08:16.403S  120:35.611E

Linghe, Flores Island

Wednesday 15^th September

We left at the crack of dawn as we had a long 77 mile journey along the island of Flores today.  We used the mud map from 101 anchorages, which seemed reasonably more accurate than our chart once again.  We threaded our way past the headland and found that a reef was right across the bay, so headed towards where the mud map seemed to show a reasonable anchorage, close to an enclosing reef on two sides, just off a sharp drop off.  We dropped the anchor in 17 metres, and the boat settled back into 30 meters of water.  But the swell was minimal, and we seemed to be quite comfortable with just a slight breeze to keep us cook.  Ollie swam out to check how deep the coral shelf was, and reported back that it was only about 1.5 metres, not enough for us to anchor onto.

It was not long before the ‘sea urchins’ came out in their sailing canoes to see if we had any exercise books, T-shirts or hats for them:

This fisherman took a good look at us whilst he motored back to his village

These little guys just got pencils and sharpeners and sweets, we had run out of everything else!

Meanwhile Ollie had concocted a delicious  Greek appetizer which he had fried for us to enjoy with our glass of rose at sundown – what luxury!