Pulau Kentar

Anchored at Pulau Kentar
Anchorage #87 in "101 Anchorages Within The Indonesian Archipelago" by Geoff Wilson

Sebangka Island
Lingga Islands Groups,
Riau Islands Province,
Sumatra,
Indonesia
0'03.6N/104'45.6E

Storms and ships. Ships and storms. Storms and ships. Ships and storms. What fun!!

Just after crossing the equator this morning Sandpiper dropped the hook at 11am amongst our friends on S/V Uterus (Norway) and S/V Sunburn (New Zealand). During the last 48 hour run we have passed through very intense squalls with high winds, and passed lots of shipping. Last night around midnight a long line of squalls showed up on radar 18 miles away. When they show us as a solid black target that far away from us means very heavy rain heading straight for us! After a quick conversation with friends on S/V Sunburn, who were just off our bow, we brought Sandpiper up to full power and barely missed being hit by a majority of the storms.

This morning at sunrise, just as we were crossing the equator, we were not so lucky. Another giant band of squalls showed up on radar. This time we were we not able to outrun them. We were hit by 35 knot winds and sideways rain. We lost site of S/V Sunburn and just motored slowly just off the wind until it dropped down. We were then able to make anchor here in this small protected bay at Palau Kentar.

We decided to drop anchor here because this is where S/V Sunburn is stopping. Other rally boats are stopped here too until they move on to Singapore. We have 90 miles to Sabana Cove Marina. We are leaving this anchorage tonight at midnight and we hope to drop the hook tomorrow afternoon. There we will wait until the following morning before we cross the Singapore Straits. If you check out Google Earth you might see the islands we have to pass through tomorrow. We are hoping to be at the channel entrance of the Selat Riue Straits tomorrow morning at 10:30am when the tidal currents are supposed to change in our favor. Then it is a 20 mile run through these islands to drop anchor early afternoon.

More in 24,
Tom and Amy

Note From Ron: Welcome back to the Northern Hemisphere! Woo Hoo!