12th to 15th August

It's been a great sail these last few days, with some reasonable winds most days from noon and mostly fine weather. A late storm on the first night had us throwing out the lightning conductor leads attached to our main stays. However, the storm passed without incident. After experiencing this weather it's apparent to me that at night in heavy rain, the chance of finding someone fallen overboard would be close to nil. Even our handheld spotlight barely penetrated the darkness past the end of the boat.


The next morning we sailed from Palau Bidau to Lumut where again we experienced some monsoon rains in the afternoon, but by the time we anchored it had eased considerably.

After a decent night sleep we sailed at daybreak to Lumut Yacht Club, past the naval base and a wrecked warship abandoned on the sand bar just outside the channel. Apparently last year ago this ship had been repaired at the shipyards at Lumut and on its first voyage out, the navigation system failed and she hit a sandbank, breaking up where she now lies.

After picking up 150L diesel (driven by a yacht club staff member to a Shell service station with 6 Jerry cans), we sailed on to Hutan Molintang, a small fishing village amongst the mangroves. This part of the world doesn't seem to get many visiting vessels and anchoring just off the village caused quite a stir amongst the passing trawlers packed with people waving and cheering. The night was refreshingly cool for a change and mostly quiet aside from constant distant explosions, presumably from some kind of mining operation.
 

Finally had a chance to test the spinnaker, it worked well.