Sunday, 26th October, 2008

We ended up staying only one night at Bangka Island and when Purnama, Destiny 111 and us heard that some of the yachts who had left early that morning had some wind we three decided to take off as well so up anchored at 8.15am. As luck would have it the wind died and we ended up motoring the whole way, a distance of 41 miles to a lovely anchorage at Cebia Island. We arrived just before dark but it was an hour or so later before Destiny, Purnama & another catamaran, Crasara Cruisin arrived in.

Purnama, Destiny, Crasara, El Misti and us decided to have a lay day so on Wednesday had a lovely relaxing day. Visited the village on the island and had a nice walk there, with two gorgeous little 5 year old girls escorting Neil & Maree from Purnama and us, in amongst a heavy shower of rain but we were able to shelter under the eves of a classroom at the school. The village was nice and tidy, even if they were poor, with lovely little gardens but the beach was just covered with litter which was a great shame. They had concrete foot paths which were well kept and on the other side of the island there was a huge and good wharf which obviously was where the supplies came in. We all had a pot luck dinner on board Purnama that night.

We all agreed that we would have an early start on Thursday morning and head for the bottom of Lingga Island and the start time was 4am! When we got up there was quite a wind so fortunately we put a reef in the main to start. It was so dark, no moon and then the wind roared and the rain came and it was virtually like it all day. Was not nice at all. The wind was anything between 20-30 knots and just about on the nose so we took a lot of water over the top and at one stage we had a knock down from a gust of wind and the cockpit filled up with water but drained pretty quickly once we came up. The only good thing about the trip was that we only had to use the motor for the last hour to get into the bay so arrived at 3.15pm after having travelled 59 miles. The anchorage developed a roll early on in the evening so we were pleased to get out of there next morning.

We all agreed that we needed a dry out day on Friday and only a short hop but we couldn't have had two more contrasting days if we had tried. A hot, hot day with no wind and along with the five of us we had Keshi and Te Wai Pounamu and we went to a lovely anchorage off an island called Kongka Kecil. We were all inundated with locals visiting our boats, especially Keshi as Leanne speaks Indonesian and the added attraction was young Jack who will be three next month. The boat that visited us had 10 children and a couple of women on it and they all came aboard to have a look at the boat. One of the women was a young Muslim woman (Mimi) from Sumatra and she was a Marine Biologist and was 6 months in to a 9 month stint studying and educating the locals on maintaining and preserving the coral reefs. She was delightful and spoke good English. All 14 of us went ashore for a potluck/barbecue dinner when we had stopped having visitors but then we became a big attraction ashore. Dave & Eddie from Te Wai were interviewed by a local who was trying to promote tourism on the island and as he spoke no English Leanne was the interpreter. We certainly had a lovely calm anchorage that night.

Yesterday morning several of us went ashore for a walk around the village and got a few supplies and Mimi joined us for the walk. It was most interesting looking at the fish that were being chilled on ice and being taken by boat to Singapore. Some of the fish was also going to China. There was quite a contrast in the housing with the obvious more affluent with painted houses and nice furniture and china inside. The fisherman who export apparently receive 250,000 rupiah per kilo for their fish, but they have to be alive, which in Indonesian terms is quite a lot of money, roughly $NZ50kg. On our walk we were followed by seven or eight children. They just all love having their photos taken and so do the adults. They also like having their photo taken with a white person. Mimi was sad to see us go and she felt awful that she did not have anything else to give us, other than three lovely shells. Once back in Sumatra she is going to email us.

We finally up anchored at 10.45am yesterday morning and headed for the magical EQUATOR. We crossed it at 12.45pm and I wanted a photo of the GPS reading 00.00.000N but Dave was going too fast and it clicked at 00.00.001N so made him go back so that I could get all the zeros. All seven of us were doing the crossing yesterday and once over we anchored just near a coral reef and as it was so hot most of us went for a swim and a snorkel over the coral reef. Came back and had morning tea/late lunch/afternoon tea in one on Purnama to celebrate the crossing. After another swim and a bit of a rest we all went on Te Wai Pounamu for a Pot luck dinner celebration. It was so calm that we stayed anchored in the middle of the ocean just over the equator in 8 metres of water! Leanne had made up cards with photos of our boats on the front, inside a map with the equator and our position of crossing and then on the back 9 little photos of various activities on our trip through Indonesia. We all wrote something in each others card - a lovely idea and very special.

We had planned to leave at daylight (7am Singapore time) this morning for Mesanak Island but were woken somewhat earlier to a howling wind and rain. By the time we went to up anchor it was pouring and we could hardly see so three of us boats headed to the nearest island to get shelter while the other four opted to carry on. However by 10.45am us three decided to move on as the weather had cleared and the wind dropped and we are now on our way to the top of Mesanak Island and should get there by 5.30pm or there abouts at the speed we are doing now. We are having to motor sail but at least it is no longer raining. By the time we get to tonight's anchorage we will only be 70 miles from Sebana Cove where we will arrive on Thursday so you can all think of us then trying to negotiate the Singapore Strait with all the other ships - should be very interesting and nerve wracking to say the least!