Day 161, Year 3: We’re Still Here
Date: Hari Jumat (Friday), Bulan Oktober 17, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny AM; Rain in the Afternoon
Location: Tanjung Kelayang, Belitung, Indonesia
Well, it was just too hard to say goodbye, so we didn’t. We stayed here, but we will be leaving in the morning. There are a number of boats leaving in the morning doing a two day, two night passage to just north of the equator, so we will travel with them. In this part of the world, it is good to have other boats nearby in case you run into trouble. There are loads of fishing platforms and fishing long lines and more than a few floating logs. So it is good to have friends nearby if you should
need help.
Since we decided to stay, I launched into a laundry frenzy. I have not done laundry since we returned from the Kumai river trip, so we had heaps. But after getting just one load hung out on the line, we heard that a bus was headed to the big town about 25 kilometers from here, so I left a laundry load to soak and headed to town. We teemed up with Marianne and Kaye of Nabob. They had been in town before and they let us follow them around until we got our bearings. We spent most of our time in
the internet café trying to look up information on Singapore and checking the ever dwindling bank account. The internet was sooooo slow that we could not even check our land-based gmail account for messages or see a video that Heather had posted on Picasa for us. It was a video of Sam riding his rocking “dragon” that we got him for Christmas and we wanted so badly to see it. But I guess we’ll just have to wait until we get to Singapore.
We had lunch in our favorite little restaurant on the beach when we returned and then came out to Windbird just in time to get the first load of dry laundry off the lines before the rains came. It continued to rain all afternoon, so all of the laundry that was soaking while we went to town is now dripping in the covered cockpit.
When we leave here tomorrow morning we will sail/motor about 237 nautical miles to Kentar Island. From there we make three day-hops to get us to Singapore. As we get closer it is important to travel in daylight as the traffic will be heavier and logs floating in the water seem to increase. If all goes well we will be in Singapore on Thursday or Friday of next week. You cannot come into Singapore on the weekend, so one way or another we will be there by Friday, October 24. Monday the 27th is
our 34th wedding anniversary and I think that is the perfect excuse to go to the very exclusive Raffles Hotel in Singapore and have a Singapore Sling in the place where that drink was invented. I think it costs about $25 a drink, so we’ll just have to have only one and go out to the Singapore food stalls for dinner.
