Thursday 8 January – anchoring outside Sorong

We picked up the anchor just after 7am so that we were in Sorong in good time to do all our chores. We motored the whole way as usual, it seems ages since we were able to get the sails up, besides being very little wind, it is invariably in the wrong direction, or from all over the place in a squall. We got in at midday and got ourselves sorted. We anchored outside the marina as there was no space inside the marina, we had to be nearby as we had ordered all the jerry cans of fuel from the marina. As we settling down we noticed two cats coming in, two from our new year’s eve bash. Chad the South African who hosted the karaoke night came by in his immaculate dinghy, he was livid as he is flying out tomorrow and had booked to leave his boat in the marina. He got a message last night to say there was no space. The boat that was meant to leave had a medical emergency and they were not able to remove the boat. Chad was not happy to put it mildly and was going to check out an area next to the marina that has been dug out, but is pretty shallow. Yikes!

Just after lunch Phoebs and I went into town with our lovely taxi man Nur, to do all the shopping while Rowan and Dani lugged 500lts of diesel back and forth in the dinghy to PolePole. Rowan is very chuffed as he bought a nifty pump the other day, that pumps the fuel from the jerry cans in the dinghy straight into PolePole’s fuel tanks. At least it means you don’t have to get all the cans on board and lug them to the front of the boat where the tanks are. Phoebs and I did the mandatory chandlery stop for Rowan, plus petrol fill up of the dinghy cans before heading to Saga the biggest, best supermarket. Very hard finding stuff, especially as they have a very specific local selection and not much European food. Phoebs was revolted by the smell at the meat counters. We did the best we could which still took a couple of hours, with Nur patiently helping us. He loves coming in with us as he enjoys getting the points added to his account from the supermarket. It was a monster shop, £400’s worth, but it has to last us really until we get to Lombok. We hope to buy more fresh stuff along the way, it was a stock up of the basics.

We had planned to have a farewell dinner out in town, but my tummy is still not good, Dani has work calls from 7-10pm so we opted to stay on board. Rowan had lined up Nur’s son to babysit the boat while we went out for dinner, which he was so sad we cancelled. We enjoyed a last lovely sunset drink, watching the crazy amount of boats whizzing around. Very sad to have our last evening with kids, we are going to miss them.