Wednesday 21 January – a good night’s sleep at anchor

Our overnight pootle had worked well, just a few squalls to work around, Rowan had a fishing boat that he had to motor around. At first light we had the main sail back up and were sailing nicely, the sea got quite choppy with big waves. At midday we could see the big island we were aiming for with the gap through the middle. We got the sails down to motor through, there is not much written up about going through the gap, certainly nothing on our NFL App. Rowan’s charts all said it was wide and deep enough, just some shallow areas to avoid. I sat up front and with our headphones on we could communicate the whole hour it took us to get through. It was about 5 miles long, with a couple of villages along the way, and some palm plantations. There was some very light blue water, which usually means shallower water but this was still over 30ms deep, it made a distinct line in the water, we couldn’t work out what was causing it, it could be fresh water coming in, but we could see no obvious rivers. There were some pockets of lovely dense jungle. We must have entered at around slack tide as there was not much current, but as we got near the end there were a couple of knots of current against us, it created some turbulent water.

Out the other side we had seen an anchorage and planned to overnight there, it was about 5 miles away. Rowan looked at the charts and found a closer bay that had a muddy bottom that looked perfect for anchoring in. We went there instead, had the anchor down mid afternoon and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon. There were two small towns across from us, with endless long boats going back and forth. Loads came by to inspect us, lots of greetings and curious glances. I am quite sure they don’t get many boats anchoring here, so we were a real novelty. Rowan was just cooking our steak on the BBQ when two men arrived with 4 coconuts for us, they hopped on board, full of curiosity. But mainly they wanted a photo of us with them on the boat, and they each got an extra one with me. So funny they seem to have not much money but make a living from something as they all have mobile phones. We were just thinking they most probably have never left these islands, and never even been in a car let alone a plane, but they all have a mobile phone.

We managed to watch one episode of Tehran and collapsed into bed.