Friday 6 February – bliss to enter the calm bay

I took over from Rowan around 2:30am, at least it was much easier as the moon had risen and made it possible to look out for FADS. Endless squalls passed over but non were very strong, without our wind gauge we had no idea how hard the wind was blowing, but it certainly never went above the mid 20’s.The waves were very bouncy thankfully as we approached Flores island the water calmed down a bit. We had been averaging about 3knots, so by the time Rowan took over at about 6:30 am we only had 15 miles to go to our anchorage.

It was a lovely bay we went into with a narrowish entrance into the lagoon with huge waves breaking either side of the entrance, but in the calm conditions it was easy to get into. It was a very muddy bay, so a very easy anchor, our first attempt we discovered we had a 1.5m under us which was a bit risky so we had to move a bit deeper. The flat water was absolute bliss after all that bouncing. Neither of us had slept much so we just had a relaxing reading day in this idyllic spot that looked so green and reminded us of NZ again. We got the awning up as it was baking hot, and enjoyed the recovery. There were a surprising amount of village houses tucked away along a road, behind the mangroves, which we couldn’t see from the boat but we could hear village noise and the competing imams from the three little villages. There were plenty of long boats about fishing, a couple of school kids visited us but besides that we were left in peace. It was a very relaxing evening, just what we needed.