Friday 20 February – farewell to Lovat and family

Everybody was packed and ready to leave by 8am. The Carnelley’s had managed to pack one suitcase into the other for their departure, the one suitcase had been full of goodies for us! There was space for me on the dinghy so we all went into the dinghy dock, our trusty taxi driver Finus was there to pick them up in his old minibus. Very sad to see them leave, it will be very quiet again, we’ve all had such a good time. The weather and route worked out so perfectly for the week. They flew to Jakarta and managed to catch an earlier standby flight back to Hong Kong, so they were back home for bedtime, much easier than on their way out to us.

Rowan and I went to a coffee shop for breakfast as we have no eggs, tomatoes or bread left on the boat. A croque monsieur followed by an almond croissant was a real treat we have not had in a long time, we are definitely back in tourist territory. We did a bit of shopping and stocked up on fresh groceries before heading back to PolePole. It was boiling hot, we forced ourselves to do some boat cleaning which was desperately needed. We were too exhausted to head out for supper so relaxed on board and had a delicious rib eye steak from the Italian deli. Our evening was not as quiet as expected as there was a party phinisi next door playing very loud music…. Friday night in the anchorage! There are 3 yachts in the anchorage, the one boat is the German couple who did the same route as us from Raja Ampat. They left before us and we overtook them along the way when they stopped to do some repairs, we had been in touch along the way. Rowan helped them onto a mooring ball, they don’t speak much english so Rowan said it was quite difficult to communicate. The other boat is a catamaran from Western Australia.