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We are now at the western end of the Island of Flores after traveling some 250 nm (500 km) along its northern coast during the past 11 days. We have stopped at this small island with a nice white sand beach and a lot of coral reef…and water visibility is great > will see what tomorrow brings by way of underwater life.

As for the above water life on the island, we see a lot of monkeys walking/sitting along beach. There isn’t any village/community on this island but as we finished setting up our anchor, along came 2 young men from Komodo island (a 6 hour trip/20 litres of diesel  across the water for them in their relatively small boats). They had fresh water pearls and carved hibiscus wood dragons for sale ……and were sufficiently persuasive to leave with us having purchased a medium size dragon carving and 2 strands of pearls…..everyone was happy!

We have now been informed that the Rally event scheduled for Labuan Baja, about 10 nm from here, has been cancelled due to lack of funding. This is the 2^nd Rally event to be cancelled for this reason…last week it was the planned event/venue at Riung.  None of us are too bothered because we have learned to do well on our own. We do want to take in a tour to experience the Komodo Dragons somewhere in this area…either on Komodo Island or on Rinca - another close-by island heavily populated with these evil creatures.

The Sail Indonesia Rally is set up with the expectation that many participants will be wandering through the nation on their own…..and some mix of participants will join in for the rally events when that timing comes along over our 3 months in country.  Alor was the last event that we participated in…and we departed there on Aug 10^th….so 3 weeks on our own and it has been all good!

One follow-up: I reported on a disappointing/dead coral reef a couple of weeks back but could only guess at the cause of what had killed the reef.  As we left that area, we were informed that back in 1992, a bad earthquake had occurred and the resulting tsunami was what killed the reef we swam on as well as many other reefs….not to mention the human catastrophe of over 1000 people killed on just those immediate islands.  The reality of Indonesia exiting on what is known as  “THE RING OF FIRE”

Ciao…the Seamisters