Saturday 14 March – heading to the Southern Gillies

We woke up to very calm weather, Rowan wanted to take advantage of the flat water to get to the Southern Gillies. It was a hot motor down that took all morning. Sadly the engine alarm came back on. Rowan has ordered the last of the 3 fuel filters to be changed, hopefully it will get done when we haul out. Sadly the ones Grant brought over were the wrong ones, Rowan had got a couple of the middle digits of the serial number wrong!

We got to the anchorage where they have a lot of mooring balls, we were glad to get onto one easily. There are quite a few boats moored here, but they all seem to have been left here while the owners are away, including our friends on Viridian who are back in the UK. We needed to cool down so we went around the corner for a snorkel. Sadly the visibility was terrible, but the coral and fish life were pretty good. There is an eco resort that has marked off a large area of the sea for a reserve, where boats are not allowed in and obviously no fishing allowed. We saw some great fish. The resort is planting corals on metal structures, which seem to be doing really well, it was very heartening to see. We went and had a beer at the resort afterwards, nicely chilled they went down very well.

Back to the boat, with a little rain to interfere with our BBQ. Sadly our Italian Deli meat was not the greatest, but we enjoyed Judith’s delicious black lentils and the last of the aubergines, plus a delicious fruit salad. We found a lady selling fruit on Gili Air with a basket of bananas in a basket on her head. We bought some bananas and discovered 4 bags of passion fruit hidden underneath the bananas, what a major find!