Sailing around the World ( presently leaving Bali , bound for the Coco's Islands, )

A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 14 Sep 2010 04:35
MONDAY  13th   SEPTEMBER   2010
 
All on board got going early, as we are leaving Bali today,
A light breakfast followed by a Hindu blessing of the boats before the trip west to the Coco's Keeling Islands.
 
Neil had to visit the yacht Club and have his passport stamped by Customs.
We also had to get rid of the Bali currency, as this will not work anywhere else. so Australian or U.S $ will both work in the Coco's .
 
09.30 Thomas Wibberenz called to look over our Parasail, ( KITE )  Thomas was the person who sold us that wonderfull sail in " Las Palmas"
back last November 2009.  A little sewing, and repair work and all is well with the sail again.
 
As we said before, as soon as we repair or renew something, something else goes wrong,, now we have a little leak in our Aqua fresh
filter, nothing serious, just annoying,   however, we will look at it later and see what we can do ...
 
10.30  We took down our bunting, and generally got the boat ready to go to sea. This is always an exciting time.
11.00hrs  We slipped our shore lines and motored out with the rest of the fleet to the start area,
A couple of things were very obvious,
*  the amount of parasailors on the water was amazing, being towed along behind big fast Motor boats, we were amused that
there were no collisions, with the amount of activity on the water, boats everywhere and the sky full of parachutes.
 
* The water pollution,, the amount of dirt and rubbish floating around was frightning, many of our fleet had their water inlets
blocked with semi submerged plastic bags and old clothes, plus tons of other shite.   disgusting,
It is obvious that these lovely people use the sea as one big garbage dump.
How anyone uses it for swimming or other water activities is beyond us.  and they still have huge tourism. mainly because its cheep and cheerfull.
 
12.00hrs  The fleet all sailed North / South over the starting line and we were off once more.
The wind was ESE at 10 knots, so it was fine on our port bow, and the weather was good, with plenty of sunshine.
Lady Lisa took off like a shot out of a gun. and showed the fleet a clean pair of heels.  We just about held our own.
It took us about 3 hours to clear the Island of Bali, before we adjusted our course to a WSW direction,
 
We made a decision to go well south of the rum line, to avoid being close to Java and also Bruce said thats where the wind will be.
so lets see.  only time will tell now,
 
14.00hrs We had a salady lunch, and then we dug out the blue spinniker from the Stb cabin, set it all up, and eventually hauled it aloft.
It set nicely and off we went merrily bobbing along.
 
Later, as dusk set in, the wind increased to 20  /  25 knots and the sea got quite rough, so we dropped the spinniker again and set the geneo
and so we white sailed for the rest of the night. going more and more south of the rum line.
As darkness set in properly, Killopie 111 sent the fleet a call , concerned that they were being tailed, so the fleet , or rather the closest boats to them
closer ranks and joined Kallopie , this ended the incident and every one was happy again.
 
We skipped dinner, it was so rough , that no one was hungry, ( with the exception of Neil ) so he grabbed himself a sandwich.
 
Night watches :-       10.00 hrs  /  00.00hrs...................... Aileen
                               00.00hrs  /  02.00hrs........................Stephen
                               02.00hrs  /  04.00hrs........................Neil
                               04.00hrs  /  06.00hrs.........................Terry
                               06.00hrs  /  08.00hrs  ......................Aileen  ( birthday girl )
 
00.00hrs   We had travelled 91 miles,  an average of 7.58 knots.
 
Did you know,  King George of England could not speak much english, so anyone who wanted a favour from George had to go
 through one of his two Mistresses,  One of these was very heavy, and the other was very slim.
It became known as having to go through  " Thick and Thin " to get at George.
The _expression_ still holds today...................................................................Just thought we would share that bit of information.
 
Thats all for now,
 
Signed   :-    Stephen  Hyde      (Skipper )