E44 – BLANG MERANG TO NORTH HADING BAY
Heading out of Blang Merang in calm weather.
Taking advantage of a light and suitable breeze, we sailed the anchor out at Bang Merang and headed north through the reef entrance just as the sun poked its head above the horizon. Outside the bay, we found about 10 kts of wind and continued getting a nice calm sail.
One of the things we noted as we made our way further west, is that there were more sandy beaches and suitable anchoring depths for yachts. Its definitely easier finding anchorages here than it was east of Kalabahi.
We had a great sail all the way to the reef entrance of the tiny port of Balurin where we found suitable depth and calm water and lots of kids diving and swimming off the jetty in the afternoon.
Leaving Balurin
Departing Balurin the next morning, we wound our way out through the clearly visible reef passage and continued sailing west. Our GPS was again failing to track at times which was becoming a bigger and bigger issue. It really seemed to happen most when I was relying on it the most.
As we sailed through the day, Tan made me aware of an infected bite or wound on her tummy and when I checked it out, I was quite shocked. It was a huge lump extending well out from the bite/mark and deep below her skin. As we were a long way from a doctor and a runaway infection could become very serious, very quickly, I started feeding her broad spectrum anti-biotics right away. We continued this for 5 days and started to see an improvement on day two and it eventually went away by itself by about day four.
Approaching North Hading Bay in the dark
Later in the day, we caught a great rain band and cracked along at a clipping 8kts+ but not long after, the wind dropped away and left us motoring in blue skies and hot sun!
We motored the rest of the day and into the early evening and anchored in the dark in North Hading Bay. I try to avoid this, but it wasn’t avoidable this time and gave me a chance to explain how I go about doing an unfamiliar anchorage in the dark. Watch the episode to hear my views 🙂
