Saturday 12 September 2015

Felicity of last 2 days has been remarkably high with excellent beam reaches in diurnal breeze, offshore in the morning switching rapidly to onshore through afternoon, and peaceful anchorages at Tanjung Karterbileh (doubtless named after Billy Carter, famous worldwide for Billy beer.. oh and a relationship to that peanut guy who was a US president or something) and now Pulau Rutong (or Ruton or one of possibly a hundred other names... Indonesia doesn't seem to have a well developed system in this regard). Latter location is offshore of Riung where on Monday various festivities are to occur. Despite previous contrary pronouncements our attendance is as good as not completely out of the question (don't worry, even if you understand the idioms it's too convoluted to worry about) because, despite atrocious organization, bloviating politicians and insufferably cute dancing and singing children, we would like to show our appreciation to the local people who have been invariably lovely and go out of their way to make us feel welcome. Besides, although dinners don't even begin until we're normally asleep, they're free. Well... there you go.

After nearly 2 weeks, medical constituent of crew has conjectured that due to escalating symptoms of high fever, headache and the coughing up of toenails, affliction enjoyed by other half could be pneumonia. Ten days of erythromycin will likely kill every molecule of pernicious microorganisms (and beneficial ones too), but regrettably leave aforementioned shameless individual with little justification to much longer milk this circumstance. Fortunately, side effects of the drug are headache and sore throat, so perhaps in the offing are at least a few more days of doing bupkis and eliciting sympathy with plaintive whimpering.

Jack