We have been in Nai Harn bay for about a week. It's a nice place, with a good beach and decent surf. The kids have been ashore almost daily surfing the waves with their body boards. The food is also good here although there are a ton of tourists this time of year so it is very busy. We've been working hard to get boat projects finished while still trying to enjoy the holidays. We will be here for another day or so before we head out to maybe Padang Beach for New Years. All is well.

We are currently anchored in Ao Chalong. It's been a VERY busy week, with lots of boat projects, time in a Marina - the first time since NZ over 2 years ago, and getting to know Thailand. We made fast friends with Erik on another Antares who lives in Phuket. He's been VERY helpful for us and made our search for vendors much easier. Our list of boat projects include: new tubes for our dinghy, new cockpit enclosures, new upholstery throughout the boat, new set of sails, some woodwork fixes, and misc items that are not working that need to be fixed. It's going to be a busy month before more guests arrive. We've enjoyed having friends aboard, and are now enjoying getting back into our normal routines with school and projects. Overall we like Thailand (a bit more expensive than expected), but overall a nice area. We still prefer Indonesia...but that may change over time. :-)

We've been exploring the Phang Na area of Thailand with our friends. It's been a busy but fun several days. We will be heading to the marina today so we can drop them off for their flights tomorrow night. All is well.

We've been exploring the Phang Na area of Thailand with our friends. It's been a busy but fun several days. We will be heading to the marina today so we can drop them off for their flights tomorrow night. All is well.

We arrived to Phuket yesterday around 3.30pm after 30 hours of hand steering. It was really no issue as we had enough crew in rotation to make it easy. We are now checking into Phuket this morning and plan on exploring as much as possible with our friends before they leave on Friday evening.

Well, we had our autopilot go on the blink. We are getting a short somewhere in the system and it is tripping out breaker. I looked at it for an hour to no avail, so will wait until we are in flat water and I can pull the unit to check it out. So, we are hand steering the last 24 hours of the sail. Good news is we have plenty of crew aboard to help, so it is going OK. We'll be arriving tomorrow late afternoon at this rate to Phuket. Winds are also a little stronger than we expected and the forecasts were a bit off from our departure so it is more of a bash now, but all is well.

We've finally checked out of Indonesia with the boat. We are back at our anchorage for another night or two before we head to Thailand. Kate's mom is finishing her open water course today, and we'll get the bottom of the boat cleaned. The weather is looking reasonably good for the trip. While not loads of wind, it is at least not a full 200NM bash..so that is good.

We left around 10am yesterday for Phuket, Thailand with 7 POB. The sail has been overall very good, with vairable winds, and mostly motoring. That is OK given the winds are normally out of the NE, and we are heading NE....so all is well aboard. We literally just had a wind shift of 180 degrees from a dead run at 12kts to 12kts on the nose. We expect to arrive to Phuket Saturday late morning if all goes well.

Good news is everyone is back in the water and ears are fine. I finished the Rescue Diver course. Probably one of the best courses I've taken in a very long time. It was rigorous and fun. I was very tired after all the scenarios and 'search and rescue' components, but glad to be finished and have it off my list. We did a half day tour around the island on rented motorbikes. It was great fun. Some are doing a night dive tonight and Kate's mom is in the middle of her open water class. Weather has been outstanding.

Kate's ear infection is still going strong. She went to the hospital yesterday and was told to take essentially the same meds she is currently taking. Hopefully it will clear up by this weekend. I finished the first of four days for Rescue Diver. It was an intense day, but a lot of fun as well. The weather has been great, sunny skies and warm weather. In the afternoon, the kids spotted a forming waterspout, but fortunately it didn't make it to the anchorage.

Elizabeth finished her Advanced Open Water certification yesterday. She was excited. Kate still has an ear infection, so hopefully after the antibiotics and meds she will be better later this week. The diving here is good, and I hate to see her miss a great opportunity. We have some friends coming to town Friday as well, so we are excited to have more arrivals. We've really enjoyed this location, and plan on coming back for a month or two next year while I get my DiveMaster certification. We hope to have our friends from Lumbaz join us for a week or two up here as well...as we know they'll love this spot and the diving. Our plans are to be here until late next week, when the winds start to change for Phuket. All is well.

Elizabeth finished her Advanced Open Water certification yesterday. She was excited. Kate still has an ear infection, so hopefully after the antibiotics and meds she will be better later this week. The diving here is good, and I hate to see her miss a great opportunity. We have some friends coming to town Friday as well, so we are excited to have more arrivals. We've really enjoyed this location, and plan on coming back for a month or two next year while I get my DiveMaster certification. We hope to have our friends from Lumbaz join us for a week or two up here as well...as we know they'll love this spot and the diving. Our plans are to be here until late next week, when the winds start to change for Phuket. All is well.

Michael and Kate finished their Open Water certificates. Michael was beaming all day. It was great. We logged three dives today, including a night dive. The fish here are dense and diverse. Some of the largest populations of fish I've seen in a very very long time. We have our Emergency First Response certifications probably tomorrow and then Rescue Diver Tuesday- Friday. It will be a busy week for sure, but we are having a blast meeting new people and exploring. Four boats arrived here in the past 24 hours. A couple of them we were diving with in Komodo earlier this year. All are heading to Langkawi or Phuket in the next week or so.

