A hazy Darwin skyline
Welcome to Darwin – always wanted to revisit the 1970s ! It didn’t take long to be welcomed by other yachts already anchored in Fannie Bay and to ease into the pre-Indonesia festivities being organized at the sailing club. Exploring Darwin was also on the agenda as we had to register with Customs and the Indonesian Consulate, exchange currency, refuel and take on water. Darwin is quite ….. oh dear. A smile or two would not go astray. But we have our cruising fraternity and have not yet met anyone who has not got a smile and a story to share so our faces have constant smiles.
The month is spent stocking up, meeting as many of the Rally participants as we can and enjoying ourselves as is always paramount in an anchorage.
During July the crew took a trip down south to visit the newest granddaughter and left the Skipper in charge of getting things ready for our departure. Hmmm, all would have been well I am informed, IF the computer’s motherboard had not died. Poor skipper has spent two weeks trying to re-format our computers and make sure that ALL our information is intact. Thus, the jobs we had scheduled for Darwin did not eventuate but we are confident that nothing is desperately urgent and can’t wait until we get to Indonesia or Malaysia.
We have had the official Technical Briefing and the BBQ, met our Indonesian representatives/hosts and now armed with information about every possible scenario we look forward to our departure on Sunday morning, 25th July. The Indonesian government have also kindly deployed two of their Navy boats to accompany us.
Sail Indonesia BBQ
However, before we depart, as always we keep an eye on the weather and oh dear - a 4-6 metre swell with waves on top is forecast for the Arafura and Banda seas. So, after some deliberation we decide that we would change our first port of call avoiding the nasty sea conditions and head for Kupang on West Timor. Several yachts bound for Banda have the same idea and so Kupang will have a few more checking in than they were expecting. But the more the merrier – we hope.
So FAREWELL from Bluestone for a little while. We will do our best to keep you updated and be in touch as often as we can.
The official start
