Saturday 10 January – a long hot motor to Boo Island

We left as soon as we woke up as we have a long way to get today. We are trying to do day hops the whole way, to avoid logs, FADS (floating fishing platforms) and fishing boats that don’t show up on AIS or radar. The seas around here in Indonesia are full of them. We got the wind but not quite the direction we wanted it, so it was a motor sail the whole way. It was a novelty to get the sails up! There was a real current to contend with as well, so it was slow going. I managed to get a few chores done, making bread and more tonic cordial. Thankfully my tummy is definitely on the mend and I feel loads better. We had to push the engines a little harder towards the end to get to the anchorage in daylight.

We finally got to the small collection of islands in the middle of open sea, our anchorage was right in front of a picture book white sand island called Frigate Island. It lived up to its name as there were loads of Frigates circling above it. It felt very remote, and the ramshackle buildings on stilts that we saw looked abandoned. We did see a boat in the evening and discover a couple of houses in the distance, so there are some people living out here, but no lights about at night. We had a wonderful evening, a little breeze keeping us cool in the cockpit, amazingly the current was forcing the boat to face away from the wind, is it was blowing in the back of the boat, an unusual experience. We had lovely stars in the night sky. Glad to be safely anchored we flopped into bed early, even though we don’t do much it is exhausting!