Tuesday/Wednesday, 8th, 9th September, 2015

Luna Quest
W. Eric Faber
Wed 9 Sep 2015 10:39
Position: 8.46S 115.56E

Gile Gede, Lombok

Monday was another day without wind. We motored night and day to ensure our arrival on Tuesday. We passed the finishing line at 9.30am on Tuesday, but needed to cover a further 27 miles to the World ARC anchorage in Gile Gede that took us through a passage between Bali and Lombok. In the passage we experienced 5 knots of tidal stream against us giving us no more than 2.5kn of progress with the engine running at near full power. Luckily, the passage was only about 5 miles and it was a great relief to witness the speed of Luna Quest improving slowly as we swung round to the anchorage, picking our way through dozens of nets of a pearl farm. Upon arrival we dropped anchor. Gile Gede is a mountainous island, quite remote from civilisation, where a lack of water, among many other things, necessitates water conservation and the supplement of water bottles brought in from Lombok. We had been looking forward to having a good shower, but on arrival found that the only shower available was a cold salt water one with a bucket of fresh water and ladle next to it, but the combination worked and it was quite wonderful to come out feeling properly washed.

We are using today (Wednesday) to do various jobs, such as servicing the engine and the watermaker, getting our gas bottles filled and arranging for the laundry to be taken ashore. Tomorrow Julia has organised a tour into Lombok island with Rally Control that we are greatly looking forward to. Last night I had started changing the oil and oil filter when we noticed that we appeared to be dragging our anchor and were about to mount a little local boat on a mooring. I was dumbfounded how to explain that, as we had anchored in soft mud. Earlier in the afternoon when the wind blew around 20 knots we did not appear to have moved at all. As I could not start the engine to re-anchor since I had not fished changing the oil, we witnessed our boat inexorably drifting towards the shore. I called for help, which soon arrived from another rally participant in his dinghy. While Julia passed him a line to tow us, I frantically tried to finish changing the oil so that I could start the engine. While the dinghy held Luna Quest off the little local boat and stopping it drifting ashore, I managed to complete the oil change and start the engine so we could get the anchor up and re-anchor elsewhere. Afterwards we realised that the stiff breeze had stretched the anchor chain while the ebbing tide took us onto the little boat and towards the shore.

Eric