Day 143, Year 3: Arrival in Karimunjawa
Date: Hari Senin (Monday), Bulan September 29, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Beautiful with a Threat of Rain Here and There
Latitude: 05 degrees 52.506 minutes S
Longitude: 110 degrees 02.592 minutes E
Location: Karimunjawa Island, Java, Indonesia
We arrived here around 10:30 am after an “interesting” night. Windbird has been like a Sherman tank. No matter what we do wrong, this boat has always compensated for us. But last night, our human error caused Windbird to suffer some damage. We were sailing wing and wing and had our main sail vanged out to the toe rail. This means that a line from the bottom of the boom was clipped off to the toe tail which runs along the edge of the deck. I was off watch and asleep, but evidently the main sail kept back winding and finally a section of the toe rail simply ripped up and away from the deck. I finally heard the commotion and got us to see what was going on. I couldn’t believe what I saw. This boat has always been so solid, but unfortunately about two feet of Windbird’s toe rail had been literally ripped up from the deck.. Mark thinks we had been attaching the preventer to the weakest spot in the toe rail and that over time, we had weakened the connection. For whatever reason, Windbird
is missing about a two-foot piece of toe rail. We will have this repaired in Malaysia and we will be fine until then. It is just unfortunate that we miscalculated and caused the problem. So our apologies to Windbird.
When I came on watch at 11 am, Justin and Jo were sleeping down below. This was the first time I have seem them be able to do this and they were actually able to sleep through the night. We were actually able to sail through much of the night and arrived here early in the morning. Justin and Jo took the dinghy to nearby island with a beautiful white sand beach and they found a marine paradise. They found a section of beach with hundred of sea stars and sand dollars. Most of the sea stars and sand dollars were alive, but they were able to fine a few sand dollars that were not alive and could be kept as souvenirs.
Late in the afternoon, we all went ashore to explore Karimunjawa. Tomorrow we will spend more time ashore enjoying the beauty here. Tonight we stayed on Windbird and enjoyed a great sushi dinner supplied by the mahi-mahi fish that Justin caught yesterday. We had a great sunset and dinner and look forward to much of the same tomorrow.
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| 080929 Day 143 Indonesia–Bawean Island to Karimunjawa |
