oddly, I realised we had got our anchor chain into a knot. The anchor must have dragged over our big hoop in the thick mud. Thank goodness Wix the marina owner was utterly charming about it all nothing was too much of an issue. He said he would organise 6 of his big lads from his workshop to come tomorrow and manhandle the anchor to get the anchor untangled. What a relief, the thought of going into that stagnant, disgusting water was unbearable! In the meantime we ran our floating line across to the other side of the marina to perform the same function as the anchor. We had to put some fenders on the floating line so no boats ran into it. Wix cancelled the little fishing boats that come in for the night. It was a very stressful few hours, but so grateful to a delightful Wix. We saw his wife and 27 year old daughter, both delightful, what a life he has made for himself here, he absolutely adores the locals and is fluent in Bahasa. He certainly doesn’t seem eighty the way he was jumping in and out the dinghy onto the boat.

Hot and exhausted, too tired to make food but starving as we had not eaten all day, we went to the Pizza restaurant we went to the first time we were here. It has the top rating in Sorong for good food, we met the owner who is Dutch also married to a local. He too also loves it here and has great staff. We went to bed with our cabin aircon on, even so I was still dripping sweat in bed!