Sunday 1 Feb – oh my what a start to February!

It was a rushed start to the day as Andy sent a message she had managed to get an earlier slot to get the fuel. I stayed behind to free up space in the dinghy while Rowan rushed in with our 5 jerry cans to the dive jetty. This proved useless as it was way too high to be passing jerry cans of fuel, so they found a pebble beach and tied up there. They went in the truck with the other 10 containers that Andy had rented to the Petrol station. Rowan’s heart sunk as he saw a queue a mile long for fuel, we had seen these diesel fuel queues in Sorong too. It turned out that the slot Andy had booked meant they could jump to the front of the queue. Rowan said the people behind in the queue were pretty disgruntled when they saw all the jerry cans. However the plan worked and they loaded 400lts of diesel costing 6 million Rupee (£265). Rowan had to visit the ATM as that rather depleted our cash stash. Back to the dinghy, Andy’s two brothers were helping, Noble from last night and Ali. They could fit in half the jerry cans, so Ali stayed behind to look after the remaining cans and Andy and Noble helped get the jerry cans on board PolePole. Such a messy business with diesel spilling everywhere. While Rowan returned to get the remaining cans and Ali, the rest of us carted the cans up to the front of the boat where the tanks are. With all the diesel on board Rowan had to lift and pour every can through a big sieve funnel into the tanks. Hard work and in the baking sun. Andy and brothers enjoyed our ice cold cokes and looking around the boat taking selfies. Finally we were done around 11am, we said our farewells and paid them handsomely for their help, Rowan took them back to the beach.

Rowan had ear marked an anchorage about 30 miles away, so we needed to get going promptly as we know the wind picks up in the afternoon and we will be motoring straight into it. We got out the bay avoiding all the FADS and long boats. We got out to open sea hugging the coast for shelter, we spotted dark clouds but didn’t think too much of it. In what seemed like minutes the wind got up to over 20 knots and then continued to rise at speed. The waves built up equally fast, I was so relieved we had no sails up, we were soon crashing into every wave, with no option but to go straight into them to get away from land and its big fringing reef. We hit 47 knots of wind which is our highest wind we have been in so far. It was pretty terrifying, and then the rain poured down so we no longer had visibility. Suddenly Rowan spotted we were heading straight for a smashed up FAD with all its bamboo poles coming loose, luckily we could alter course easily with the engines, would have been a lot more tricky with sails up. We had our secondary auto pilot on which means going outside to the helm station to change course, Rowan got soaked. Rowan always says the wind eases when the rain arrives which is exactly what happened, but the big breaking waves continued. We saw a dramatic rescue of a long boat going to a FAD that had a person on it, they were bouncing around like crazy, their small agile bodies proved invaluable, the guy jumped easily onto the long boat, it was a very nimble operation which looked terrifying.

We finally got through to clearer skies but still a very uncomfortable passage in those waves. As we had lost a lot of speed we were not going to make our original destination in daylight. Rowan cleverly managed to find a nice sandy river entrance on the lee of the island ahead of us, no markings to say it is an anchorage but looked good on all the satellite maps. It seemed to take for ever to get there, we finally got into the lee of the land, the water calmed down and by 4pm we were dropping the anchor in pretty calm waters, we had a good roll but nothing unbearable. We made sure the anchor was well and truly hooked which luckily in this river sand it was. Our original destination was another 10kms away, which we will make up tomorrow by leaving early.

Phew that was an adrenalin fuelled afternoon, with all the physical work in the morning, Rowan was absolutely pooped. Luckily I had put some mince in the slow cooker this morning for a bolognaise, so supper was all sorted for us. We knew that coming south we are entering the rainy season, which is also the stormy season, so we were expecting it to be quite a tough passage but this was more than we anticipated. We will now be looking out for dark ominous clouds more carefully. The forecast was for heavy rain in the afternoon but with winds 18-20 knots. These squalls are totally unpredictable and not in the forecasts. Sadly this is going to be the weather pattern until we depart in March, it will keep us on our toes!