Oops. I was remiss in giving an updated on our safe arrival several days ago. We've been so immersed in our surrounding, diving and exploring that I've been skipping the updates. Michael and Kate are taking their Open Water certifications. They finish their class today. It's been great to see them both enjoy the chalenge. The water is outstanding here with clarity and fish. The reef is not great, but everything else is good, much better than our stops along the west coast of Sumatra. We found the reefs better in Mentawai (so far), but the sheer volume of fish here and variety is great. I'll be doing my Rescue Diver this week, Sarah and E will get up to Advanced, and maybe Rescue if they are up for it. We have more friends arriving Friday, so we are hoping to get our extra certifications finished before they arrive. We plan on being here until probably the second week in December before leaving given the current weather patterns. All is well!

We've been having a good overall sail/motor. We caught a nice wahoo yesterday and had that for dinner. This morning, after my watch, we got smashed with a 30kt squall. It was 12NM x 24NM in dimension and push us along at 12.1kts. I was asleep for most of the action, but Sarah was on top of it and had the Code Zero furled and we were running with a reef in the main. After the squall passed after over 2 hours of hard wind, Kate and Elizabeth saw a pod of dolphins on our bow and spent 15 mins up front, in the rain watching the dolphins play in our wake. We expect to arrive tomorrow morning. All well, and calm aboard. :)

It's been an eventful 24 hours. We arrived to a great spot for some diving. While the water initially was not that clear, I was confident it was going to be good out on the reefs. We did 2 small dives with Kate, our crew, getting her up to speed on basic diving water skills. That went great. We cleaned our gear and left some of it outside drying overnight. We woke up in the morning to find two wetsuits, all booties, dive gloves and one mask stolen off the back of the boat. I was very agitated that we forgot to turn on the security light overnight, not to mention that we had a person onboard stealing stuff out of the cockpit and off the lines. We've NEVER had any issues in Indonesia, so this was our first...and hopefully last. After checking out the reefs yesterday by dinghy, I found that they were beaten up, poor visibility and some of the least attractive reefs we've seen in Indonesia so far. So, we picked up the anchor and have been sailing since 1pm yesterday. Our plan is to go direct to Pula Weh (north tip of Sumatra) for diving, diving, diving....and to replace some of our stolen gear. A real bummer, not to mention it was my birthday. Otherwise, all is well and we are off and sailing nicely with following seas and a comfortable ride.

We are leaving at 5am to head around the corner to a small group of islands for diving. We should get there around noon or 1pm. We are sad to be leaving new friends here in Nias, but must get going as the weather is good.

The past two days have been jammed packed with exploring Nias and their ancient megalith culture. The villages are some like we've never seen before in their architecture and use of stones. We are going back today for some drone footage of a couple of the more unique villages and hopefully some stone jumping if weather permits. Our hike yesterday was 10km through all sorts of terrain to the oldest known village in Nias. It was very very interesting and challenging at times as it drizzled most of the day and the trail in places was VERY slippery. We plan on leaving Friday for the next set of islands for diving, as we have been waiting out the NW winds in this cove. A

We arrived at 6am yesterday to Nias Island. It was a slow but comfortable trip, for a total of 203NM in 48 hours. We had a very good and interesting day on Sunday after our arrival. We spent some time watching the surfers and then went ashore to fly the drone. In short, I ended up having my iPhone stolen on the beach. There were literally 50-75 kids around, and I accidentally left it near the drone bag. I went back to the boat, looked up the iPhone location using the Find my Phone feature, found it moving around the village. I went ashore, found some 'police' and told them what happened using Google Translate. There were amazed that I could see the phone moving almost in realtime on Sarah's phone. They called in other criminal police, and we were off in a police van chasing the moving dot, and making a big scene. I was not hopeful as it is very hard to find the phone amongst of bunch of kids. The police frisked some kids that were near the moving dot, and long story shot, it spooked the kid who stole it as he ditched the phone behind an outside 'toilet'. We found the location, and used the 'alarm' feature of the phone to hear it ring...and found it!!! We then took the police back to the beach, and bought them a round or two of beer as a thank you. This is primarily a protestant island, so having a beer was no issue and the were happy to have some free drink. We ended up having dinner with them last night and had a small 'dance' party with the kids. It turned out to be a blast, and memories for sure.

We are underway heading WNW to Bolo Island. We hope to arrive mid day tomorrow. The winds have been very flaky up here with 180 degree shifts and 0kts - 21kts depending on the squalls. Overall though comfortable even though we are having to motor more than we would like. The good news is we have our updated visas and are going to spend the next month or so working up towards Aceh before we leave early December for Phuket Thailand. Our goal is to find some new dive sites and explore. Kate is aboard, a friends daughter, who is in college studying marine biology. She is excited to explore the ocean with us and has been a pleasure to have aboard.

We arrived back to Padang yesterday with our guests. I flew out to KL for a visa renewal hop and our other guest arrived...so it was a big day aboard swapping out guests and getting visas renewed. We are waiting here for weather and hope to be out of here Thur or Fri heading north. Until then I am finishing up our new Orangutan video for the blog and getting caught up on internet items.

We had a very good day diving. There was a spot we tried to find last time - a seamount - but could not. I figured I may have slid the waypoint by accident on my laptop, and I did. We had the wrong waypoint last week. We found the mount and dived it. Tons of fish, and the most Nudis we have ever seen on one dive. They were everywhere. It must be the currents in the area. Of all the nudis we saw, we saw one we had never seen before and a flatworm that was new to the area. Elizabeth was not on that dive (she loves Nudis) so we will go there again I suspect today before we leave tonight. All is well.

It was a calm night last night. No rain, just clouds and minimal breeze. Today we will be heading out for a dive in about 30 min, and plan to get three dives in today so we can get our guests in the water a couple of times today.

