Waymaking south

Many miles of only light to no winds with occasional squalls & strong tidal currents, monotonous motoring broken up with night stopovers, surprise 🏝 waterfalls, happy kiddies, provisioning, 🤿, 🎣 & 🚢 dodging.
As we ⛵️ down Morotai 🏝, Ted spotted a waterfall gushing straight into the ocean, so we pulled in to check it out (⚓️ down-motors running-paddle in) excited for a fresh 💧 rinse... little did we know a big squall 20min later would soon soak us & collect 200ltr water 🤣.
We stop in at Supu village, hoping for 🌊, sadly for Teddles the wind/swell didn't align, so after 2 rocky nights we moved on to Salangadeke Island, a lovely FLAT anchorage with little village 1/2 on stilts & happy-go-lucky kiddies, who took us on a tour... we felt a bit like the pidepippers as more & more kids join. Later that day, we dropped off a pile of OZ school stuff to the teachers, which led us to having surprise night visits from Village reps offering to do our washing/anything... they even sent someone out to check that we are OK in a big storm 🙌.
We left as it also had 🕌 with massive 🔊 that blared till 2am, restarting at 5 am 😬 (Ramadam). Next stop, thankfully, was quiet, so we caught up on 😴 & enjoyed more waterfalls before heading off toward the city of Tenate to do our provisioning, located on 🏝 🌋. Only 2 nights here as its super exposed to wind & tricky anchorage...we nearly melted the winch after 5 goes to hook up, initially hooking a huge pot & then repeated dragging across rock 😞 ..to top it off ⚓️ in front of 🕌🕌🕌🕌🕌🕌 about 500m apart with their 🔊 playing different prayer 🎶 all hrs ...our 👂 & 🧠 🫠 so we exit asap. Our next stopovers, we made sure to find quiet 🤫 spots, some with 🤿, all with roof 🍻 watching beautiful sunsets.
Passage making = long days, with occasional need to naviate around big 🚢 & barge tugs when paths cross, catching 🎣 lots of plastic bags & 1 unlucky mackerel for tea. We are sitting at the bottom of North Malaku, a little (a lot) travel weary, but ready & excited to head west to Sulawesi... 🤞🤞🤞we get some 🌬 assistance.Leggi altro