Arrived in Padang

S/V Galatea update
Neil Scott
Tue 14 Apr 2015 07:21
We had a good day a few days back at our anchorage in Teluk (bay) Labhuan Bajau. The Bay was huge, but also deep, up close in to the beach, so, in reality, anchoring opportunities are limited unless you are prepared to put out at least 300 feet of anchor chain and rope. The bay is surrounded by miles of beach along which we walked. Not far down the beach from our anchoring position, was a local boat building operation. Quite amazing to see how they put boats of various sizes together out of local wood, nails, tar and tin to line the hull. They seem to leak like sieves and go to hell in a relatively short time, like 5 years, unless they are well maintained.

We left Labuhan Bajau at about 6pm for an overnighter, about 85 miles, to Padang. Once again, no sailable wind, but, apart from an hour from 2 to 3am, smooth, calm seas making for easy motoring. We arrived at Teluk Bayur, about 5 miles south of Padang city around midday on the 12th. The anchorage is on the edge of quite a busy commercial harbor, the main business there being Semen Padang, not what you might think, but a cement plant. The view from the boat, not looking at the cement place, is actually quite pleasant with steep, rocky, jungly green cliffs dropping down to the bay's edges which are dotted with rickety houses, restaurants, etc. apart from making a trip to a local restaurant for dinner, we had a quiet, rest afternoon. Dinner was interesting - they drop a whole bunch of dishes on the table, dried fish, tough beef rendang, bbq chicken, veggies, atcha etc, far more than we wanted, and said eat what you want and, as long as you don't touch a plate, you aren't charged for it and it goes back to the kitchen for the next guy.

We had a busy day in Padang yesterday - quite a big city, rather messy, and with 1.5million people, the largest place we have been in since leaving Phuket. After a nice coconut bun and coffee breakfast, we got a new engine start battery, some tools, a sim card for my old Nokia phone for local calls, a nice beef rendang lunch, a massage (first time I have ever had one) and then a nice chili crab and deer and fried rice dinner with the lady who is acting as our assistant here for organizing customs and immigration stuff, laundry, food buying etc. Not a bad day, but I don't know whether I will bother about ever having a massage again - didn't make me feel as special as people say it is supposed to be. But maybe i need to try a better, more expensive one - as a Chinese friend of mine once said "money doesn't lie" and the 90 minute ones we had only cost about $8!!

Teague left this morning to fly back to California. I took him over to the dock at 5am so he could take a taxi to the airport. We will miss not having him on the boat - he is a good sailor and he is a good cook. Now we have no good cook and less skilled sailors on Galatea. Time to start eating the canned food and pasta, other than the 12 packs of sausages that we still have in the freezer.
We will be meeting with a canvas guy this afternoon to quote on replacing the zippers on the front opening, dodger window. One of the old zippers blew out on us and, although we massaged it back together, we don't trust it for an Indian ocean crossing. We have arranged for diesel to be brought to the boat on Thursday morning. Hope that goes well. We will spend the rest of the day cleaning the interior an getting ready for Chris's arrival on Thursday.

Ok, that's it for now.

Neil and Mike

- S/V Galatea
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