The Sublime to the absolute ridiculous

By the time the currents had turned to a favourable direction to leave Pink Beach it was half way through the day, so instead of making it to an island approximately 40nm away, we only managed 20nm to get to Gili Lawa, an island on the northeast corner of Komodo Island where we anchored for the night.

This meant that our next day's travel, which was to be an overnight trip, was 20 miles longer than we'd originally planned but we still hoped to get to Lombok Island the following early afternoon. As we set off at the break of dawn, all signs indicated that we could do just that; the winds were good, we had a favourable current and were moving along at 6 to 7 knots – perfect. Then the wheels fell off. Just as though someone had got up and turned the fan off, the wind died within seconds and we were left wallowing away getting nowhere.

Darn, fire up the iron genny and hope to find some wind once we passed the corner of Komodo Island. Sometime during the afternoon, it came in full force; 30 knots, wonderful. Up went the sails and all was well again but.... that same person switched off the fan again an hour or so later. It didn't happen over a period of a few minutes, it happened instantaneously. One second it was howling, the next absolutely nothing! And, it went on like this throughout the night and the following day. Our big hopes of getting to Medana Bay on Lombok that day flew out with the non-existent wind.

By late afternoon, we were within 11nm off another anchorage so decided to head for that rather than spend another (unplanned) night out at sea but just as we tried to start the engine to head shore wards, it clicked and nothing happened. Paul tried numerous things but still nothing and now we've only an hour and half left before the sun sets. After a few more attempts, he discovered a rusted up fuse on the starter motor, cleaned it up and voilà, we're back in business but time was definitely not on our side.

Fortunately, there were two other yachts at anchor so we were able to contact them to ensure that there were no hidden reefs in our path and dropped anchor about an hour after sunset underneath several magnificent volcanoes.

The Navionics charts we use are so out of sync for this part of Indonesia that we certainly couldn't rely on them in this instance. When we were going down to south Rindja, they showed that we were travelling overland, through islands, crossing mountains and anchoring up hills so, no, not to be trusted right here.

Up and away at dawn the following morning only to experience exactly the same conditions, howling one moment and absolutely nothing the next. For a while it looked as though we weren't even going to make it to Medana by the end of that day either but we cut in closer to shore and made it by mid afternoon only to find that the planned dinner had already taken place two days earlier than advertised. Oh well, they had a great band on the beach so we met up with some friends and spent a wonderful evening socialising and dancing.