My Favourite Things

Other than mittens, kittens and brown paper parcels tied up with string, these are a few of my favourite things (in no particular order):

1) Sending a message in a bottle which I still hope we'll hear back from, one day twenty years from now. We wrote the note in 4 languages (to increase our chances of it being found and understood. Italian, Greek, English and a poorly translated Indonesian, that probably means something like: "You bottle look. Email deliver. Before thanks you." I did try though.)

2) Something the inner child (which is not kept so inner) had wanted to do for ages: Build a den on the deck from all our scarves, blankets, flags etc and spend the night camped out there. Or as much as I could manage before I got too cold! The rest of Team GB managed admirably though.

Rise and shine! Delina and Ronnie

3) The Indian festival of Holi - a little late and a lot more naked than the original. Partying on the beach with Laura, Rosie and Brian.










4) Another example of being in the right place at the right time: Pulau Derawan, where we wandered around the sandy roads and found ourselves in a hotel which had discovered turtle hatchlings in their grounds. Emily, Siem, Lo and I managed to convince them to let us help with the release.

In the same night we also rescued a beautiful moth that had been attracted by the light in a shop and was damaging itself flying into the walls. This was also our first meal on shore, in what felt like weeks! Actually, maybe it was just the one.

It was unfortunate we didn't get to stay longer at Derawan - it is a beautiful island with well maintained moorings and plenty of dive sites on the surrounding islands. I will hopefully come back some day.  

5) Koh Hong - which must be one of the most perfect destinations in the world for early morning beach yoga - after kayaking with Rosie through an 800m cave entrance to the hidden lagoon in the centre. Completely sheltered by the surrounding karst mountains it was a blissful experience to be there before the hordes.


6) Watching Rachel's incredible fire stick dance on the beach at Gili Air.

Miss Rachel

7) The Great British Beach clean-up! Unfortunately no pictures of this back-breaking, feet-scorching work, in which we cleared half of the long stretch of beach of discarded flipflops, lighters, plastic cups, bottles, lightbulbs, toothbrushes and many other assorted types of junk. Well done Delina, Kateface and Ronnie!

8) Becoming proficient at various arts and crafts - carving coconut jewellery, henna and making batik (and all the tidying up afterwards!) Thanks to all the people that let me practise henna on them :-)

One of my first attempts at Batik, turned into a cushion!



9)Sail Komodo. Getting involved in this rally was great fun and an opportunity to dress up for once! We went to a dinner with the President of Indonesia, plus all the other local bigwigs.



Being part of a sail pass during Sail Komodo.



10) Owning part of an aeroplane thanks to a big adventure in Bali with a nutty Italian, Laura!


On the navy boat with our new friends.




The Lion Air jet wreckage at Bali

These are just a few examples of all the boat-related activites we've done in the last six months. Obviously I haven't included any diving otherwise I'd still be writing now.

The next adventure

The next adventure came sooner than we would have liked – sailing from Kudat towards Kota Kinabalu around the northernmost tip of Borneo in the South China Sea.

A small problem of the engine completely stopping, whilst in rough waters…also with a squall, giving us 45knots of wind to go against. And to make things even more interesting, we were drifting uncontrollably whilst perilously close to a pinnacle that jutted out of the water, some 50metres away. 

Honestly, I don’t make this stuff up. 

An image of the squall on the radar which we were right in the middle of. Everything yellow is lots of wind, rain and big waves. Plus the rocks to the left, of course.

Luckily for us, Furthur is installed with a ‘Get Home’ system – or APU which allows the propeller to be run by power from the generator, rather than the engine in situations like ours. In flat, calm waters it should manage around 4knots – or about half of what we’d normally cruise at.

In this mess, we found the system worked, although a bit slower than promised given the conditions. We quickly devised a system – as soon as the engine ignition switch light went off, the engine would stall, (despite our threats and pleas) which meant Brian would run down to the engine room to turn on the get-home while I waited to steer the boat as soon as we had power. Emily watched the small engine ignition switch light like a hawk, and would shout out the second the light came back on - the engine would run again. This happened somewhere between 15 and 20 times throughout the rest of our 70 mile journey to Kota Kinabalu. Every time the light came back on, we’d be back to battle stations – Brian in the engine room, turning off the get home (you can't run both systems simultaneously), and me at the helm, trying to avoid the worst of the 3-4m swells and re-starting the engine.

Emily decided that bed was the safest place to be in the rough stuff!

Some 14 hours later, we limped into the most beautiful marina I’ve ever seen – Sutera Harbour Resort, which is just what we need for a month of well-earned R&R. 

A spectacular sunset from the marina

If you need me, I’ll be at the pool.