It's been a busy couple of days. First, we moved today to our other favorite spot by the sand island. We are here with another boat - sv/ Perry and their kids. We did a nice dive this afternoon after arrival. The big news was our friend at Aloita Resort - Roc - had his 6.5m aluminum resort surf boat sink. He had just put two new Suzuki 150 engines on the boat three days ago and woke up in the morning with the boat on the bottom of the ocean in 8m of water. We spent most of the morning with our scuba gear diving and helping get the boat lifted up and put onshore. Long story short, it required dumping about two full bottles of air into the bilge to blow out the water and get the boat buoyant enough for the crew of about 15 guys on shore to pull the boat forward and slowly get is to shallow water. Finally, it was rightside up (it was upside down on the bottom) and they got the water pumped out. The engines are still being salvaged and hopefully by tomorrow they will be up an running - probably without a starter motor but we shall see. Otherwise, all is well and we will be here until Saturday night.

We've enjoyed being back here in the Mentawais. Our new friend and owner of the resort here - Roc - was happy to see us and invited us to lunch. We had drinks last night and he also invited us to go on a video shoot with the female 2017 World Champion long board surfer who is staying at his resort. The film is being shot mainly with drones, and he has a team of 3 here doing the filming. We hope we can join them but we have other sailing friends arriving today - so we don't want to bolt to another island too early. We'll see what happens. All is well and I have a small dive class to teach with our guests for some shallow water diving today.

We are now back to the Mentawais after a smooth motor all night with our new guests. It was an easy trip. We'll be here for 3-5 days exploring this area some more and waiting for friends to arrive on there boats. We expect to have 2-4 more boats arriving over the next week to this area. All friends of ours we've met while diving in Komodo, and all wanting to dive. Sad to be here without our friends on Lumbaz. It's

Well, we've been in Padang now for 24 hours. We had an excellent time with our friends and are sad to have them gone. Kids are sullen as they miss their friends..but school is now underway onboard so they will be back in their normal routine. We pick up Sarah's nephew Thursday morning and then head back to the Mentawai islands for more exploring and diving. All well onboard.

We leave in an hour from the beautiful spot to sail to Padang. We've had an outstanding week with our friends and it will be sad to see them leave. The winds will be low and variable so we'll probably have to motor most of the way. It's about 85NM, so we plan on arriving in the morning so they can catch a flight.

We had another great day here. This anchorage is excellent. We can swim to the sandy beach island or the island to our south. The diving has been the best we've seen in Sumatra, and everyone is doing great. We have on final day tomorrow before we have to sail back to Padang for s/v Lumbaz to catch their flight back to KL. The kids were on the beach all day making forts and clean up all the plastic. They are having a great time playing on the beach while the 'adults' dive... :)

We moved today after our morning dive to a spot about 20NM north. It is beautiful here, with a small 'all sand' island and lots of waves. There are a ton of surfers in this area and the waves around the corner are around 3m+. We'll explore more tomorrow diving and spend some more time on the beach. The kids are having a blast and it really does not feel like 10 POB. All is well.

I've missed a couple of days doing the update. We arrived no issues to the Mentawai islands around 9am on Sunday. We were in the water diving at 11am, and logged a couple of dives after arrival with our friends from Lumbaz. We have a total of 10 POB and it has been great. The diving is not spectacular, but any dive is a good dive, so everyone is having fun. All 10 are divers, so we are rotating and are trying to make three, 4 person dives a day. It's all about schedules with early dive at 7am, 10am and 2pm. :) This place is beautiful and the surf resort we are anchored next to has been very very nice. We'll be here another day or so before moving up to the next island in the Mentawai for some more exploring before sailing back Padang on Friday night.

Yesterday was the wettest day we've had since leaving New Zealand over two years ago. It rained and rained and we got soaked going to Immigration for our visa renewals. The good news is the outlook is now better and we leave late PM for the Mentawai islands for diving. I can't wait to get back in the water and dive with friends. We will be there for about a week before sailing back here to swap out guests and pick up Sarah's cousin...for more diving.

We've enjoyed being in one spot for a bit. We've been on the move the past two weeks covering 1,100NM, so we are taking a break and getting some things done on the boat like fixing water catching system (lots of rain here), sorting out visas, and getting provisions and fuel. While not a great spot regarding anchorage, it's got 4G data and it is a low traffic area so overall it's nice. We leave Saturday evening with our friends from s/v Lumbaz to head offshore for diving and water activities.

We had a good motor/sail into the harbor yesterday afternoon. We are now getting ourselves familiar with Padang as we prepare for our friends and get ready for some diving. The weather has been a lot more rainy than we are used to, but this is how things are at this latitude. We were spoiled with clear sunny skies for over a month, no rain and lots of solar for the batteries. We will be going to Immigration this afternoon for visa renewals and begin to plan our next journey.

We had to motor overnight as the winds dropped and we got slammed with lots of squalls. We are now sailing again and should be arriving later today to Padang. It is wet, wet, wet outside, but otherwise all is wel.

It's been a good sail. Almost all a dead run, wing on wing. We hit our first squall in over a month, with some decent rain to wash the boat. We decided to make a run straight for Padang vs. stopping along the way so we can get some items sorted and visa renewals underway in Padang. We expect to arrive tomorrow afternoon.

So far the sailing has been very good. Following seas and an almost dead run. We are sailing wing on wing and hope the wind continues for at least another 24 hours as we sail farther north towards Padang, Sumatra. We plan exploring some of the outer islands before working our way to Padang by Thursday for visa renwals and picking up some friends. All is well.

