Sailing around the World ( presently leaving Bali , bound for the Coco's Islands, )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 14 Sep 2010 04:35
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MONDAY 13th
SEPTEMBER 2010
All on board got going early, as we are leaving
Bali today,
A light breakfast followed by a Hindu blessing of
the boats before the trip west to the Coco's Keeling Islands.
Neil had to visit the yacht Club and have his
passport stamped by Customs.
We also had to get rid of the Bali currency, as
this will not work anywhere else. so Australian or U.S $ will both work in the
Coco's .
09.30 Thomas Wibberenz called to look over our
Parasail, ( KITE ) Thomas was the person who sold us that wonderfull sail
in " Las Palmas"
back last November 2009. A little sewing, and
repair work and all is well with the sail again.
As we said before, as soon as we repair or renew
something, something else goes wrong,, now we have a little leak in our Aqua
fresh
filter, nothing serious, just annoying,
however, we will look at it later and see what we can do ...
10.30 We took down our bunting, and generally
got the boat ready to go to sea. This is always an exciting time.
11.00hrs We slipped our shore lines and
motored out with the rest of the fleet to the start area,
A couple of things were very obvious,
* the amount of parasailors on the water was
amazing, being towed along behind big fast Motor boats, we were amused that
there were no collisions, with the amount of
activity on the water, boats everywhere and the sky full of
parachutes.
* The water pollution,, the amount of dirt and
rubbish floating around was frightning, many of our fleet had their water inlets
blocked with semi submerged plastic bags and old
clothes, plus tons of other shite. disgusting,
It is obvious that these lovely people use the sea
as one big garbage dump.
How anyone uses it for swimming or other water
activities is beyond us. and they still have huge tourism. mainly because
its cheep and cheerfull.
12.00hrs The fleet all sailed North / South
over the starting line and we were off once more.
The wind was ESE at 10 knots, so it was fine on our
port bow, and the weather was good, with plenty of sunshine.
Lady Lisa took off like a shot out of a gun. and
showed the fleet a clean pair of heels. We just about held our
own.
It took us about 3 hours to clear the Island of
Bali, before we adjusted our course to a WSW direction,
We made a decision to go well south of the rum
line, to avoid being close to Java and also Bruce said thats where the wind will
be.
so lets see. only time will tell now,
14.00hrs We had a salady lunch, and then we dug out
the blue spinniker from the Stb cabin, set it all up, and eventually hauled it
aloft.
It set nicely and off we went merrily bobbing
along.
Later, as dusk set in, the wind increased to
20 / 25 knots and the sea got quite rough, so we dropped the
spinniker again and set the geneo
and so we white sailed for the rest of the night.
going more and more south of the rum line.
As darkness set in properly, Killopie 111 sent the
fleet a call , concerned that they were being tailed, so the fleet , or rather
the closest boats to them
closer ranks and joined Kallopie , this ended the
incident and every one was happy again.
We skipped dinner, it was so rough , that no one
was hungry, ( with the exception of Neil ) so he grabbed himself a
sandwich.
Night watches
:- 10.00 hrs /
00.00hrs...................... Aileen
00.00hrs
/ 02.00hrs........................Stephen
02.00hrs / 04.00hrs........................Neil
04.00hrs / 06.00hrs.........................Terry
06.00hrs / 08.00hrs ......................Aileen (
birthday girl )
00.00hrs We had travelled 91
miles, an average of 7.58 knots.
Did you know, King George of England could
not speak much english, so anyone who wanted a favour from George had to
go
through one of his two Mistresses, One
of these was very heavy, and the other was very slim.
It became known as having to go through "
Thick and Thin " to get at George.
The _expression_ still holds
today...................................................................Just
thought we would share that bit of information.
Thats all for now,
Signed :-
Stephen Hyde (Skipper
)
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