Tuesday 3 February – relax day

It was a nice feeling not jumping out of bed early to get the anchor up. It was a good day not to be doing anything as we could get a few chores done before the big head south tomorrow with wind in our sails hopefully. Rowan went for a snorkel in the morning, he came back very disappointed, judging from the constant tractor noise of longboats all day long the place is heavily fished, Rowan saw very few fish, coral was not great as there is a strong current and the visibility was not great, still churned from the storms I imagine.

The damage from the sun is phenomenal, our trampoline has so many patches where I have repaired it, that we definitely will have to replace it before heading back to the Med. Our canvas bag that fits on the dinghy seat has completely perished, so I got that off today to try and resurrect it as it is so useful for hiding things in when we leave the dinghy on the beach. The most important thing is my step ladder to get in and out the dinghy in the sea. The bag was filthy as it often sits in the wet bottom of the dinghy, and all our emergency spares and puncture kit etc all needed a thorough clean and sort out. Rowan was polishing our fuel from Pasarwajo, he had a filter pump installed in NZ so that we can clean the fuel. We think the one problem with the engine could be from dirty fuel. He also replaced all the filters so fingers crossed.

We wanted to go for a walk on the lovely beach, ideally we would have gone late afternoon when a bit cooler but with the weather building in the afternoon we decided to go midday which was baking hot. A stunning beach we had to wait for the tide to go up a little to get over the reef, but once on the beach it was white powder soft sand. The only sadness was the litter, luckily a creeper on the beach seems to be catching a lot of it and growing over it, at least it doesn’t go back into the sea once caught. There is an awful video on social media of the rubbish on the beaches of Bali in December, the sea is just a foaming solid plastic brown wave, looks too disgusting for words. The President then pleaded for school kids and adults to go litter picking to save their tourism industry. He is so right. We walked half the beach before needing a cooling swim and then headed back.

Rowan is in a dilemma about our route tomorrow, it is 70 miles, with the wind angle we still need to head a little further west before turning south. It is a full day and our destination is in some atolls, which we really need good light to get into. If we get there in the dark we will have to try and hove to in fairly strong winds which might be a little too exciting for me. Heaving to is setting the sails so the jib wants to sail one way while the main wants to sail another so, with some rudder adjustment, the boat stands nearly still. The area is full of FADS. I’m crossing everything we get there in daylight!