WOW. What a day we had. We spent a total of 14 hours exploring the jungle, seeing the tigers, and learning all about their natural habitat. We had one of our best days we ever had, and our best day in Indonesia so far. It was just great. First class service, proper 'safari' jeeps with seats on the roof, excellent guides, great food and lots and lots of exploring. We even had horseback riding to look for tigers and rare monkeys. It was just great. Regardless, we now have to leave to continue our journey north to Padang. We'll make 1-2 stops along the way looking for good diving spots before our friends from KL join us next weekend. We plan on a week of diving with them and then Sarah's cousin arrives for 10 days to Padang for more exploring and diving. All well aboard FT other than we had to leave this beautiful national park.... :)

We arrived last night around 7pm to the national park. We were greeted after a lot of flashing lights ashore by a park ranger and some guys in a boat. Very nice chaps, but insistent I go ashore to meet with the manager. So, by now it was 8pm and I went ashore. The security guard was carrying a baseball bat. I found out while walking to the station that the bat was to keep animal 'away' if they came too close. This place was crawling with wildlife as we walked to the ranger station. We sorted out the details of this place, finding out it is a no anchoring marine reserve as well as a land based reserve. So, for a fee of $60USD we get to use the large park mooring. We signed up for the jungle trekking for today, including the tiger rehabilitation station. All told, it should be a good day today,but was not inexpensive... :)

We are slowly sailing past the volcano, which is currently erupting. We decided to check online for any warning before anchoring at the base of the volcano for a close up experience and diving. Unfortunately, it is a tad bit too active for us, rated yesterday a 4/5 on volcanic activity....with warnings not to be closer than 1km to the crater....so...we are being prudent, dont' want a ton of ash on the boat or sails...and are going to sail off to Sumatra. I am very bummed as I really wanted to dive the new reefs around the edge of the volcano. We dove the reefs in Banda Island and they were really amazing....UGH!!!

We had to update you YIT account to post. We were offshore and just now got some land based cellular internet. We are having a great sail, and all is well onboard. The winds have died so we are now motoring, but the crew is happy. We will be arriving to Kracatau this morning for some diving before we push off towards Sumatra. We plan on stopping to a reserve that rehabilitates the Sumatra Tiger...should be interesting.

All has been going well. We were averaging 8 kts until about 5 hours ago when the wind dropped out. We are now motoring.

Well it's been flat out aboard Field Trip. We spent three days up the river with the Orangutans - which was amazing. Upon returning our friends aboard s/v Perry had arrived from the other side of Borneo. We had not seen them in almost 4 months. We spent a day and a half getting caught up before we left them and began our sail yesterday to Kracatau - the volcano between Java and Sumatra. We've been having a cracking sail, good winds and generally OK seas given or speed so all is good. We will arrive early AM on the 3rd or late PM tomorrow. We will probably have to slow down if the wind does not so we don't arrive in the dark. All is well.

We dropped the hook here last night around 4am to wait until light before heading farther up the bay and into the river. There was a LOT of barge traffic last night so we decided to wait until morning and give me a couple of hours of sleep before beginning again. We will pull up the anchor in about 30 minutes and complete the last 20NM of travel from here up the river to Kumai.

The winds have finally picked up nicely and we are moving along towards Borneo. We should be arriving tomorrow morning. We are zipping along wing on wing and are having a nice comfortable sail. All well onboard except we have caught NO fish.... :(

It's been a good but slow 30 hours since we left. The winds have been from behind and very light ranging from 6kts to 12kts. The good news is the seas are following and comfortable. It looks like we will be arriving later than expected due to the slower sailing and in some cases head current. Otherwise, all is gong well and we are excited about the jungle in Borneo.

I've been several days delinquent on updates. Sorry, I had to fly to Kuala Lumpur for visas and got lost in boat projects. We leave tomorrow for Borneo to meet up with friends and see the Orangutans. Speaking of friends, there are now 22 yachts anchored here in Lovina. Most of them part of the Indonesia Rally. We were able to meet up with some sailing friends we sailed with since the Caribbean over 5 years ago. They just got here from Australia. The last time we saw them was in New Zealand over two years ago. In addition Erie Spirit are in the area as we talked on the radio as the were passing by. Its busy busy busy here in Indonesia...and we'll be glad to get 'out' of here to a quieter anchorage tomorrow (no offense to the rally folks, but just not our style.... :) ). More updates as we sail.

We arrived yesterday to Lovina, Bali. The stretch of water between Lombok and Bali was nasty with large confused seas and 20-25kts of wind agains the current. We took water over the bow multiple times and had it smash into the cockpit as well. We are glad we arrived, and are now licking our wounds from some gear chaffe issues on our furling line. Nothing major, just need to repair. All is well and this is a nice town with several other boats at anchor.

We've had an overall decent passage so far. The seas at the moment are sloppy and beamy, but we are making nice progress. We should be arriving tomorrow AM to Lovina, Bali. All is well.

We finally had to leave our favorite spot in the Komodos. It was sad to leave as we could have spent weeks in the location diving...but we must push on. We are underway for Lovina, Bali and plan to arrive Saturday. All is well and the seas comfortable.

We are still here enjoying this anchorage. The morning dive was the best dive we've had on the other side of the lagoon. We went over with 5 other divers and a total of three dinghys so it was nice to be so far away from the boat and be with other divers. We will be here for today, our last day before we sail out early tomorrow morning back to Bali. Ugh. This is our favorite spot in all of Komodo and we could spend weeks here exploring but unfortunately I have to get cracking on our visa renewals and we must start heading west to meet friends in Borneo.

