Nongsa (Batam) to Singapore

Hello One And All

We left Nongas Point Marina in Indonesia on the 25th November, a beautiful Marina come Resort with all the modern facilities one could wish for at a fraction of the price we would pay back home or for that matter in any so called western country. It was like arriving at a luxurious Resort on the French Rivera where “Mr Average” just could not afford to stay. From there we negotiated our way across the Singapore strait either crossing in front of or behind ships, with only one humongous, giant, enormous, super super size tanker bearing down on us with a slight threat to run us down, and that was one of the few times I am found yelling at Alex to step on the gas, which of course he was doing, before we ended up as a statistic of the Straits Shipping.

Bali to Kumai - Kalimantan to Nongsa Point Marina - Batam

Hello Again

Well Alec’s bout of food poisoning kept us on the boat for a couple of days not really being able to venture very far. We did do a couple of small trips ashore to the Bali Yacht Club to check the emails and to fill the jerry cans with diesel. One morning as I was sitting on the terrace of the Yacht Club having a semi real coffee, the local ‘gang’ came down for their morning wash – yes in that filthy harbour! A small girl of about five and four boys between three and four. Granddad came along to watch proceedings. After a time of splashing about and trying to drown each other it was time to see what they could find in the small fishing boats which were anchored just off the beach. Plastic bags were the order of the day this morning which had been neatly folded and stowed away under the seats. They were dragged out, taken into the water and partly filled, then the end was screwed up and it acted as a float. Once that sank they just filled another. More rubbish added to this horridly polluted harbour! This kept them occupied till Granddad had had enough and wanted them out of the water which turned into another fiasco. No way were they ready to go home. Granddad was not going in and had no power over them. They were still debating the matter with him when we left quite some time later.

Lombok to Bali

Hello To You All

The run from Lombok to Bali was 60nm and was into the wind all the way, but with a strong current of up to 7Kt’s at times we made the crossing in eight hours. With wind against tide it made for some choppy seas at times. This seems to be the norm around here when sailing between the different Islands.

Komodo to Lombok via The Gili Islands

A Note From Those Sea Gypsies

As I start this post we are sitting in a lovely bay just north of Senggigi on the Island of Lombok. We will leave here for Bali in a couple of days.

Kupang to Komoda - Home of the Dragons

Hello Again

As I said in our last post we had to say good-bye to Brigitte in Kupang. With a heavy heart we sadly took her out to the airport for her 6.30am flight yesterday morning. She flew on Lion Air where the slogan is ‘We Make You Fly’ then Alec and I headed back to SHAMAL and as we watched her plane fly over we upped anchor and set sail for a Komodo about 250nm away where we will see the famous Komodo Dragons. Brigitte has not seen all the lovely places we are yet to visit, but we did a quick run out to an Island just 5 miles off Kupang on her last night so she could have a swim in cleaner waters.

Darwin to Kupang - West Timor in Indonesia

Hello Again

First a very big thank you to all of you who have sent us emails keeping us up to date with your news. We really do appreciate getting your emails and hearing what’s happening in your part of the world, so again a big thank you.

Our two weeks in Darwin passed very quickly with really only one day off for a little R & R. That was a site seeing walking trip around Darwin with Alec as the guide in temperatures in their mid to late 30s!! At one point he took us through a park where we were dive bombed by birds who must have been nesting very close by. That was a case of ‘run for it girls’. Oh yeah right - in this heat. That was a Sunday and we visited the Museum which had a nice restaurant overlooking Fannie Bay. We did take a cab there! Brigitte had joined us the day before so it was lovely to catch up with all her news. For our first couple of days we stayed anchored in Fannie Bay where we had Quarantine come to the boat and put a disinfectant into our salt water inlets to kill off any unwanted marine growth we may have picked up in our travels. This then allows one to use the marinas there. Then the following day we beached SHAMAL so Alec could change the sail drive oils in each engine and I gave both hulls a good scrub down. We had her grounded by 1100 and then waited till the tide receded enough to start work. I started while there was still water around the boat so had my eyes peeled in all directions as a croc had been sighted in the Bay about four days previous!! We worked like bees as we only had the hours of the low tide, so did not stop until we had finished which was as the water was lapping the hulls again on the incoming tide. We had time for dinner at the Fannie Bay Yacht Club watching the tide coming in, then just after 2100 SHAMAL was floating again – thank goodness.

Thursday Island to Darwin

Hello Again from the rather warm and slightly humid Northern Territories

My last post finished as we had just arrived at Thursday Island. It is a small Island between Horn , Hammond and Prince of Wales Island but is the administration centre for the Torres Strait Islands. Horn Island is recommended as the better anchorage with protection from the southeast trade winds. We dropped the anchor only to find we were dragging so up it came again for us to reset it. Well in doing all that the anchor chain guide snapped – a small steel thing - so we were rather stuck, and far too close to yet another super yacht. We told him our problem and he was OK with that as he was moving on that evening – lucky for him as we weren’t going anywhere and during all of this the anchor set. It took the rest of the afternoon for us to change the anchor guide. Alec delved into his ‘ton of spare parts’ box to get out a new one. Thank goodness we had one and it was only because someone else had broken theirs and told us to carry one. Otherwise we would be pulling the anchor up by hand which would be rather hard work.

