Saturday 7 February – heading west into the wind

It is always calmer in the morning so we decided to get going earlier to enjoy an easier motor into the wind than the blustery afternoons. It was a stunning peaceful scene leaving the lagoon in the morning light. It started pretty calm but as soon as we were in open seas again the waves were huge the current and wind were making the waves hit us from all sorts of directions. A few rogue waves were very noisy but generally not too bad and we managed to avoid the squalls. Around lunch we were entering the bay we planned to anchor in. It is some kind of harbour with a couple of big tankers at the dock and huge storage tanks on land. Not the most scenic anchorage but there was good mud where we put the anchor down near a river mouth so we felt secure and the water was flat.

Mid afternoon the yacht Sea Angel arrived, they have been behind us for the last few days and offered to help us out when all our electronics were giving up. We invited them over for supper. We have met them a couple of times Raja Ampat the last time was at New Year’s Eve, when they were one of the kind catamarans to raft up to make space or us. Aaron is from NZ and Daiana is Brazilian but has lived with Aaron in NZ for the past 20 years. We thought we had problems, they are made of stern stuff, their auto pilot packed up a week ago and they have had to hand steer through all this rough sea, for the past 4 days without a stop. They took a much more southern route to Wakatobi and then came straight to Flores without stopping. We are all looking forward to getting to Labuan Bajo (LBJ) the main city of Flores Island, where we can be safely anchored near to resources and try and fix our issues. We had a delicious supper, Rowan excelled himself making very scrummy Georgian cheese bread and a delicious beef rendang curry. It was great to have company our first since we left Sorong!