The boats keep on arriving. Yesterday we had 4 Indoensian dive boats arrive here full of divers. It's been full on with diving for sure. We had three great dives and have enjoyed getting caught up with our old friends from five years ago. We plan on being here for another couple of days before we sail to Bali for my flight to Kuala Lumpur. One more thing we noticed last night was the volcano on the adjacent island was dripping red lava at night down the side. It had not done that before, and was beautiful watching the fingers of glowing lava dribble down the side to the sea.

Let's just say we are SHOCKED at all the yachts we've seen. In fact, we are in a remote area, or so we thought, just outside Komodo park and there are SIX yachts anchored around us. All of them divers, so the word must be out that this is a great location for diving. It's been fun meeting new people, but we do like the serenity of our last visit when it was just us. One of the yachts we actually know, and met them 5 years ago in the Caribbean. They are just now getting here, so it was fun to see tem again and have them over for drinks last night. The spear fishing has been crazy good. One of the yachts shot three dogtooth tuna and one wahoo....so we're going out today for some spear fishing!! :)

FINALLY, we are back and going on Field Trip. We spent 2.5 months back in the USA to see family and friends. I had not been back in 3 years, so it was great to see everyone. We just finished a two day sail from Lombok back to Gili Banta near Komodo for some diving. We loved this spot several months ago, and are happy to be back. We did our first dive today after arrival and water is relatively warm at 27C. All good aboard Field Trip and we are happy to be back on the water!!!

We arrived safely to Lombok after a quick stop at Gili Air. We are on a mooring at the 'marina' - and will be leaving to Kuala Lumpur in two days. There are 12 other yachts here on moorings, and all is well.

Our first 24hrs of sailing have been generally OK. We've had a number of patches of no wind so we've had to motor more than we would like. The biggest pain has been opposing current of 1.5-2kts. We knew this was in the forecast, but still painful to be hammering into that much current on the nose. The skies are sunny and the seas are calm so the crew is very happy. We plan to arrive Monday morning or possibly Sunday evening if we get more wind later today.

This has been one of our favorite anchorages in the Flores Islands. Clear water, sandy bottom, and beautiful diving. We're anchored in 8m of water, and have really enjoyed the snorkeling and diving over the past couple of days. We're doing one more dive early this morning before we pull up the anchor and sail to Lombok. It will be a 245NM sail. In light winds we expect this to take 2.5-3 days. The weather here continue to be excellent with sunny days and clear skies. it's hot, but the water keeps us cool.

We are underway heading out of Komodo National Park. It's sad to leave Komodo as we've really enjoyed the beauty and serenity. Our first stop is a small island just outside the park that has some excellent diving. We'll do some more diving there over the next couple of days before we head out for Lombok later this week. All is well aboard.

We've had a very eventful several days. In short we are in our favorite spot so far in Komodo. The diving in this area is outstanding, and the water is warm! We frankly got tired of the cold (23C) water with poor visibility in central and southern Komodo. It was just 'OK' diving and in our opinion not worth the full wetsuit, hoodie and still freezing cold. The diving up here is warm (29C) and the water is crystal clear...and the fish life is excellent. We did two dives yesterday and three today. We've extended our stay another day at this anchorage to dive our favorite spot one more time before we move to another area. All is well aboard.

We logged two dives early in the morning yesterday so we could make the tide change and sail up to the next stop for more diving and exploring ashore. We did a 6am hike this morning to the top of the 'mountain' and had beautiful views as the sun rose over the bay. I was able to even fly the drone for a bit for some photos. It's beautiful here....but BUSY with tons of boats delivering tourists. We'll dive three sisters divesite this afternoon. All well.

We were told by the park rangers that this island we are anchored next to is 'dangerous' as the Komodo Dragons will swim after your boat. So far we've not see a Komodo yet down here, only a monkey onshore. Evidently some operators used to feed the Komodos down here, and the sound of a boat engine prompts them to swim offshore towards the boat. Regardless, we had a great dive this morning at Cannibal Rock, and plan on another dive this afternoon after lunch. All well aboard. THANKS P&H for your info as well about Komodo! :)

We arrived safely to Komodo yesterday morning around 6am. We averaged 77NM/day on the slow but very comfortable trip. No complaints from crew as everyone enjoyed the calm sailing. We are anchored in a nice place, and is very reminiscent of a dryer version of the Bay of Islands...at least from this anchorage. We did a dive yesterday afternoon and will do some more diving today before moving to Rinca to check in with the Rangers and do a Komodo Dragon walk. All well.

We're still 'sailing', but very slowly as we have 1-1.5kts against us in light winds. However, we are only 40NM from Komodo, so going slow at this point is fine as we don't want to arrive at night. The kids have been researching Komodo, and are now scrared to go ashore. No because of the dragons, but because of the 3 species of deadly snakes that live there, including the Javan Spitting Cobra. :) We'll work through the trepidation I'm sure, but funny to hear the kids reading aloud about how dangerous the animals are on the islands of Komodo.

It's been a slow but comfortable 24 hours. We caught a barracuda at 6am, and let him go...otherwise no more fish just yet. It's another beautiful day with lots of sunshine and calm seas.

We've had a very good 24 hours. Slow sailing, but comfortable and beautiful weather. We caught a 1.2m wahoo this morning to top off a good night watch. Kids were very happy to see fresh fish as well. We still plan on a direct route to Komodo, but....if we still have decent winds the rest of the week we may stop at a remote atoll for some snorkeling and diving in the middle of the Flores sea...so we'll see how things progress.

