[password] kudzuu1114
[position] 08 26.770S 119 26.16E
[weather] 4KTS, FLAT WATER
[speed] preparing to depart
[heading] 338T
[status]Yesterday we enjoyed three wonderful dives at Siapa Besar, just 8nm from Rinca Island. The dive boat picked us up at Mersoleil and we had a delightful day with private dive guide Stefano, who sees everything down there and makes sure we see it too! Thus we saw sea turtles in abundance, green and hawksbills, colorful eels, a lovely jouvenile stingray about a foot across,seahorses and not just seahorses, mind you, but mating seahorses! Also a couple of very cute little white flounders, how did he see those in the white coral sand, and a flamboyant cuttlefish. The flamboyant cuttlefish caused much enthusiasm among the marine biologists on board. Frankly it was lost on me, I've seen cigar butts sticking up out of the sand in ash urns that looked exactly like that, and no one ever calls those flamboyant. Some Internet research is clearly in order so the next time I spy a flamboyant cigar butt I can get as excited as the others This morning we moved some twenty miles to Loh Serau, a deep bay on the NW tip of Komodo Island surrounded by high steep hills, still green despite the dry season, and with water supporting abundant coral and fishes. We came here on the tails of Bamboozle and Soudade, Vision rolled in a bit later. After an hour long snorkel right off the boat, we rinsed off the salt and spent the evening with Jamie and Lucy (Bamboozle) and Jimmy (Vison) in the cockpit of Mersoleil. Now its 8PM and we'll pick up the hook and depart at 9PM for Gili Air at the west end of Lombok Island. That's a 36 hour sail and we must always consider where we are during dark and approach land only during daylight. The evening departure (from this isolated location where there are no villages and presumably no fish traps near shore) puts us closing in on Gili Air as day breaks on Friday. It's Independence Day in Indonesia. We didn't see very many Indonesians today, only Frenchmen, Brits and an Irishman, but we're flying a bigger than normal Indonesian courtesy flag and we wish everyone here a happy Independence Day! Now, up to the cockpit. I'll be on watch for the first few hours.
Bev
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