We left Krakatoa early to try to make it to 1,000 Isles before sunset. We travelled through the Sunda Strait, looking to our right we saw Java and looking to our left we saw Sumatera. This was one of the most polluted areas that we had seen in Indonesia so far, everyone just throws their rubbish straight into the water. We were heading toward a heap of white objects and were concerned that it was a net but as we got closer we realised that it was hundreds of instant noodle cups! They were as far as the eye could see. Once we were through the rubbish we had to contend with the shipping lane. The amount of ferries travelling back and forth between the two Islands is amazing, small ones, big ones, a never-ending convoy of ferries. Not to mention the tankers that just cut straight across the shipping lane, not stopping for anyone. Luckily by the time we reached it there was a gap in the traffic and we were able to cross without incident.

It was around this time that everything turned against us, literally. Tide, wind, everything worked against us to stop us from reaching our destination before sunset. We could see 1,000 Isles in front of us but as the sun dropped lower and lower we knew we were not going to make it in the light. We could just make out the shapes of the Islands in the dark and then all of a sudden it was as if someone had turned on a light switch in front of us. Lights lit up an island directly in the front of us, reaching out over the water on what we assumed was a jetty. We carefully edged our way into the anchorage, we were surrounded by reef on three sides so extreme caution was needed. All the islands were surrounded by deep water so we had to anchor in about 20 metres, this meant all our anchor chain had to go out plus an additional 30 metres of silver rope. We had never anchored in water so deep. We were exhausted after our day of travelling and were soon catching some z's when we were woken by the start of a storm, Jay got up to have a look and we realised we had swung around and were now almost on top of the reef! We raced to get the anchor up and in the middle of the storm we managed to re-anchor safely. How we didn't hit the reef we'll never know. The bommies were literally centimetres from our rudders.

We awoke in the morning to paradise. The 1,000 Isles is made up of not 1,000 islands but 105 but maybe nobody took the time to count them before they named them. Most of the islands are privately owned by rich Javanese businessmen, others house resorts. We did not see another yacht while we were there and no one else around the area really paid us much attention. We did speak to one of the workers on the island we were moored off but apart from that we relaxed, swam and snorkelled, getting ourselves ready for the next leg of our journey to Belitung where we would check out of Indonesia.