We decided to leave this morning for a direct sail to Komodo as the winds are good (8-10kts) for this 2.5-3 day passage. We did a nice dive yesterday before leaving this morning. The coral was pristine and there were lots of fish...but it wasn't anything better than we've seen in other ares of PNG and eastern Indonesia.

We arrived yesterday around 9.30am after a comfortable passage. This is a nice location, but we decided to move about 25NM farther SW to an atoll that is secluded and has good diving, so we'll be anchors up in about 30min for that short trip. There are about 40 students from Essex University UK here studying marine biology for two weeks. The local dive shop is crammed as well, another reason for us to move to another spot since we'll be diving sans guide.

We are currently making slow but comfortable progress. We have about 1.5kts of favorable current that is keeping us going nicely even in very light winds. We expect to arrive in about 30-36 hours at this rate with about 110NM left on our sail.

We've had an uneventful calm sail/motor after leaving Ambon yesterday morning. Last night was about 50% sailing, on the beam so it made for a fast sail while we had wind. The winds have died down as forecasted, so we are now motoring.

We leave in about two hours for Wakatobe. We're doing some last minute provisioning, and will be underway by about 10am. We expect this light sail to take 3 days, maybe a bit more, and should have calm seas with light winds. We're looking forward to our next destination.

We're still here! We had a good Easter with a bunch of expats here in Ambon. It was fun meeting other people living here in Ambon, some have been here for 30years, and understand the culture, issues, etc. that has occurred over the years. We're learning a lot about Indonesia, and have been enjoying our time here. We'll be leaving tomorrow(ish) and heading for a three day passage to Wakatobe Marine Park. It's only 280NM, but the winds are very light (or will be later this week) so we expect a slow sail/motor most of the way. Sad to leave good friends here behind but very excited about the new locations we have to visit. All well onboard!

The kids have made fast friends with this other family. We are going to explore more of the island with the family today and go to a hot springs. The diving is still good, and we plan on moving around the corner Monday for some diving on the outside. We'll leave Tuesday heading for Wakatobe National Park - about 300NM from here SW.

We've been doing more diving while here and it continues to be very good. The dive we did yesterday was not 'great' as it was on a seamount and there was about 2kts of current so we could not stop much and search for the small critters. We've had very good weather, but still westerlies...so we continue to wait for the winds to die down. We also met a very nice American family with four kids that have lived in Ambon for 7 years. We'll be spending more time with them while we are here in Ambon.

Sarah and Elizabeth logged three dives yesterday with Dive in Ambon dive shop. All three were muck diving, and they saw some great things, including the mimick octopus (use google to check this guy out). While they were diving, I was in immigration working on visa renewals. Fortunately it went well, and had no issues. I'll be going back today to pick up the visas. So far we really like Ambon, and in particular this dive shop in the north bay. It's owned by an English guy and an Australian gal who are very nice and helpful. The bonus is there is a pool here at the resort so the kids are happy!

We arrived to Ambon yesterday around 4.30pm after a great trip from Banda. We really miss Banda, as it was a great place to stay with good diving and crystal clear water. However, we had to move on due to weather and get farther west. We'll work on visa renewals this well along with some provisioning before we head out to our next stop.

We left Banda this morning and are sailing to Ambon. We have very calm seas, with light winds, but are making decent progress. We plan on arrving tomorrow late in the day at this rate, but all is well and we are happy we're not having to bash into 20kts to get our visa's renewed.

We arrived this morning at 6.30am to Banda. It was a generally good motor/sail despite making very slow progress as we had 1-1.5kts of current against us most of the way along with the wind so it was a slow slog, but surprising comfortable and we made a lot of westward progress. We'll be here for about a week before taking the next weather window to Ambon for passort visa renewals and then a 600nm journey to Komodo. All well aboard.

We decided to head out straight to the Banda islands as the winds are still low and it will be a beat later this week as the winds pick up...so we are off for a 24hr motor/sail to Banda. It should be just fine and at least now it is very comfortable as we head farther west.

We took an opportunity in the weather to leave last night in calm winds (5-7kts NW) and head NW from Tual working our way towards Banda and Ambon. It was a slow but comfortable motor all night to get here to our first stop on the way. We will be here for a couple of days and when the winds subside again we'll work our way NW and then SW in a very large tack covering 750NM. We have 7 weeks left in Indonesia before we have to fly out for visa renewals. All is well and we are looking forward to exploring this area.

We had a good sail Saturday/Sunday back to Tual. We are now at anchor and heading ashore to renew our visas this morning before we wait for weather to sail towards the Banda islands and then towards Ambon and Komodo. The clock is ticking for us as we have 60 days before we fly to Kuala Lumpur to visit our friends on Lumbaz and then renew our visas for Indonesia. It's hard to believe we have been here almost six months (two unofficially as we worked our way to Sorong). There is so much to see in Indonesia and the country is so vast that it would take years to get a good sampling of the different areas. So far Triton Bay is our overall favorite location.

We are back now at Triton Bay Divers as we wanted to log some dives here with a guide to see the small stuff. We're glad we did, as our dive yesterday was awesome for macro. We saw five species of pygmy seahorses in one dive..along with a rare small octopus. It was great and Elizabeth in particular had a blast as she loves seeing the small macro animals. We are off today for a two tank dive with the resort far south on what is supposed to be one of the best dives in the area...so we'll see how it goes. All is well and the weather is still great.

