Lembongan Island to Benoa Harbour Bali
Gaviota
Wed 7 Sep 2016 09:47
008:44.88S 115:12.65E
We were
surprised on getting to the entrance of Benoa Harbour to find it full of
watersports boats, paragliders, inflatable bananas and flying airbeds soared
and roared all around us. It did seemed
slightly odd allowing this in the entrance to a major shipping port but of
course this is Indonesia!
We found
Bali Marina tucked away up a creek and Syd did an amazing manoeuvre with
Gaviota to get her into the only remaining space which was for a boat half her
size. But we were in and immediately
went to plug into shore power to try and save the freezer contents. First problem our plug did not fit. So first job was for Syd to ‘adapt’ a plug
that would work – and it did, so the freezer re-froze and first problem was
sorted. We looked around at Bali Marina
with it’s broken jetties and floating rubbish everywhere – not a good first
sight for visiting international yachts to the area! The facilities resembled an Indonesian prison
and the whole place was very run down but as always the staff were wonderful
and we knew we had no option but to get on and sort our repairs as quickly as
possible.
First
call was to a wonderful Italian guy who used to work as an engineer on
Superyachts – without his help we would have been struggling! He quickly organized an electrician to
confirm Syd’s suspicions that the electrical part of the generator needed a
full re-wind. This meant the generator
had to be dismantled – again!
Syd
needed a break before he tackled this job again so I dragged him off
horse-riding. We were picked up from the
Marina (which was in the arse end of nowhere) and had a very interesting ride
through the tourist area of Kuta and over to the Kuda P Stables which were
close to the surfing beach of Pererenan.
I was immediately impressed with the standard of the stables and the
horses we were given were lovely, well fed, well groomed and very well
behaved. We set off and rode through the
rice fields down to the coast where the rollers crashed in on a lovely black
sand beach. Our guide Deni took lots of
photos, then let us canter and gallop along the beach. Syd had the best horse he has ridden so far
and really enjoyed experiencing a good horse at speed. The ride back took us past lots of beautiful
traditional Hindhu houses each with their own elaborate temple in the garden,
very beautiful. When we arrived back our
host’s wife bought us cold drinks and freshly cooked banana fritters. It was a really good break from sailing.
Back to
cell block Bali Marina and getting the generator out. Syd managed to do this in half the time it
had taken him before in Port Douglas and Alberto (our Italian helper) took the
generator away. As always timing was
crap, it was Saturday and the following week there was a 3 day Hindhu festival
so a lot of places would be closed. To
compound the problem the entire credit card system of Indonesia had decided to
pack up and as you are only allowed to get 1.25 million Rupiah (£70) out of a
cash machine in one go it was going to be a problem. Luckily the repair place took American
Dollars and we were suddenly free to go.
We arranged for the rewound generator to be delivered to Lovina Bay in
the North of Bali (where the next Rally stop was and more importantly where we
had to get our Visas extended!). We
packed the freezer with ice and escaped.
