5th & 6th October 2013
Saturday 5th October 2013
No sooner than we had cleared the Medang anchorage, by 18:30, than we were able to turn the engine off and sail under full main and genoa. The wind was kind to us, with a steady force 5, but the seas were again uncomfortable and very confused. There was a long gentle swell crossing with the wind driven waves creating the corkscrew movement to the boat, but a far quicker action than we had previously experienced. It wasn't that it was a large movement, but just very quick and unpleasant action.
We passed a fishing boat moored to a fishing raft in the middle of deep water of over 200m and wondered how they had secured this to the bottom as it appeared to be holding so well in the running seas, giving the confusing impression of making way from its small bow-wave.
Sunday 6th October 2013
Dawn found us rounding the north of Lombok and making our approach to Gili Air. The electronic charts appeared to be around half a mile out, when compared to the radar. We made our cautious approach between the guarding shallows before picking up the 20 meter contour and following it between Lombok and Gili Air. Most of the boats had anchored to the south of the island, which as we came down the pass, looked decidedly choppy with a deal of white water around the boats already there. Marcus, the skipper on Pandemonium, came out on their rib to inform us that we would be much better off anchoring in the deeper water, next to them on the eastern side on the edge of the channel, than spending a sleepless night in the rough water to the south.
We agreed with his sound reasoning and took up a place on Pandemonium's starboard side at 11:30, with Wolfhound settling shortly afterwards on our starboard. Late afternoon found Pearl of Persia's arrival and similar decision once they had reached the south-eastern corner and turned around to join our more stable anchorage.
Trish from Babe and Ian from Yantia had kindly done the research, having been there for a while, and booked us a table at Scallywags restaurant for 7pm that evening, citing it as the best food on the island. We had arranged to meet for pre-dinner drinks around 6-6:30 and Wolfhound had volunteered to launch their dinghy and take us ashore at 5pm to give us a while to explore before dinner.
We had to anchor 'the ice-breaker' rib as, being solid aluminium, it was too heavy to drag up the beach. The landing place was full of bars, restaurants, shops, massage places, dive centres etc. The main street was a mixture of earth and sand with donkey and trap or bicycles being the only form of transport on the island. We had a drink at one bar overlooking the anchorage where Perusha and Yantina were on the south of the island; it looked surrounded with shallow reefs and we were relieved to have chosen our anchorage over theirs.
We made our way to Scallywags for dinner which again was on the beach. The food was good but more international cuisine rather than local Indonesian, and we had another fun evening. We were tired and decided to return to the boats after the meal rather than party all night, as some were obviously intending.
When we arrived back at where we had left the dinghy, the tide had come in and it was anchored 30 meters from the shore. Jerry stripped off and swam across to bring it to the shoreline for us to board but to Tony's growing consternation and annoyance, he was unable to start it! Tony was soon stripped off to his very brief briefs and swimming across to get things sorted! Susan and I were then ferried across to Spent in the ice-breaker whose standing crew appeared to be sporting the last word in crew uniforms - buggie smugglers!