It is Sunday and we are recovering from our little farewell party last night. Aussies Di and Bruce (Friend Jenny's cousin) came on board Valiam with the most important contribution- COLD champagne!!! Bi Yuen and friend Lim came down from Johor Bahru and seemed to enjoy the Aussie way of celebrating with finger food in the cockpit. They did well to keep up with our rapid Aussie English! As a 'Thank you' gift Linda had drawn a portrait of Valiam, photographed the drawing and put them in little frames for our guests. We bored our guests with video clips of our trip so far. It made us all realise how fortunate we've been experiencing places like PNG and the Philippines. Yes Valiam and her crew need to get moving again away from this urban environment to the ocean and hopefully pristine white beaches of Cocos Keeling islands. After a couple of bottles of Aussie Champagne and wine were finished the Aussies headed over to the One 15 Marina club bar at midnight. Its the glass 3 level bar we can see from our boat flashing pink, purple and blue lights. A live jazz (?) performance of a guitarist and female singer entertained the 4 of us. (There were 3 other people there - obviously a very 'in' place to go in Singpapore on a Saturday night!!) A couple of cosmopolitans and martini later we ceremoniously ushered our guests up the grand stairs (oops we only had rubber thongs on....) to the grand lobby. No-one at the reception but within moments a taxi arrived with returning guests which was most convenient for Di and Bruce. A lovely night.

Bill is getting through the last jobs and we finally got the ok for insurance for Valiam. I must congratulate our insurance broker in Australia for getting through all the bureaucracy in Perth and London at the last minute. On Friday afternoon just before the Queens Birthday weekend London requested a 'rigging report'! Bill promptly phoned Allyachtspars in Brisbane who emailed us one within half an hour. Thanks guys!! Our broker pushed it all through over the weekend so now we are officially insured for the Indian ocean, South Africa and southern Atlantic ocean for the next 12 months..

Immigration fun : A couple of weeks ago when Bill went to see Immigration he got into trouble by the boss because we didn't tell them at the Malaysian checkpoint that we were on a yacht. We were so pleased to get through but incorrectly we had a tourist visa in our passports. WRONG! Much tut tutting later new stamps and a new crew list later we were again officially crew reunited with our ship. BUT when on board later on inspection of the passport stamps and new crew list the dates were different! The passport said 11 June whilst the crew list said 6 June. Well on the 5th June Bill thought he had better do the right thing and go to immigration again. The man sat at his desk scratching his head for half an hour totally confused looking at the 2 different dates. When he found out the boss did it she laughed it off saying it was a mistake haha and gave Bill another month's extension. We didn't want another month we just wanted another day!!! Usually yachts only get 2 weeks at a time. If Singapore is like this in Immigration I wonder what is in store in the next countries we visit.. At least Cocos is Australia and we HAVE notified them of our eventual arrival!!!
As well as getting our departure and maintenance jobs done we enjoyed Di's recommendations of eating establishments in Little Arabia and Chinatown. The hand made noodle restaurant was fun. We watched the fellow throw the dough around and between his fingers to make perfect strands of noodles. They were delicious too!
We'll be doing a bit more shoppingbefore we go. We've already had one order delivered to the boat from the supermarket . We'll also take a careful look at the weather. We need to have good visiblity going through the shipping channels towards Indonesia. We can't stop so we will need to be alert at all times for about a week until we get through Sunda Strait. The captain cant wait to be sailing in the Indian ocean with the trade winds.