On to Sumbawa

Delayed by 24 hours due to rough weather, today we sailed from the Gilis to Pulau Kramat, Sumbawa, skirting north of Lombok.
I woke at 3 am to hear Dale prepping the boat for departure, so staggered out of the cabin to help. He took one look at me and sent me back to bed!
To be fair, I am definitely not a morning person, and would just have been more of a liability, than a help.
When I woke again at 6:45 we were under sail, and the conditions were rough!
In addition to being swells coming off the Java Sea, the wind had picked up, and the rain was really hammering down 😬.
I tried to capture the conditions on video, but you just can’t! At various times the winds got up to 35 knots, and swells ranged between 2 and 3 metres!
The boat coped with it all very well, but let me tell you - it is loud, dramatic, and when you are staring down the face of a 3 mt swell, you do question 1. If the boat will just be swamped; 2. How good the engineers designed it; 3. Will we cope up the other side; and 4. WTF am I doing here?!
Usually I cook a hot breakfast, but figured cereal was a safer option this morning. After that I went back to the cabin to get out of the weather (no point in both of us suffering, right😜). Amazingly I fell asleep and woke up 2 1/2 hours later! Dale said he came down several times to check I was ok, but I was just out cold!
Because of the conditions, we (read Dale, for how would I have a clue?!) decided to bypass our intended mooring spot in North Lombok and continue on to Sumbawa.
We are now moored on the south side of Pulau Kramat, so are protected from the strong prevailing currents. When we arrived the weather had cleared and there were spots of blue sky. The wind has picked up a bit now, but it’s lovely being out of the current - the boat is steady so it makes cooking dinner (warm spicy chicken and avocado salad) easy and safe.
Although there is habitation on the main island of Sumbawa in the distance, Pulau Kramat appears to have a population of 1. We’ll confirm that in the morning, but when Dale was here in September, only an ‘old’ woman lived on the island.
Enroute, aside from being sure that the boat was going to break apart (not exaggerating too much) the highlights were:
Brown boobies - not mine - or human - the birds! Even in the height of the storm cell, they flew alongside us;
A flying fish that ‘flew’ for at least 20 metres before making a hard left hand turn in midair.
The prawn farms! On northern Lombok I could see odd structures on the coast. A check of satellite images and some searching revealed they are prawn farms. Apparently Indonesia has 308000 prawn farms!
Given how over fished this area is, aqua culture is really vital!
On that note, bedtime!Read more