Cairns to Thursday Island

Hello To You All

Well we are heading North (in the not so distant future we will change direction and head west). As I start this letter it is the most beautiful day – like most we have been having – with the sun out and the temperature a lovely 30 degrees with a cooling breeze off the sea. The water temperature today is a barmy 29 degrees. My fishing line is out and Alec is navigating our way between coral reefs, cays – small low islets composed of coral and sand sometimes with scrub or mangroves and maybe the odd coconut palm growing on them - and islands - with more vegetation . It is just beautiful, and to date our chart plotter and maps are all accurate. We have just had a little black and white sea bird land for a rest.

Airlie Beach to Cairns

Hello again one and all

As I start to write this we are back out at sea once more heading North up the Australian East Coast with a few more little adventures in the wake behind us.

Mackay to Airlie Beach

Hello again.

Our four days in Mackay seemed to pass quickly. We discovered we were in huge sugar cane growing area with ships coming into the port to load up with sugar or molasses. Also a little south of Mackay is an enormous coal loading facility where the ships are loaded out at sea by a conveyor belt system, hence all the ships anchored offshore waiting their turn to load – more than 30 of them.

Vanuatu (Luganville) to Mackay (Australia)

Hello Again

As I start this email to you we are on day three of our crossing from Luganville on the Island of Santo – Vanuatu, to Mackay in Oz. We have only covered a total of 267nm. A very slow trip so far but the winds are so light we are having to motor sail. The charges for arriving in Oz are horrendous. Customs and Immigration have quoted us $400 and it is more if we arrive in the weekend, so we have seen a reef marked on the map we pass quite close by and we may stop here to pass the time if it looks like our arrival time is going to be over a weekend.

Poindimie to Vanuatu

Hello Again,

Now we are back in civilization (well the closest thing around here to civilization – there is power here in the form of batteries and a generator and some magical internet connection ) I can send you the next update.

Noumea - Isle of Pines - Poindimie

Hello One And All

Well to fill you in on what we are up to. On Tuesday 2nd June we finally upped anchor from our little bay just outside Port Moselle and motored in to clear custom etc. With a little ‘help’ from our new kiwi friends on board “Nutcase” ( Graham and Sandra) parked just outside the Port with us, clearance went very smoothly. Most of our fruit and veges were taken from us - and this we had expected so had run supplies down. We were allowed to keep anything we had cooked!! So potatoes and my kumara were cooked up along with some hard boiled eggs. They let me keep my carrots as well. Then there was our ‘export’ meat, all $300 plus!! The rules have just changed and one is now allowed to bring in meat from NZ and Australia as long as it has the export sticker on it. Thank goodness ours did. “Nutcase” gave us help here! Can’t go into too many details!!

Opua to Noumea

 Hello to you all out there

Well with all jobs done, our crew of Dave and Kathy settled into the guest cabin, custom formalities all completed and a lovely fresh coffee from the new marina cafe, at 1030 we motored out from Opua on a lovely sunny but cool winters morning on Leg one – heading for Noumea. We then motored for the nearly 20 hours with not enough puff to raise a sail. The seas were calm with hardly a ripple. So much for the Bob McDavitt’s Voyage Forecast in which he said we would have SSW winds of 15kts. Alec said he owes him 50Lts of diesel!!! Then just after 0700 the next morning when we were off the top of North Cape we were able to raised the sails with the wind increasing to a good 20kt from the SE. At last we were on our way. Squalls have been about most days, until today - day 6 – but nothing to worry about. The strongest gust in those squalls was 30kts and only lasted a few minutes.

Auckland to Opua

Hello One And All

First Hi to all of you who are receiving my news letter for the first time. As I said to you at the time of collecting your email address this is just an update of where we are, where we are heading next and some of the adventures we have had in the last wee while.

Tauranga to Auckland

Hello One And All

This is just a brief note as we laze our way through Summer. The weather has been wonderful since we arrived in Tauranga and we have spent quite a bit of time out sailing and fishing with family and friends. People are still showing an interest in the boat which is great and we are having a lot of fun showing it to them.

From the Marlborough Sounds to Tauranga

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL

Well it is some sea miles ago that I last wrote so for a bit of an update as to what we have been up to.

It was early December when we left the South Island and headed north again. We motored to the edge of the Marlborough Sounds and dropped anchor just inside in a sheltered bay for the night so we could catch the out-going tide in the morning. We had the inter-Island Ferries passing all night which look like floating hotels going by. At 6.00am we were up anchor and off out into Cook Strait. It was a little lumpy but we had a good wind and made the crossing in 4 hours. We then spent 2 weeks in Wellington catching up with family and friends, doing the rounds of all the local yacht clubs with our SEAWIND info packs, visited the Wellington Museum to see “The Colossal Squid” – a 4.2 metre long squid weighing 459 kilograms caught in the Southern Ocean last year. Don’t really want to come across one of those in our ocean travels thank you, and, I even managed to do my Christmas shopping with Brigitte’s help as she flew down from Auckland to join us for the next leg up the coast. We met another lovely couple on their catamaran who were making it ready to do off shore passages. Hope we cross paths with them again in warmer waters.