Arrived at Nusa Lembongan yesterday afternoon and we are now enjoying some cocktails and lunch at the Batu Karang Resort 🍹

We've parked next to Waterworld😱

Overlapping headsail and the main back in action 👍

We have just had a wonderful meal at Spice Restaurant in Senggigi - a wonderful night with fantastic food, wine and service and beautiful company

Boom Vang fixed!

Mark and Reg arrived at Gili Air yesterday and this morning the boys did a wonderful job putting the vang back together. After the maintenance was finished Craig, Mark and Reg took the dinghy to Gili Meno for a snorkel and then we set off back to Sengiggi for the night. We will get going earlyish tomorrow morning heading to Lembongan.

Sengiggi was a lovely spot until the rain came, then it became a sea of tree branches, rubbish and dirty brown water. We did manage to enjoy our night there though, having happy hour on Scarlet Ribbon and then dinner at a resort on the beach. The next day (Friday) we motored over to Gili Air and are now sitting on a mooring in the bay. We hired a glass bottom boat to take us and the Scarlet Ribbon crew around the three islands for a snorkelling trip and lunch on Gili Meno. On Sunday Peter caught the ferry back to Bali and Scarlet Ribbon left for the next part of their adventure, so we are now on our own (Craig, Janette and Nikki). Today we are expecting Mark and Reg to arrive along with the vang - they have nicknamed themselves the "boom vang gang" 😂 We are looking forward to spending time with them and hopefully the vang will go back on easily for us.

Tropical Paradise 😂

Cruising Indonesia

Presentation night last Saturday was a great event with Indonesian dancing and good company, Napea won the line honours trophy 🏆 and we were third on handicap 👏🏻👏🏻

After a few very nice days staying at the Maya Resort in Sanur, we headed back to the boat in Benoa on Sunday to start our cruise over to Lembongan and Lombok. Unfortunately it proved a little bit problematic for us to get clearance to leave and so we didn't get going until Tuesday morning 😱 Two days at the Bali Marina was two days too many! We spent Tuesday motor cruising (no vang 😟) over to Lembongan for a quick swim and then over to the south west corner of Lombok to Bangko Bangko. Wednesday took us to Gili Gede which was a short trip up the coast of Lombok.
Today we are heading further north to Sengiggi.
We have been having a lovely time catching up with the crew of Scarlet Ribbon, Kondili and Endorfin.

Faulty Vang

Vang ready to be sent to Sydney for repair 😱

Spent most of yesterday working on the boat - spinnaker halyard end for ended and restrung up the mast; vang removed and packaged up into a PVC pipe Craig found at the marina ready to be couriered to Sydney for repair. We hope to get this back before sailing back to Australia in early June 😱

We've Arrived!

Before I begin with our adventures at sea I must apologise for not blogging during the trip - I didn't realise there would be no internet once we left Fremantle - we took a more seaward route than expected.

We arrived safely in Benoa Harbour around 11:30 yesterday morning (according to the Yellow Brick Tracker- 9 days 1 hour 20 minutes and 22 seconds after starting). We were blessed with awesome conditions with nothing much above 20 knots and a 3/4 reach nearly the entire way 👏🏻👏🏻⛵️, something that Napea loves to do. Our crew were fantastic and everyone got along really well. Even the lack of sleep was bearable with two hours on watch then four hours off during the night (two crew on for each watch). We did have a few boat "issues " along the way but managed to mostly sort them out or do with out. The worst of these was that our hydraulic vang (that's the bit that allows us to adjust the height of the boom and safely manage the boom, which is really important when furling the main sail) lost a hydraulic seal around day 3 and so it would not keep pressure and the boom would sky - definitely not ideal. Luckily for us we had Andrew "MacGyver" Knowles with us and he managed to splice a rope support which gave us a safety backup but unfortunately we still did not have full control of the main sail. We also broke the spinnaker halyard on the last full day of sailing, this was a bit of a problem given that the overlapping (Code 0)  headsail was attached and flying at the time, and we couldn't use this sail for the last 15 hours - it had been our "secret weapon" for boat speed - we then had to use our other weapon - the 160hp Yanmar Engine 😀

We are now staying at a lovely resort in Sanur beach, The Maya, we will enjoy some relax time but will also have to spend a bit of time doing maintenance work on the boat ⛵️

We've Started!

What a beautiful day to start a yacht race (well rally) 😀
We started the rally well, then enjoyed a bottle of champagne together on the bow of the boat while rounding the last mark until Bali!
The day took a bit of a backward step (literally) when we hoisted the new top down spinnaker only to discover that it wasn't going to unfurl properly - oh well, after moving back in the fleet we gave up on that and went back to the main and overlapping headsail - much better and now sailing quite nicely at around 6 knots.