We arrived back to Sarah's favorite spot here in Triton. We did a good dive in the afternoon - Bo's Rainbow, and will be doing a couple of dives this weekend with the resort before we head back to Tual for visa renewals. Sarah and I were saying this morning just how amazing the weather has been the past three weeks. While we can always use rain, we've only had one day that was cloudy most of the day with some rain. Otherwise, it has been very much like the western side of Fiji, sunny days, light breeze and just beautiful.

We are underway heading about 20NM farther SE back towards Triton Bay Divers. There are some more dives we want to do, and a couple with TBD that are far away and hard to dive with the dinghy. The weather continues to be outstanding, and has been now for over three weeks. I'm not sure if this is normal, but if it is, this is really a great place to spend a lot of time. Sunny every day, and cool at night with the mountain breeze coming off from the east at night.

WOW. We just finished swimming with three whale sharks and a pod of dolphins here in Triton Bay. This was our second time swimming with whale sharks here in Indonesia, and by far the best experience as we had relatively clear water and three sharks, one very large (about 10m+) with dolphins that were literally swarming around us as they at the fish being dropped in by the bagans. The dive shop that is about 20 miles south of here came up after we were there for about 30 min and dropped off seven divers who were also thrilled. It was a lot of fun and we were glad to be there alone initially without all the scuba bubbles.

We've missed several days due to a busy and frustrating time. We are now in Kaimana as we picked a good window to get up here and motored overnight. The frustrating part is my underwater camera leaked when elizabeth did a drive with the resort for the flasher wrasses. So, we presently have two cameras that bit the dust. I was able to sort our a replacement camera being express shipped from Bali to Kaimana. It should be here in several days and that will be a major relief as I thought there for a while I was going to be without any uderwater camera for the next couple of months. The amazing part is the price was very good, they gave me an additional 20% off on the camera and the express air shipping was only $6 USD to Kaimana. So, I'm relieved and happy.... :)

We've been here at Triton Bay Divers for two nights, and are having a great time getting to know the people at the resort. We had dinner last night ashore and made some new friends. There is a group here from the BBC that shot the BBC series The Blue Planet and several other BBC series. It was fun talking to them about how they found the locations and shot the footage. I was surprised to find out that most of the footage was shot with 100% natural lighting and the primary videographer had a specially built setup that he made himself to electronically adjust the colors on the fly underwater for each lighting situation, as they did very little post production color editing. No small feat and why I supposed they were saying he was the best underwater videographer in the world. Fascinating people with amazing stories to tell.

We are going to move over to Triton Bay Divers this afternoon after school. We'll spend a couple of days there at the resort. The weather continues to be beautiful, with a shower or two at night.

Sarah has declared this is her favorite anchorage in Indonesia. We are completely in the lee, and the water is 4m deep at low tide with a sandy bottom. The kids love swimming here and the diving is easily accesible. We'll be here for a bit longer before we start to explore other areas. We have abbreviated school today and then we'll try to log a couple of dives since we know we'll be leaving this area soon.

The weather continues to be very good. The birds here are abundant and we had dinner last night outside watching lots of hornbills fly over the boat along with parrots. We have found the people here to be very nice and they remind us of PNG and the Solomons. In this area virtually all the people are native Papuan vs. Indonesian so it has a similar feel to the Melanesian culture we've been living in for the past 18 months. We also did our first family scuba dive and it was fun to have all four of us diving. Michael is doing great on the scuba and he is almost ready for more advanced dives, but we still need to work on his buoyancy control a bit.

We moved into the bay that was 2m deep at mid tide and put Field Trip on the hard for a day. We got the bottom cleaned and dried out for a day before moving back here for the evening. Today we'll do some diving and enjoy this weather.

We've been lucky as the weather has been outstanding. Nice breeze in the afternoon and sunny days. We actually need some rain, but will be content with the sun. We did two dives yesterday. Sarah and I dove Aquarium and it was just 'OK'. I am sure it was partly due to the water vis not being that great so we will keep trying during different tide cycles. It was the first day I had both kids diving on scuba yesterday. Michael is still learning so we are doing shallow dives but the both had a blast. We'll beach Field Trip this morning for cleaning the bottom. All is well.

It was a beautiful day and our first formal lesson with Michale went great for diving. Another cat showed up from Australia. They've been cruising for 20 years and are heading back to Cains from the Phillipines. A nice family and they seemed very passionate about sailing with kids as they raised their three kids aboard from a very early age. We plan on beaching FT today so we can do a good job on cleaning the bottom of the boat and let it dry out a bit. Seems to help the coppercoat if we can get it out of the water a year or two. All well.

We had a great sail to Triton Bay. It's been nice to sail to places vs. motor. No doubt the winds have kicked in full force from the W, NW monsoon so it will make some of our travels tricky as we work our way towards Bali in another month or two. Our anchorage here in Triton is dead calm and beautiful. There is a lot of diving in this area, and we plan on getting started this afternoon. Michael is going to get full lessons from me and begin doing some of his first scuba dives here. He's excited.

I just realized we never logged our arrival in YIT. We arrived safely to Tual, and really enjoy this town. It's clean, the people are great and immigration was very easy. It's been windy here until today, but overall nice weather. We'll be here for another day, and then leave tomorrow for Triton Bay. There is one other boat here - s/v Adamaster, friends of ours that crossed the pacific at the same time we did in 2014. It's been fun to catch up with them while we were here.

