Last night when we got back to the boat, it was rocking so much we felt like we were on passage in the South Pacific. This morning when we got up we were still undecided as to whether we should leave Kupang today or tomorrow. On the stay side was: after 8 days at sea, it would have been nice to stay anchored longer. There were more sights we could go see in Kupang to entertain ourselves. Eric’s eye was looking better after using some drops we had on board that soothe irritation, but it wasn’t completely healed and could need a different medicine. On the con side: it was rocky on board, the beach landings were not fun, and we were more interested in seeing sights in other places.

We headed to shore at noon where we met Ony, Anish and Napa for lunch. We took them to one of the nicest restaurants in town. We ordered a bunch of large plates of food and shared them family style. Most of the dishes were familiar from Asian food at home sweet & sour prawns and fish, vegetable soup, Mongolian beef. The soup had an odd twist in that it had a bunch of bird eggs in it. They tasted and looked just like tiny chicken eggs. We also had a vegetable dish with green beans, cassava and papaya flowers that is a new one for us. It tasted like flowers. Lunch cost $25 USD for 5 people. We just can’t believe how inexpensive food is here.

Anish dropped us off back at the beach after lunch. We looked out on the water and saw the waves had really picked up and Kosmos was bucking like a rodeo bronco. That made up our mind for us. We wanted to go somewhere calmer. Getting the dinghy launched was an enormous challenge. The waves were rapidly pounding on the shore and kept pushing us back onto the sand each time we pushed off. Stuck on the sand, the big waves kept breaking into the dinghy and Kosmopolitan rapidly filled up. With the help of a couple more people, we were finally able to launch the dinghy, but once again got tangled into one of the other dinghy lines. One of the guys waded out to help us get untangled. By the time we were finally free and on our way, Eric, Christi and our two kind helpers were soaked and battered.

Getting off the dinghy and onto Kosmos proved to be equally challenging. Kosmos and Kosmopolitan were both swaying wildly and not in sync with one another, making lining the boats up and balancing between them to get out a feat. Once off the dinghy, we brought her up on top, which turned out to be the hardest task yet. Kosmos was rocking wildly, and between the rocking and the wind, Kosmopolitan was all over the place. We needed to keep a firm grip on her to get her up over the rail and set down in place, which wasn’t easy because with Kosmos moving so much we were having a hard time keeping our balance. While we were bringing the dinghy up, we noticed the dark clouds on the horizon were moving closer, with bolts of lightening shooting out of them. Oh boy.

While we were bringing the paravane in the rain started. It rained furiously for a few minutes, and fortunately passed quickly. Once the storm had cleared us, we picked up anchor and were underway. We are pleased to report that it is smoother underway than sitting still. It is still a little rocky, but not too bad, and definitely better than the anchorage.

Also something we keep forgetting to mention the outlets we thought might be broken are working again. It was a GFI, just not the GFI that was closest and most obvious. Duh for us.