From yesterday's blog you would know that we were in ideal sailing conditions through the previous night, comfortable, speeds of 11, 10, 9 knots consistently, running at about twice the speed we had planned for the passage, beautiful moonlit night, flat seas - oh how idyllic it is to sail in these conditions!!

But the Ocean is a hard taskmaster and as we near the equator and the opportunity to meet King Neptune himself he takes the opportunity to remind us it is not always like this! Coming into yesterday morning the wind continues to whip up, the seas get lumpy, and wind gets "harder" - not that the wind strength is a problem but it is 'hard wind' - rain squalls and lightning appear in the distance to the east and to the west.. As we contact the vessel travelling with us, and they started at midnight so are a fair distance behind as we expected them to catch us we find that they have been through two squalls with high winds and rough conditions.

We see squalls up ahead so we put a reef in the main, we get the squalls, it blows a bit but not excessively only about 25's, but it comes from the front and the conditions deteriorate so we furl the genoa and set the staysail - a smaller headsail. I get the lens knocked out of my prescription sunglasses in the process, of course it disappears quickly! We sail on, our companions are no longer catching us. They get rain, we get the deteriorating conditions.

Yesterday was grey and miserable and not a comfortable sail.

As we go into nightfall we plan and replan our destinations and waypoints to get to an anchorage and tucked in safely for the next morning - Sunday morning.

Early evening although it is very dark out because of the cloud we can see a black, very black, very very black area on the horizon that reflects black on the water in the light of lightning flashes. We see it on the radar, a large rain squall - it is a rain or rain and wind squall? We keep our reduced sail but try to sail around the west of it as it bares down on us, and we were sailling towards the centre of it. It catches us of course and rains, and rains and rains - torrential. The decks needed a flush with fresh water, this is the first good fresh water wash since Darwin marina! We sail up and down in it almost hove to at times, fortunately the wind in it is only about 10 knots. It is dark, very very dark, about as dark as being inside a cow's belly! We detect a track out and sail, motor out the back of the squall - we let our companions know as it is heading directly in their direction about 20 miles down the track, they are wresting with the conditions and a young family and some seasickness on board.

We agree our next destination to be our original planned destination but we are almost a day in front of our planned arrival in daylight hours, by sailing very slowly (which is sometimes easy) we will get to it by daylight but not too much earlier. Our companions will travel just a bit faster and catch us. We leave all reefs in and just the small headsail, the wind has dropped - since we entered the squall - and the seas are now flat and comfortable so it is quite comfortable just dribbling along with a light breeze and calm seas. We make some water for a couple of hours running one engine to keep on track in the now fluky breeze.

Towards sunrise we are proceeding towards our anchorage, we would not attempt to go into without daylight and we are just a little concerned that there may not be enough light. We see our companions right back in the distance, so now we have visual contact. The anchorage is inside an extensive reef on a small island in about 25 metres so is quite a deep anchorage. The anchorage bay does not show on the charts electronic or otherwise! With the chart offsets here, even with known waypoints, we would not go in without the greatest navigation aid known to man - a good eye and sound visibility!

C�st bon! we see a boat leaving, a yacht, it is good. We call them up and they have anchored there overnight so they give us some tips on entry and where to anchor and we bid each other well. We try to raise our companions on the radio as they speak fluent french (they are from France after all!) and would have been able to communicate easier but we cannot raise them. This is a bonus that we have further waypoints!

We see a local boat go in fishing, another bonus, we go in from the north and enter a channel through the coral reefs which are quite visible now. We motor on seeking a reasonable anchoring spot and end up almost back out the other end of the channel almost where the French boat indicated they were anchored.

Our companions come in the other end of the channel, at our now expert advice, we were in there and could see the reefs clearly now!!!

They anchored nearby and it was clean up time, pancake time and for a well needed sleep for a few hours!!! Into the hammock I go.

In summary we did this passage in eight hours less than predicted as a conservative estimate, we had winds of up to 25 knots which is is not bad but tough sea conditions, we had mostly favourable currents, we had boat speeds of up to 11.3 knots which is good, we had calms - our average for the passage came to 5.63 knots - a slow passage but in some ways a quick passage! Yes your right that is confusing - just like the seas were confused. We had some great rain squalls. We had fantastic lightning shows, (we had no lightning strikes - a statistic we like to keep!).

I think maybe we will have a day or two here before we press on, the next leg is a fairly long one also and it would be good if the weather stabilised a little first.

As for the area, just beautiful, a couple of local fishing boats plying the waters - heh but everywhere there is salt water in Indonesia there is a few or a few thousand boats fishing it it.

There is small island looks like a cay covered in coconuts a short distance across - about three times as big as Green Island, there is a small rocky islet adjacent to our anchorage surrounded by reef, there is plenty of reef - the island is high sided but not mountainous, lovely sandy beaches, can't see a village but there could be one - there usually is. Imagine the Whitsundays a thousand times bigger with every island and outcrop having villages and settlements!

The ocean is a hard taskmaster at times and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - just when you might start thinking you have found the perfect sailing area there is a reminder that it can give you a serve as well!