Yacht Delivery Blog

Well, this is going to be a brief update, but I don't even know where to start. We arrived in Tual on Christmas afternoon, and I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but it was nice to be anchored. We were told we would be cleared in the next day. We spent all day waiting for the Quarantine guy to come "in a few hours," "shortly," "he will be there in a while," "he just has to finish something," "after he's had his lunch." He finally arrived on the 27th at 11 am, and I wasn't very happy. I am at a complete loss as to how to explain the level of complete frustration and almost overwhelming perplexity of what happened when he got to the boat. He sat in the cockpit watching videos on Facebook. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I looked over his shoulder. Has our addiction to cell phones become so great we are completely oblivious of our surroundings and think it's acceptable to behave like this? It'...

Well, we're on the move again after a brief but necessary stop to fix the generator. We weren't supposed to stop anywhere before reaching the clearance port and checking in with the authorities, but we got special permission to drop anchor as long as we stayed on the boat. Not that we were tempted to go ashore – we were too busy with repairs, and honestly, one island starts to look much like another after a while! The repair job was a bit of a "make-do" situation with the limited supplies we have onboard. I think I did a decent job considering what I had to work with, but fingers crossed it holds up! We ran some tests last night, and things were looking okay after a bit of fine-tuning once the generator cooled down. Our current plan is to clear into Tual. A quick Google Maps search shows several hardware stores and what look like some engineering workshops. Depending on how our recent patch job is holding up, I have a few ideas for improving it. It's a tricky ...

I'm not sure what else I can say about headwinds and counter-currents – it's all starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day! But we are slowly chipping away at the distance, and there's definitely light at the end of the tunnel. Speaking of challenges, my friend Gary (who, as you know, is cruising in the opposite direction) reminded me of another exciting nautical feature of Indonesia that we haven't encountered yet on this trip: massive tugboats towing barges. This might not sound particularly thrilling until I mention the exciting part – they often have no lights or AIS! Sometimes, three tugs and barges will share a single AIS transponder, leaving two of them traveling in convoy with the "lucky" one that has AIS. To add to the fun, there is (or perhaps "was" is the operative word) a 100-meter vessel about 5 nautical miles ahead of us that was simply labeled "other" on the AIS. Well, it was labeled "other" until they apparent...