Friday 9 October 2015

Glad we stopped at Bawean in lieu of continuing to Karimunjawa as did Champagne Charlies. Beautiful, calm anchorage with 2 others: Smart Choice whom we know and Alaera from other rally with bad alternator. Immediately ran up mast to retrieve spinnaker halyard, fix strobe and a few other bits and bobs to tidy mast paraphernalia, then dinked by each boat to say hi. Beguiled an invitation for drinks at 1700 with Smarties and was then instrumental in successfully wiring spare alternator - skillfully showed Alex backside of identical unit on Anthem's Yanmar. Jan, the gregarious one, promised not to party late, but was only coaxed home after cruiser midnight. Nobody saw sunrise.

Left anchorage just after 0800 net, soon to be moved to 0800 (concurrent net and time zone changes - thought I'd screwed up didn't you?). For inexplicable reason, GRIB (Garbled Response to Information Beseechment) was remarkably accurate resulting in a wonderful sail nearly all day. If this magical verisimilitude continues, wind direction, which has now begun to shift, will require opposite tack for a few hours mid-evening then return to port (tack, not destination - English is very confusing) for sleigh ride into Karimunjawa early morning.

The Java Sea is eat up with traffic: fishing boats, cargo ships, tugs towing tin ore barges and various other manifestations of seagoing conveyance or obstacle. Not quite the ball in a pachinko machine, we've actually had to maintain a watch (what a bother) and periodically play dodgem. Tonight promises to be moderately sporty with most of the floaty stuff having no AIS. Hope some of them have electricity to provide a bit of illumination. Of course, even that requires somebody onboard be awake and observant (what a bother).

Jack