Wow. We just went from 12-14kts of wind to 40kts of wind in about an instant. What is odd is we have partly cloudy skies, and no squalls anywhere with no majore pressure drop and we just hit a wall of wind...and still have high 20's low 30's almost an hour after the 40kts. I'll have to read more about the weather patterns to figure this one out as we had no visual indication from the clouds, etc that this was on the way. Fortunately Sarah was calm and collected (I was taking a nap) and we were only running our Genoa since it was almost a dead run and we are not in a rush to arrive tomorrow. She was able to start reefing as I came running up on deck to help get the sail triple reefed. No harm no damage, just a quick rise in adrenaline for sure. We plan on arriving early AM tomorrow to Tual.

We've been having a great sail today, and I wanted to update our position. We have mostly sunny skies, and just outstanding weather. It's rare for us to have this kind of wind so we took the window and headed out for Tual. We plan on arriving early morning on Saturday with about 200 miles to sail.

It's a sad day toady for Field Trip. We are leaving Raja Ampat after almost three months of exploring and diving this outstanding area. Of all of our travels over the past six years, this has been our favorite location for diving and raw beauty. We did our last dive yesterday on another beautiful site, and will be leaving here for our 270NM sail around 8am. The weather should be good for a sail almost the entire way assuming forecasts are correct.

Our nice spot was vacated for an even nicer spot around the corner. This is a GREAT location, dead calm flat in the prevailing westerlies, no current and beautiful. We'll be here we think until late this week when we head out for a direct 'sail' to Tual. All is well, and we hope to log a dive or two today.

We found a fairly nice spot to tie up on port and sb side of the boat to rock walls. We are in 45m of water with 80m of width between islands and reefs so it is tight. However, it's a lot more comfortable than the previous spot. We are surrounded by more dive sites and will start exploring those for the next 4-5 days as we wait in this area for wind to head SE to Tual. The big news is we had our high pressure valve fail in the Bauer. Fortunately our friend Daryl in Brisbane who we purchased the unit from included a rebuild kit for this valve, and I was able to rebuilt today and it's working great. If we didn't have a kit, we turn into snorkelers for the next 3 months...UGH!.... :-) :-)

We are leaving today for another location here in Misool. Our dive yesterday was perhaps the best dive yet. It was just outstanding with excellent wide angle photography. Some of my best shots yet. Sad to be leaving here for another location but we must continue to move as we have to be in Tual in a week for immigration. Hard to believe we've been almost three months in Raja Ampat!

The diving continues to be excellent. We did two dives in the morning at Boo Windows and Boo Point. Both were excellent. We are going to be here for another couple of days and then start working our way south(ish) towards Tual and then Triton Bay.

We logged our first dives here at Whale Rock. Let's just say it was the best single wide angle dive we've ever done. We got some amazing photos and the fish AND sharks are abundant...which is rare in Indonesia. We'll be here until this weekend at least, and will then start moving around some more in Misool. No joke, the diving is 'that' good!

We are in the land of Misool Eco Resort Reserve, which basically means this area is a 'No Take' zone, and preserved for diving. It's supposed to be spectacular, and we are eager to get diving today. Kids are still a little sick, Sarah has a bit of a cold, and hopefully they will all get better soon. Elizabeth was in tears thinking she may not be able to dive some of these areas. We assured he we would stay in the area until she gets better to dive some of the premier sites here. We are tied up between two rock walls, as the area is 50m deep...so not possible to anchor. We've gotten used to tying up to rock walls the past couple of weeks as this seems to be the best method to secure vessels in these bays. It takes a lot more work than anchoring for sure, and you don't always swing into the wind, but it's the only answer to be able to dive in some of the areas and not anchor in 50m+!

I was finally able to get back in the water and do a couple of dives. The dives are OK, but not as good as the diving north of here near Martha's Garden. We are looking forward to further exploring the area, and will leave in the next day or two. Both kids are sick with a cold and mild fever. Not fun, and we hope they will get better soon.

The day was beautiful. We unfortunately have three sick people onboard with colds, so Sarah was the only diver today. We hope to be able to get rid of the colds soon as this is the first time we had a sick boat since NZ. Today I'll get in the water and try to dive. We'll be here for another couple of days before heading over to our next spot. We have three more weeks left in Misool before we have to head to Tual. All is well.

It was a bit rainy yesterday, and I was still a little sick. Sarah was able to get in another couple of dives and Elizabeth went as well. Hopefully today I'll be able to jump in and get in a dive or two. It looks like a beautiful day, and I'm excited to get into the water. There are three dive boats that arrived this morning, so this must be a busy dive location for the diveboats.

We had a good day diving. Sarah logged two dives, but I was not able to do much with my cold, so I'll have to wait another day before diving. We had a strong storm last night that really slammed us with rain, lighting and wind. We are in a sheltered area, but we still had 17-20kts on the beam and that put a lot of strain on the lines we have run on bow and stern. No issues, but still kept us awake just in case something went amiss. Today looks a little dark, the rainiest we've seen in weeks, so we'll have to see how it pans out for diving today.

We finally made it to Misool, Raja Ampat. We are here in a beautiful location tied bow and stern to shore. It is 45m deep, so we can't feasibly anchor when the bay is only 100m across. I've been fighting a cold and small fever that last couple of days so I won't be able to do any diving for another day or two. Sarah is diving with our friends on Perry who are here with us. The weather has been just fantastic the past week.

We left the marina after one night so we can get back in the water with some diving and snorkeling. Sarah and I went for a snokel after arrving to the anchorage to find ourselves swimming with a dugong! The dugong was not skittish and stayed with us for about 15min. It was a beautiful creature and we've never swam with one before. We are going to dive today with our new gear that santa delivered from Bali, and hope to see the dugong again. All is well.