Water, water everywhere

The last 12 hours have been a bit of an ordeal but finished with lots of water. The seas have calmed and rain set in, so the bucket with pump/filter is in position at the deck drain outlet and our tanks are now full and the girls are out washing/playing in the water.

Last night around midnight a big squall came over and blew 25-30 knots from the NW, which is opposite to all the other weather we've had on this trip. We laid hove-to to wait and see what was going to happen next, but after 30 minutes a 20 knot NW wind continued. Well this was pretty good news, so we set our sails to run downwind and had 4-5 hours of good boat speed with the boat sailing flat, as opposed to the last nine days of heeled over.

All good things come to an end and the wind died at dawn and the resultant sea was horrible! The NW had built up a metre sea and once the wind dropped away the Southerly swell gave a real washing machine action with peaks of water bouncing vertically a few metres. The boat just bounced and jarred and bobbed. Sail pumped and banged. Bugger this - on with the motor and try to get some stability. The sea started to settle after an hour and just when things were brightening the temperature alarm went
off. Luckily it settled down more while the engine covers came off and some breakfast was had. A smaller NW squall came through and allowed a steady sailing boat while I found the worn fan belt that caused the overheating and replaced it.

We are now on our way to a resort just off the tip of Irian Jaya, called Sorido. Ian and Robyn off Reeflections II told me how they worked for Wick at the town of Sorong and put us in contact. After initially planning to stop in Sorong, Wick suggested that we go to this resort and his crew would pick some supplies and meet us there as they were heading on a regular run there tomorrow (Sunday). Avoiding town and authorities is advisable for us as we don't have a cruising permit.

The heavy rain and grey skies mean we probably won't go in there today but tomorrow we hope to be at anchor. We are all intensely interested to see what there is at this dive resort, located so remotely.

The weather cleared enough for us to see shallows off the island so we snuck in and anchored, but not very soundly on a coral bottom. Hopefully we'll be OK but will need to maintain a watch on our position. Feels very nice to be still after 10 days on the move.