Manggar

Hi everyone,
We are anchored off the town of Manggar on the east coast of Belitung Island.  We arrived at 0650 this morning, anchoring in 5m at 02 50.740S 108 18.207E.  The 240nm passage took 49 hours and we motored for all except 1 hour.  For much of the passage we were motorsailing, which was better than simply motoring.  Overall though it was very tedious.  It was good to have Kakadu in company with us.  We stayed in touch by VHF and HF depending on how far apart we were.  Kakadu arrived an hour after us, having managed to sail more than us overnight.

Zen Again Track

Track in to anchorage off Manggar
Note1 - port/stbd marks not present
Note2 - uncharted shallow area just N of anchorage

Overnight we motored along at reduced revs to ensure arrival at dawn.  When dawn arrived we were approaching some outlying islands and made our way from there in to the anchorage.  We were assisted by some GPS waypoints emailed to us and radioed to us by other Sail Indonesia yachts.  The anchorage is off the bar of the river mouth around which the town is built.  Some yachts have crossed the bar into the river, which certainly offers a nice calm anchorage but the bar is too shallow for us.

Sailing!

On arrival we called the local coordinator and were invited ashore to clear in to the port and to arrange fuel and water supplies.  We were also told that a free lunch and dinner were being laid on for the Sail Indonesia yachts.  So despite the overall Sail Indonesia schedule being poorly thought out some of the towns are adapting to the reality of yachts arriving much earlier than officially dictated.

We went ashore and presented our papers, and also our empty jerry cans (4 for water, 5 for diesel).  The local people were very friendly and several have excellent English which certainly helps.  After the formalities and promises of filling the jerry cans we joined a dozen or more other cruisers for a free lunch.  We were all driven to a local restaurant and had a very good feed.

Kakadu at anchor off Manggar

We returned to the boat after lunch after explaining we couldn't stay ashore all day going from one feed to another to another - we needed some sleep!  We promised to return for the dinner with traditional dancing this evening.  The dinghy ride back to the boat was extremely wet and we found the tide had turned creating a nasty wind over tide situation.  The boats were bouncing around all over the place and getting aboard was a challenge.  Hopefully the situation will ease before dinner time!