08 16.546 S 120 36.009 E

Westward bound…we continued another 35 nm today…motor sailing…at least there was enough wind to motor sail….the last couple of legs it has been just motoring. We were warned last year, long before we joined the Sail Indonesia Rally…..that it would be more aptly names Motor Indonesia Rally. The path of the rally is sort of in the doldrums….no substantial wind in these parts. ….a small sea breeze during the day as the land heats up and initiates convection….and, at night after the land cools down…IF…there are strong enough tradewinds 1000 nm from here east of Australia/Papua New Guinea, then there may be light south-easterlies over the dark hours ….until the sun starts heating the planet up big time somewhere after 8 am.

We had some good snorkeling in the 17 Islands National Park yesterday mid-day….Cheryl and I were joined by Stuart and Shelia, S/V Imagine.  The other main activity there was to organize what I will call a Bintang run….we had run out of been or so many boats that I thought we should try and do a major restocking at the Riung Market Day – Monday morning…..But, by the time about 6 dinghies of us arrived at the Riung dock just after 9 am, it was clear that we were much too late.  All the beer had been sold long before we arrived at the market. Anyway, we persisted….I felt some accountability as I had broadcast on the VHF that we could get Bintang for a good price if we went to the market……so now what??   Anyway, I kept talking to more and more people, trying to find anyone who understood/spoke enough English so that I could explain our predicament….and I eventually found someone, he walked with us to many merchants but the response was always “ABYSS”…..(spelling may not be correct??)….which I became to understand as “sold out!”. Finally we found a woman who had a little shop….no Bintang…but she was willing to find a regional supplier to try and get 20-25 cases of 12 bottles in each case – 620 ml bottles!  After she called around….and with my new found friend “sort of” acting as a translator…she said we would have about 20 cases at the pier at 6 pm….and I gave her 300,000 rupia as a deposit towards the 5.7 million total cost for 20 cases (Note: that comes to $2.37 cents per bottle….cheapest Bintang yet!!). Back in the anchorage, 2 nm away from the pier, I rationed out the 20 cases and got all the related money….and waited for 5 pm to arrive at which time I had got 3 other volunteers to run their dinghies across the bay to bring back about 5 cases each.  She told us it would not be “early”….but as with everything in Indonesia, my phone rang at about 4:15 ….only Indonesian on the other end of the line….I could not understand her nor she me.  I tried to guess that the beer had arrived early….3 more calls from her did not make it any more understandable…I now had alerted the other dinghy volunteers that we had to go NOW….and then as we started out, my phone rand with a text message…the only word I recognized in the text was Bintang…but now….was it that the beer had arrived….or that it wasn’t possible to get it…no way for me to know. I got my friends to stop their dinghies and stand by a ways off shore….as I saw a local small tourist boat up on the beach at our island….and my guess was that the operator “might” speak some English…I raced into him…asked him to translate the text message..and then call her….the word was the beer was at the dock….but the merchant could not figure out where we were….she didn’t know that we were 2 miles across the bay at an island……all got sorted out and the 4 of us came back to the anchorage with 18 cases and played like Christmas elves dropping the boxes of beer on the boats who had ordered.

This afternoon, we snorkeled here in this new anchorage…..NICE REEF!!...probably best reef so far…only drawback was water clarity/visibility was not great…and the sun was late in the afternoon sky which doubled up the problem….but we really enjoyed it (Cheryl/Stu/Shelia and me); Sea Mist was the first boat in here at noon today but as the afternoon moved along, there have been 6 other boats arrive.  If you check our location on Google Earth, you will see that we are surrounded by reef….anchored right in the middle channel that cuts up through the reef and provides good anchoring in 15 meters of water depth and sand bottom

I think everyone finds the anchorage appealing overall…..however, there is a local village about 2 kms down the bay, and all the kids paddled out in their dugouts to visit the boats and hopefully get something given to them by way of lollipops, school supplies, t-shirts…anything….but we cruisers are tired of this intrusion into our solitude…..the fact is the kids are terrific…but their fascination with us and their incessant “HELLO MISTER”…”HELLO MRS” gets tiring after a while…we just want to be left alone in our “homes”  So it is all a balance, trade-offs, summoning up respectful interaction with them…..and KEEPING THEM OFF OUR BOATS!!

Time to go up for a sundowner beverage on the after deck and take in the beautiful setting sun…..we just don’t get tired of that experience…each day is different with the sky colours, land/terrain/mountains/volcanoes as backdrops.

Cheers, the Seamisters