Sunday 11 January – another long day motor sailing west

We got going as soon as we woke up as we knew it was another long day to get to our anchorage in daylight. Frustrating as the wind didn’t quite blow from the direction expected, tantalisingly close, but we need to make progress straight across to skirt the bottom of Halmahera Island. Another hot day, but no squalls now we have left Raja Ampat. We seemed to take all day to pass the only island along the way called Pisang (banana), it is pretty high so we could see it from miles away, it looks volcano shaped.

We were pleased to see our low lying islands late afternoon, the last 5 miles always take for ever. We had to get over a lowish sand bar with some coral on in to enter the lagoon, so we definitely needed a bit of light. The NFL app listed the lowest depth at 5ms, which it was. We found a nice sandy patch and dropped the anchor. It was a lovely evening sky, not a soul around, there seem to be no yachts about in at least a 100 mile radius. We did have a long boat pass with some lads, we thought they were coming to see us, but they headed straight out to sea, must be fishing. We thought a big set of clouds was going to bring some weather but it just skirted us and we had a very tranquil evening.