0:24.21N  104:32.62E

Wednesday 13th October

Captain’s Log:

Tuesday 12th October 2010

0600hrs a fine dawn and some wind! Set the sails and stopped the engine - hooray!!  We never expected to be able to have such fair weather at the equator!

21.00 finally had to start the engine.

2200hrs Nearly got in a tangle with a trawler, Ollie called me on deck as he was getting close, finally ended up gunning the engine and going across his bows to get clear!

Wednesday 13th October 2010

00.20hrs Crossed the line!!! We were all up with a bottle of bubbly at the ready and stopped the engine to drift across in a flat calm - the first time for over 10 years since Kanaloa has been in the Northern Hemisphere.

0600 A really nasty squall right on the nose 28-30 knots, thank goodness for the plastic curtains for the sides of the bimini at least we can keep reasonably dry.  Decided upon a more sheltered anchorage other that the one recommended.

0815hrs Anchored in 8.5 metres of water amongst a village of fish farms all on stilts!

Position 0:24'.21n 104:32'.62e

Distance run 312 miles Average speed 7.2 knots

CROSSED THE EQUATOR FROM SOUTH TO NORTH AT 00.23Hrs

Not very clear, but it says 0.00.001 S

And 12 seconds later its already reading 0:00.004 North

I had to get David and Ollie up as it was my watch.  We downed some bubbly, and I poured cold water of them, but David retaliated with pouring some of the bubbly down us too!  Thankfully it was still a calm night.  We were drifting along under sail at just 3.5 knots.

Four hours later however, after Ollie’s watch, the lightning which had been threatening all night became a full scale big blow with rainshowers.  I had to call David up to help put the plastic back up to protect the cockpit, and reduce sail as it rapidly increased up to 35 knots on the nose!  We motored into the increasing waves for the next couple of hours.  I realised that our destination anchorage we had chosen was not going to give us any shelter from strong winds from the NW.  Thankfully, the island we were approaching had a great hook in it offering us perfect shelter on the south side.

What I thought were rocks in the anchorage, uncharted of course, happened to be dozens of these stilted fishing enclosures.  I was sure there would be plenty of boats here, but did not anticipate that the boats would be permanent housing with fishing nets that can be lowered into the sea at night!

Here the nets are just being hoisted up at dawn, I am sure they cannot have a great catch, there are so many of them permanently in the bay.

The noise level was certainly cut down by the fact that the locals move between their home ashore and home on stilts by this method of standing up and rowing.

It was OK dodging amongst them during daylight, but got forbid trying to find a sheltered spot here at night, some of them did not have their lights on!

It offered us a great day of R&R, David and I went straight to bed on our arrival, whilst Ollie, much to our great surprise, cleaned the stainless steel and washed the salt off the front of the boat!

We had a second celebration of crossing the Equator at lunchtime, with the another bottle of bubbly and smoked salmon sandwiches.  We had a few visits from small boys in their rowing boats, asking for ‘biskits’, and then mask and snorkel! Having neither they had to make do with some peanuts and pens!  We did not go ashore, as we did not want to feel intrusive, and felt that we needed a rest anyway!

We left at sunrise, which hapens to be getting later every day, now it’s 7 a.m. before it’s light, but as we’re going west, it stays lighter longer, till 7.30 p.m.

We could already see the reflection of the lights from Singapore in the clouds to the west of us, it’s only 60 miles away now.

Motoring close to the island of Masenae, the forst looks quite dense and untouched on the other side of the island.  We were in for a shock though, not much more than 2 hours away was all the hubub of Indonesian shipping and industry – see our next blog.