Back to Boat, and Moving On

Setting nets in Sabang harbour

Local fishermen

Provisioning

Ruby and Miles delivering fish

BPO features on many large banners around Sabang

Back to Boat, and Moving On

April 10, 2016

Yesterday, after checking out, we traveled a short distance to the small island of Rubaih. This is the tourist/diving area that we visited previously. It is a park so we paid $5 for a mooring ball in the narrow channel between the island and Pulau Weh. It is deep with strong currents so well worth it. Gaia left this am but said that this was the best stop for them in Sumatra and they could stay a month. (This is their second visit.) With that recommendation we have decided to at least stay the day and go tomorrow. The water under the boat is 50 feet deep and we can see the bottom. The shore line is rocky so I'm sure the snorkeling would be good. The internet is not working from the boat so need to find a restaurant ashore to send this and download weather forecasts.

Several more sailboats have arrived here-most going west via Africa. Surprisingly, the more common choice of route is to the north of Madagascar. Jimmy has suggested that we should go south of it. We had a good visit with the family on Convivia with their 2 children, Ruby and Miles. They are outgoing and competent as many boat kids are. Gaia has set up a SSB net for any boats wanting to stay in touch. We will do that in addition to keeping in touch with No Regrets.

No Regrets started off on their exploring a week ago. Zeke has been good enough to email back about anchorages. Revel is doing the same. Helen gave us some notes from their last trip and we have read articles on Noonsite and SSCA. The charts are not very accurate or detailed. We finally got our letter from Chagos declining our request to stop there. To cover the distance to our check out spot in Padang in good time we need to average 25 km a day. We'll probably need to do some overnights.

Not everything is paradise here, although the scenery looks it. A young tourist died snorkeling alone over the underwater volcano. Another person was in a motorcycle accident. There is talk of raising the minimum wage above $300 a month. There is a half finished commercial dock in Sabang. The last 3 company heads are now in prison on corruption charges. Rob is working now on a blocked head and scraping barnacles off the bottom of the boat. His hands are getting well scraped as well. The heat is brutal. But we enjoyed seeing the photos posted on facebook of the snow at home!