Monday 17th August 2008

We up anchored from Lembata on Friday and Catala and us decided we would not head north and west like all the other yachts as we wanted to be in a nice quiet anchorage so headed a little south and then west and went through the Solar Strait between Adunara and Solar Islands. There certainly was not much wind so motoring was the order of the day for most of the trip. We were also followed by two other yachts, Charmer and Tiaki and we spent a nice quiet and calm night in a place called Pamakaju. We were invited over to Charmer for sundowners and it was nice to meet them as up until then we had not done so. We had met Tiaki when in Kupang.

We left Pamakaju on Saturday shortly after 8am as we needed to work the tide and current up through the Flores Strait which I had calculated correctly as we were given a programme called SkyMate Pro which you use to give you the moon rise and moon set and to work out upper and lower transits for travelling through these straits as there are such fierce currents and one does not want to be trying to go through when you have the currents against you. It is amazing the large villages that are on the shores of these islands and if we had realized earlier we should have been stopping at Larantuka on Flores to have a look as it looked a really interesting place and huge. It is unbelievable the number of cell phone towers there are everywhere although we do not have cell phone service here in Gedong. Once through the Flores Strait we stopped at Serbete Reef where we had lunch and a snorkel over the reef. There was some lovely coral and we have never snorkeled in such crystal clear water and I could see exactly where our anchor went when I let it down.

We had thought we may have been able to spend the night there but the wind got up so at 4pm decided to move on and we ended up arriving in the next anchorage, TG Gedong at 7pm in the dark but fortunately we were guided in by Charmer. In all there were 20 yachts anchored in this bay. However it is a lovely spot so decided to spend another day here and a few others opted to do the same so we had a quiet relaxing day yesterday and caught up on a few jobs and later in the afternoon I had a nice swim and while in the water gave a the hull a bit of a clean until Dave called me out of the water as a couple of people had been stung by blue bottle jelly fish.

Catala and us plan to visit the local village here this morning and then we will head further on across the north coast of Flores so will update you with that in the next addition.