Day 165, Year 3: Slowly Moving North to Singapore
Date: Hari Selasa (Tuesday), Bulan Oktober 21, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Overcast; Some Wind; HOT
Latitude: 00 degrees 52.242 minutes N
Longitude: 104 degrees 14.845 minutes E
Location: Sembulang, Pulau Remdag, Indonesia
We had hoped to stay at Mesanak today, but very early in the morning a wicked roll developed. So we decided to move on. We had heard about two possible anchorages on the net, so we headed for the one that was about 28 nautical miles from Mesanak. We are there, but other boats went further north. We are thinking that we will move another thirteen miles north tomorrow and make our final approach to Singapore the next day. On our way here it became obvious that we are no longer in the Java Sea.
We have entered the South China Sea and the traffic and floating trash are increasing. There are floating logs and little islands of seaweed, pieces of wood, plastic bottles, Styrofoam pieces, and plastic bags. Lovely! We had out our fishing line and caught two of these little “islands” but no fish today. There are real little islands everywhere but the presence of very large cargo ships seems to be the attention getter here. We also have the sound of jets overhead. This is something we haven’t
heard for quite some time. But we are anchored behind an island where there is what looks like a small village. The fishing boats here are still traditional with no motors. As I am writing this, I stopped to get a video of a man returning to shore in an outrigger with a small sail. There is no wind, so he was also paddling. It is a simple but beautiful way of life.
So we are leaving the beauty of Indonesia behind and getting ready for the Singapore experience. It will be short, but I am sure it will be interesting and busy. I’m a little worried about Windbird “fitting in” in a flashy super-yacht marina, but we’ll try to clean her up a bit before we make our grand entrance.
