Wednesday 18 March – last blog for a while!

We set off after breakfast heading north, hoping to catch the wind for a good sail. Once we were out of the reef area around the southern Gilies Rowan set about getting the sails up. Sadly the binding joint we had made on the main halyard when we damaged it in the Solomon islands came apart and stripped the halyard back to the core. Luckily it it right at the beginning so we had no problem getting the sail down. Grant and Judith brought us a new halyard from America when they visited us in PNG, we just hadn’t changed it, as it is a bit of a palaver and the binding job that Rowan did was holding well until now. Our new halyard cost £3000 just to give you an idea of the cost of these marine parts, and that is without help getting it installed! It was a motor back up to Gili Air with the current against us, the engines needed to work hard.

Grant and Judith packed up all their belongings and got ready to disembark at Gili Air where they have booked a room for a couple of nights. Tomorrow the 19 is called Nyepi in Bali, a day of silence marking the Balinese (Hindu) New Year, this means tourists can’t leave their hotels, the airport closes, streets are empty as cars cannot be used, businesses shut down and lights are kept to a minimum. These rules are strictly adhered to with local security patrolling the street. Obviously it was not a good time for Grant and Judith to go back to Bali to get their flight home, so they will have a couple of nights on Gili Air, where they have booked into somewhere nice.

The wind finally picked up early afternoon by the time we got to Gili Air there were white horses, we put the anchor down to drop them off, and planned to take them to the beach in the dinghy. The current was ferocious flowing in the opposite direction to the wind which was making it very tricky to set the anchor. I was not too keen to be left on PolePole on my own in these conditions. We managed to flag down a passing boat taxi and got them to take Grant and Judith with their luggage to the beach. It was a rather rushed departure as the taxi was banging up against PolePole in the wind. Luckily they made it ok and we had the anchor up making our way to the mooring balls at the marina, only a couple of miles away. Thankfully there was calm water the other side of the headland which made picking up the mooring ball a lot easier. Just a couple of boats here, La Reeve, a couple we met in Port Villa, Vanuatu who were waiting 3 months for a new windlass. They made it here eventually, doing the southern route via the Torres Straight.

It feels rather weird that we have finally made it to our destination after nearly a year. It certainly feels like quite an achievement, we celebrated with a good sunset drink! Now we just have cleaning and tidying up to sort out before PolePole is taken out the water. We move to a hotel on the 22nd and fly out on the 25th back to London via Singapore. We are so looking forward to catching up with everyone back in the UK also looking forward to getting home to enjoy the English Spring.

Enjoy a silence from the blog until sometime in September when we return, our plan is to sail to Singapore for engine services, then Langkawi which will be our jump off to start our return to the Med, via the Maldives, Socotra and then the Suez canal if the war hasn’t kiboshed everything!