Mesanak Island

Hi everyone,
We are now anchored in the bay on the SE side of Mesanak Island with Kakadu and Swiss yacht Sostene. We are at 00 24.316N 104 32.737E in 9m over sand. Yes, we are in the northern hemisphere!

Zen Again Track

Mesanak Island is about 25nm NW of Kentar Island, so we have progressed further towards the Singapore area than anticipated. Kakadu arrived off Kentar before dawn and decided to press on to here. We arrived about 4 hours behind them after a 56 hour passage. We motored for 43 hours which was very tedious, but had several good sails between the motoring sessions.

Last night we motored a lot. At one point we came upon a group of 50+ fishing boats all closely packed together. Needless to say we gave them a wide berth. In the early morning a W wind came in and we had a great sail for several hours. We were close reaching at a steady 7 knots boatspeed. Of course that wind died and the motor went back on.

Calm seas, with scattered thunderstorms

At 0917 this morning we crossed the line, offering King Neptune a tot of rum in hopes of his being kind to us. At midday a rainstorm clobbered us with heavy rain, some small hail and 25-30 knot winds. The boat needed a wash, and so did we! Thanks King Neptune.

On the equator - exactly! 

All in all it was quite an eventful passage, what with disintegrating V-belts, filtering and transferring fuel at sea, crossing "the line" and catching our first rainstorm at sea since the Darwin-Dili rally.

At Mesanak Island

Tomorrow we expect to head towards Nongsa Point Marina. There we can have a shower, hopefully do the laundry, and arrange to "clear out" of Indonesia. Once cleared we will probably head over to Danga Bay Marina in Johor Buru, Malaysia, which is immediately north of Singapore. The Sail Malaysia rally starts from Danga Bay early next month and in the mean time we will explore Singapore by land.