Sunday 14 December – Phoebs arrives

Phoebs was with us by 8am, Nur picked her up from the airport and brought her to us. She has had a great flight across with Turkish airlines to Jakarta via Istanbul and the last leg to Sorong on a local flight. She came through with her extra bag containing a stand up paddle board, over 4kgs of cheese, tahini, coffee, sunflower seeds, bottles of gin and many, many other goodies. What a star! So lovely to have her with us. Once onboard Nur released our lines and we were off out the marina. Departing without a single entanglement with next door’s lines!

We had a slow hot motor back to near Friwen, we were heading to a little island with a resort between Friwen and Waigeo, the island Waisai is on, where we pick up Dani in a few days. There is a bay Rowan wanted to anchor in but as we got closer the boat Wadura was heading into it, a Danish couple we have met. We landed up going to an anchorage on the other side of the bay, in among some very pretty small karst islands. We were surprised to find a couple of house boats, kitted out for tourists. One was traditional and looked rather nice but the other was just a long boat with a prefab house on top with two out riggers which appeared to be plastic sewer pipes! We anchored just after lunch in a gorgeous little enclosed bay, very well protected. We headed off for a snorkel to cool down, out to the main body of sea as it looked a little too much like croc country with mangroves around. We had a good snorkel, but the visibility was terrible, the worst we have seen. There was plenty of coral but loads looking stressed by a black sludgy algae. Plenty of little fish, we spotted a neon blue angel fish we have definitely not seen before. We also saw a nice big lobster. Phoebs seemed pretty impressed with her snorkel so it can only get better.

Phoebs did really well to stay awake for supper, I made a chicken Indonesian noodle dish, so nice to use all the local ingredients I bought in the market. I had bought huge bundles of lemon grass, that is how they sell it, loads of kafir leaves, fresh turmeric, thai basil, chillies, ginger, palm sugar, tamarind paste and garlic. It’s so lovely to have Phoebs on board, Dani joins us in a few days and Milly and Luke a few days after that. It is beginning to feel like Christmas!