Category Archives: Cruising Life

Describes an experience regarding the boating lifestyle of our travel.

Bali to Singapore Days 3-4

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Continued from yesterday”¦ We neared a couple low, flat islands at 1700 (5:00 pm) on Wednesday. We changed course to get closer to them so we could be in more protected waters. Unfortunately, they were not a suitable place to stop, but at least in the lee of the island it was a little bit calmer. Christi’s nausea instantly went away and she ate a big meal. Eric felt less nauseous and managed to eat some crackers and drink some Pedialyte. We looked on the charts and found a suitable place to anchor off an island called Bawean that was 24 hours away. After an hour of idling, we pressed on, heading for the anchorage. Moving on was hard for Eric. He struggled with going out knowing the sickness would return. But he managed to do it.

Literally, the minute we were out in the big waves, Eric’s sea sickness returned. As the night wore on the wind and seas again got bigger. By Thursday morning the wind was at 34 with gusts up to 40 and the waves were 12 14 feet right on our nose (head seas). Surprisingly, Christi physically felt OK, but Continue reading →

Bali to Singapore Day 1-2

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Our visa expired on Tuesday, so we absolutely had to leave. Monday was one of our typical get ready to go days. Eric changed the transmission oil and oil filter, which he describes as a “messy job”. Lots of oil spills, but easy to contain with oil aborbant pads. We went to the nicest grocery store in town, The Carrefour, to stock up on food. The Carrefour in Tahiti was one of the nicest grocery stores we have ever been to nicer even than Gelson’s. Like the Carrefour in Tahiti, it is inside a new, modern mall. The mall here is much bigger and nicer than the Tahiti one, which set up high expectations for the grocery store. We are disappointed to report this one wasn’t nearly as good. This one has a nice bakery, like the one in Tahiti. But there was no beautiful selection of cheeses and dairy products. The selection of western foods is somewhat limited. The eggs are lying on a table, and you take as many as you want and put them in a plastic bag, like produce, and they ring you up per egg. And, believe it or not, there was even less selection of frozen heat and serve foods here than in Tahiti. Good thing we had stocked up in Australia. It was raining really hard, causing traffic to virtually stop going both directions, so the trip to the grocery store took much longer than planned due to long transit times.

Tuesday morning we were planning to leave at 1100, trying to time it so we were on an outgoing current. Everyone had warned us it would be a very rough ride all the way to Singapore since Continue reading →

Goodbye Ende – Off to Rinca

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Last night we found four little black flying bugs in our room. They looked like they were small enough to get through the screen. Argh. This explains why we have been getting bitten when we have been so careful to use the bug spray when we go out. We have some noseeum netting aboard, which is finer meshed screen, so Eric put that on all the windows we like to leave open.

This morning was an even more upsetting Continue reading →

Rock Stars in Ende

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This morning we managed to sleep through the 0430 prayers, but we were awakened at 0600 by another loudspeaker. There was an announcer of some sort talking away, with a few songs played in between his monologues. There were also short snippets of music played now and again while he talked. It sounded like there was some sort of contest going on in a carnival type setting. We begrudgingly dragged ourselves out of bed and looked out the windows. There seemed to be something huge happening along the waterfront park area. There were tons of people out and a lot of activity in an area where there was not much happening when we had been there a couple days before.

We merrily went to shore, excited about our luck to have been in Ende for this big special occasion. We were shocked to see the crew was hard at work on repairing the dock. It is Sunday. On shore, the streets had been transformed. Every single shop was open. Yesterday many had been closed. The sidewalks were completely taken over by an endless row of vendors sitting on the ground with their wares spread out around them. They were even lining the alley ways. They were selling all kinds of non-perishable goods. The street was absolutely jam packed with people and scooters.

We made our way down the street to the waterfront park where we had seen all the activity from Kosmos. As we turned the corner, Continue reading →