The last blog had us 60 nm from the Banda Islands. From that point on we continued sailing and out of the haze the outline of the Banda Islands complete with volcano, started to appear. As we sailed around the western side of the volcano we were enveloped in the natural spicy fragrance of the islands. We motored into the natural deep water harbour between one of the islands and the volcano. Anchoring here is very difficult as the water is very deep ie. 30 m just off the shore. After a few tries to find a suitable spot to anchor among some of the early arrival yachts, we finally dropped anchor in 35 m of water and hoped it would hold. We were visited by about 8 officials all in uniforms, big black boots etc to process our entry into Indonesia. It all went quite smoothly and after going ashore to complete formalities with the Harbour Master I was presented with a bag containing Sail Banda poloshirts and other goodies and information about all the festivities happening . It seems that the sailing fleet we are a part of, is the centrepiece of a huge and very expensive tourist development initiative of the Indonesian government. Wednesday morning the official program of Sail Banda commenced. The crews of all the yachts that had arrived were guests of honour, seated in satin covered chairs with an airline type box of food to sustain us through the many speeches, dancing and music. It was a very special morning and was topped off by a delicious buffet lunch prepared by all the locals to welcome us as guests of honour. Many of the locals have up to the minute mobile phones so we had many photo shoots via the locals mobile ph.- 'stars for a day'!. The finale for the day was the dragon boat race. The dragon boats here are the traditional ones that are twice as long as those raced in Australia and hold 50 men. They are very sleek with elaborate bows and sterns and when racing they are very fast and impressive. This morning we took a walking tour of the town and learnt about the local history, some of it quite gruesome at the hands of the colonists, eager to get their hands on the nutmeg and clove spices so unique to this island. It was a very informative tour and finished at the local markets which have a variety of interesting vegetables,and many takes on nutemg-dried, sweetened with added chilli(!),nutmag juice,nutmeg powder etc, etc. We plan to spend a few more days here being such a unique island all out on its own in the Banda Sea.

Hopefully we can find internet so we can attach photos of this amazing place.

Love Bern and Di