E40 – HELA TO WETAR ISLAND (WEST)
Sailing the pick out at Hela.
As conditions were calm and the exit clear, I sailed the pick out in a light breeze in order to save as much fuel as possible. We knew fuel was difficult to get and if you can get it, it’s usually a very poor quality out on the eastern edges of Indonesia, so sailing wherever possible is the name of the game.
As we moved further out, the wind slowly filled until we had a ripping sail all the way across to the northern coast of Wetar Island…that’s when the wind really started to fill in and I regretted not lifting the dinghy on deck for that passage.
It was also laundry day for Starlight and we had a typical day of great sailing and laundry drying on the rails all through the day making about 7kts wing and wing, dead downwind.
I had hoped to anchor on the northern side of Wetar Island, but as the wind filled in through the day, the swell and wind wrapped around the northern coast of Wetar making the possible anchorages untenable. That meant I would have to sail through the night again but it did bring the promise of another beautiful sunset underway and passage making!
We sailed through most of the night, anchoring on the west coast of Wetar Island in a perfectly sheltered little bay with a perfectly picturesque village.
Later that afternoon, we took a beautiful swim in water so clear we could see the bottom in 18m…but learned afterward the bay has regular crocodile visitors! It certainly wasn’t somewhere I expected to find crocs and we became significantly more careful in choosing our swimming locations after that.
