Day 140, Year 3: Rough Night, Better Day
Date: Hari Kamis (Saturday), Bulan September 26, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Winds SSE 25-30 Overnight, SE 10 All Day
Location: Second Day of Passage to Bawean Island, Indonesia
Justin and Jo survived the first night out, but it was a rough one for all of us. I slept from 10:00 pm to midnight and then stayed on watch until about 4:20 this morning, but unfortunately Mark got almost no sleep during that time. Once Justin and Jo came up to the cockpit, they were able to get a little sleep and Mark is sleeping today to make-up for last night and get ready for tonight. The seas and winds settled once the sun came up, but that is also the same time that we passed between some
islands about 70 miles from Bali and entered the Java Sea. So we don’t know if the change has caused the seas to settle and the winds to die down. We sailed with the spinnaker for a while this morning, but then the wind changed to be directly behind us and dropped to about 7 knots. On Windbird, that means motoring, so we have been motoring for the remainder of the day. The other issue is the heat. When we returned from Ubud, we felt a noticeable difference in temperature. It has been hot all
along, but it is now in the nineties with a rising humidity level. Down inside the boat is intolerable with a fan blowing directly on you. We stopped motoring mid-day long enough to take a quick dip in the ocean to cool off. That worked for a while, but before dinner, we will need to do that again. It is about 4:15 in the afternoon and the winds are already starting to build. In fact, since I started writing this log, the wind has gone from 10 knots to 15-20 and the seas are beginning to build.
So I guess we have our answer for tonight. It will probably be another rough one. Justin has sailed with us but never in rough weather, and Jo’s only sailboat experience was in the Caribbean on a catamaran. They are being real troupers, however, and trying to mellow into this unpredictable passage. Tomorrow we will arrive at Bawean Island and take a rest there before doing the overnight from there to Kurimanjawa. Mark had thought we might skip it but it looks like a nice stop. Little by little
we will get to Borneo, but we will enjoy our time along the way.
Well, I am resuming writing after an hour-long sail change exercise. Just as I wrote above that the winds were starting to build, they indeed did that and the increased winds are right behind us. So we are now sailing wing and wing with a reefed main sail and a half knot of current against us. We are averaging about five and half knots and if we can keep that up overnight, we will arrive at Bawean before noon tomorrow. It is unfortunate that we will arrive over a weekend as we have read that
the teacher there loves to have visiting yachties come to the school and interact with the students who are practicing their English. The villages on Bawean are Muslim fishing villages and other cruisers have reported that they are very friendly and have colorful fleets of fishing boats.
As we roll along into another sunset, Bali is becoming a memory, but a very special memory indeed. I will always carry with me the memory of shop keepers who so carefully place their offerings of flowers and fruits in front of their shops every morning. They do this with such love and devotion that it is hard not to be affected by their faith. The Hindu temples of Bali are just beautiful. They are everywhere and their beauty is hard to describe. The graceful hand movements of beautiful Balinese
dancers with long black hair and costumes of woven gold silk mixed with other vibrant colors is another vision that we carry with us, as are the intricate masks and costumes of other dancers. Bali is certainly a place like no other that we have visited and as we sail further and further away I wonder if I will ever visit another place so surreal and beautiful. It was so special to share our visit to Bali with Justin and Jo. They were also so taken with its beauty that they have dreams of moving
there. It is as different as night is from day from their desert home in New Mexico. What a wonderful world we live in with such diversity and beauty.
