Day 162, Year 3: First Day of Passage to Pulau Kentar
Date: Hari Sabtu (Saturday), Bulan Oktober 18, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Overcast; Winds E 10-15
Latitude: 02 degrees 05.899 minutes S
Longitude: 107 degrees 13.684 minutes E
Location: On Passage from Pulau Belitung to Pulau Kentar, Indonesia
Miles to Go: 198

We are sailing! That is amazing as we are approaching the equator and there is usually no wind here. But we have a nice 10-15 knot breeze from the East which puts us somewhere between a broad reach and downwind. The seas have a nice gentle roll and we are sailing along very comfortably. I guess this is our reward for delaying our departure one day allowing us to not start a passage on a Friday-bad luck for sailors. I can see five boats ahead of us, one to our starboard, and one just behind us,
so we have company for our trip north. We doubt that these winds will stay with us through the night, but it has been a lovely beginning to this passage.

We left Boston three years ago today and have traveled 22,230 miles. And we are not yet halfway around the world. So we have miles to go, but right now we’ll just focus on the miles to go to Singapore. By this time next week we will be in the One15 Marina enjoying Singapore city life.

Our stops between here and Singapore are all on what we think are uninhabited islands. Therefore, we think we have seen the last of wonderful Indonesian life. We skipped the cruiser barbeque on the beach last night because of the on and off drizzles and had dinner on Windbird. Then around 7 pm we went to shore to join in little tribute to Dewi and Raymond Lesmana. They are the Sail Indonesia coordinators and Aki of Japan had bought them a handheld VHF radio so they can communicate with cruisers
by radio in future years. The celebration was at our favorite little restaurant on the beach and we said our farewells to good friends. Some we might see in Singapore but we are going to be heading up the Malaysian coast almost three weeks ahead of everyone else, so the next time we might see friends is in Phuket in December. Tory and Piet Hein of Double Dutch (South Africa) are the only cruisers we know of that are going to be on the same time schedule, so we do hope to see them along the way
in Malaysia. So we are slowly breaking our ties to Sail Indonesia and heading into the next phase of the voyage of Windbird.