Just Cruisin'

Sandale has now left Flores and nears Adoenaca and the Savu Sea. It's all about watches, lunches, watches, sleeps, watches .. and more. On Friday Sandale will reach Kupang where Andrew will exchange his sea legs for his flying arms - returning to Perth. Janet, Marty and Geoff remain on board for the big crossing to Australia - any enthusiastic crew for the crossing should arrange their flights to Kupang now!

Awards night

 Some photos from Awards Night on Sanur Beach. Above the CEO Garuda Indonesia welcomes home to Bali his 2 stowaways. Below Mr Navigator Extroidinaire Marty with the Cups.

Island life - Medang

One island after another - Lombok, Gilli Air and Medang. And now just leaving Komodo. Beautiful bays, the best coral reefs ever, friendly locals - and even Komodo Dragons chasing deer. No photos of that yet; these all of Medang's bay, gorgeous locals and our sing-a-long barbeque.

Sandale's Olympic Crew

Best navigators! - now time to relax

Friday 13th May

well we are sitting in a beach side cafe on a tiny island on the north west corner of Lombok called Gilli Air. Beach side is stretching the truth as I can almost extend my foot out and touch the water. There's free internet so it really is heaven on earth. If we didn't have to get the 'extras' back to Sambawa (~200M) by Tuesday we'd stay here for a while. Yesterday Andrew rode a turtle while we were snorkeling. Its amazing - like swimming in a posh fish tank at Cicerellos. 

We are two days out of Bali now after an amazing presentation night. The Indo's put an a huge 'do' right on the beach in front of the hotel with linen and crystal, vast buffet and a surprisingly good local band. Most of the Indo pop bands sound like Ikea meets Abba to do 'greatest elevator hits' but this band really was good. 

The highlight was Marty won the Navigator's Trophy as the best navigator for both the rally and race fleets which is a huge accomplishment. Although he came last in the speech-making stakes saying only he was as lost making speeches as he felt when navigating. Sandale was awarded 3rd for the Rally fleet result but i can't make sense of the scoring system and suspect it to be highly arbitrary and that no one was to win twice. But the navigators trophy was the best.

They didn't show the movies unfortunately as Sandy's was brilliant. (keep and eye out for this - will be uploaded as soon as possible!)

There was a contest for the best boat song and I wrote a song which I thought was pretty good but the band didn't know the tune to "Drinking Rum and Coca Cola - working for the Yankee dollar" by the Andrew's sisters and after the first two boats did their renditions with full band support to Hotel California and then Hallelujah, our boat decided that me singing lead to a song none of them knew might scar Aus Indo relations permanently, so we didn't do it.

So now the plan is to take a more leisurely trip back through East Indo rather than rush and try to squeeze Kimberley on as well. Everyone well and enjoying themselves.

Bali

After a thorough clean and having refuelled and rewatered, and the same to the boat, we have headed to Ubud for some relaxation. You might think we would be sick of the sight of each other, indeed, Geoff and Janet did head in the other direction on a motorbike. But who should we meet at a cafe overlooking Kintimani.
We also decided we needed some exercise after two weeks on the boat. Today we rode bikes 40 km. It was warm hot and sweaty, and would have been even harder if it hadn't been entirely downhill. The only exercise we got was in our fingers as we use the brakes. Dogs and chickens and children and motorbikes and cars and trucks and narrow lanes and all downhill meant we used a lot of brakes. I highly reccommend it. (Check the bike has good brakes, though).
Tommorrow it is back to the marina to resupply for our voyage East. We depart on Wednesday, Gilli, Lombok, Komodo, Flores, Timor, day sailing and visiting remote beaches and villiages, snorkelling, fishing and whatever takes our fancy.
We are not sure how much access we will have for updates to the blog, but you can follow our onward voyage via the spot (just to the right there). I will leave the sailing club link up but the tracker we all carried for the race has been taken off the boat (yes, they want them back).
Here are some pictures. Keep an eye out for the video that is too big to upload untilwe can get better bandwidth.

on the surreal sea

As we sail from the continent out into the vastness of ocean and we move to the second week our little cocoon shrinks around us. Be careful of the mind, they say, in such open-skied confinement. We jump overboard. There is something surreal about swimming two hundred kilometres from land and five kilometres above the sea bed, being towed by a rope behind a yacht that is the only boat in the entire world. We have not seen anyone since leaving Northwest Cape. We are doing this to gain rally points, we stop the boat to swim, to take underwater photographs.

But even more surreal is later on a moonless dark night with the phosphorescent stars above and below and the boat is not a boat but a spaceship flying far from home. A hundred dolphins herd flying fish against the hull and pick them off in a frenzy, fish and dolphins weaving and leaping in the light breeze, as we sail at timeless speed towards a distant galaxy. The fish are so panicked that they leap in desperation into the cockpit, hit the dreaming helmsman in the face, or through the open galley porthole to land dangerously close to the frypan.

And then we are running time-on-distance to some imaginary line, 10degrees south, bear away, come up, slow the boat, counting down, five, four, three, two, one, crossing now, exactly eleven am on the fourth, a line on the ocean fed to us and race control by a little yellow electronic brick and a few satellites. Are we sane?

Slow Down Some - sailors' scheme when nearly there!

Less than 100nm to go!
Although land is not yet in sight, we have seen plenty of evidence it is close, with a constant stream of plastic bottles and bags, bits of pvc foam, logs, reeds and other assorted rubbish floating past us over that last 12 hours.
Yesterday we also saw a group of 3 Indonesian fishing boats plying their trade, nearly 200nm offshore, and all of them with a lot less freeboard than Sandale. Lucky the sea conditions are quite benign up here....most of the time!
But still no other yachts have come in sight...where are they all?!! We expect that at least 3 race yachts have passed us in the last 24 hours, but none of them have dared come within sight of us. Do they know something we don't, and are making their approach to Bali in a different direction?!
Now, apparently we aren't really in a 'race'...that's why we are entered in the 'Rally' category of this event, so it doesn't actually matter that these other faster yachts (who gave us a 3 day start anyway) are going past us. Fortunately this doesn't mean we can't win, which we have been working hard at since well before we left Fremantle 11 days ago!!
To win the Rally category of the event we had to submit before the event started predicted times for when we would pass 6 specified lines of latitude on our way to Bali. We lose points for each minute early or late that we cross these latitudes.
There are also points deducted for use of engine and bonus points for novelty items such as a use of sextant, biggest fish caught, strongest wind experienced and best voyage video produced etc - watch out for Sandale's mini feature film 'The Stowaways', sure to be a hit and available soon at a blogsite near you!
Due to Marty's amazing navigational and weather forecasting skills, and impressive all round boat handling by the crew, we have crossed the selected lines of latitude within minutes of our nominated times whilst keeping engine hours below our free allocation.
That's why you may have seen our boat speed drop off over the past day (for those of you following us on the race tracker!), since we were actually ahead of schedule coming up to 10 degrees latitude, and have slowed down to ensure we pass on time. We have also given ourselves much more time than necessary to cross the finish line, which we now expect to reach tomorrow (Thursday) morning sometime - our 'official' finish time projection is actually 7.00am Friday.
As part of our clever 'Rally' winning strategy we plan to enter Bali and complete immigration etc tomorrow without crossing the finish line, and then motor out of the marina on Friday morning to cross the finish line exactly at our specified time!! Ahaaaa!!

So thank you to all those followers of Sandale who have been cheering us along, and celebrating that our little boat has stayed near the front of the fleet for most of the event, and please don't worry when you see us let a few boats get past us as we race past the finish line, and back again!!

So long Cliffs and Capes and Land masses