Indonesia...

We joined the Wonderful Sail 2 Indonesia Rally

which means that our paperwork for Indonesia is assisted with

(It has been the most difficult paperwork to deal with in all our travels!)

(There are 68 boats on this rally)

We left Hope/Thursday Island for the journey which took us 5 days, 

slowing ourselves down to ensure arrival in daylight.

We were very lucky, as many boats encounted lots of problems on the way here.

There were more fishing boats and nets than we have seen anywhere - a number of boats got tangled in nets, one boat lost their rudder.

We had 3 "hitchhikers" along the way, staying for a couple of days

On arrival, customs and Immigration were brought out to Our Rose by long boat

Once cleared, the local children came out

Recollection of our passports was completed ashore...

As you can see by all the smiles, everybody is incredibly friendly.

The town of Debut do not get tourists, so we are a real novelty!

S/V Sedna, S/V Chase The Cat and us decided to go touring so we organised a driver along with a English Speaking Guide (fondly known to us now as Captain Ron).

Cost for 6 hours for taxi and Captain Ron was the equivalent of $45 total!

We went to the markets

The children so excited to see us

Had a look at boatbuilding - they use 3 tools to build a boat!

Beautiful Cave Pools...

Swimming Area

On the way to a beautiful lookout walk, this village was completing this for a religious ceremony

Here there are two prominent religions (that live in harmony together!)

Catholic and Muslim.

On the way to the lookout the church

And these statues

       

A beautiful beach, where we had dozens of people run up to us and want a photograph with us

The local children were "valet parking" for our dinghys

Local boats heading out

There was a huge welcome ceremony for us...

Then off we went for a school visit

Richard speaking indonesian to the class

This was one of the english lessons they do...

(My favourite song!)

These fishing structures are our amazing - out at sea they are very hard to see, as they are not well lit

We were so thrilled this morning and went out to greet the "rudderless yacht"

finally arrived after being rescued by other cruisers

Goodbyes...

Sunrise at Scarborough Marina.

A tribute walkway to the Beegees, having come from this area

Waiting for a weather window to head north from Scarborough Marina was taking longer than expected, so we hired a car and headed up to see Carola and Jim (Koza) and Fay and Phil (Jigsaw)

We had had so much fun coming down through the Pacific with them 

and it was yet again time for goodbyes...  we will miss them as we travel on.

Middle Percy Island...

where there was a structure built for the cruisers to use, 

 

with flags and parafanaleia from all over the world,

so we left our mark of having visited...

There was a lovely walk up to the original homestead, where they had put sayings along the way attached to trees...

Near the A-Frame on the beach  is a "Tree House".  This is presently lived in by a young couple who are volunteering on the island, and also on occassion offering coffee and goat stew to cruisers - if they were lucky enough to catch a goat on the right day...

Sailing passed Hamilton Island you are directly deside the airport

At the time of arriving here, it was only about a month after the Cyclone and you could see it had hit some of the islands with a vengeance.

At Sawmill Bay, Whitsundy Island we went ashore for a walk to the top

The damage from the cyclone very evident...

The views at the top were spectacular

Spectacular sunset at Airlie Beach...

Anchored off Mantes Resort Cape Glouchesr it was time for more goodbyes...

Another sad goodbye to Sea Adler... It was a delight meeting you all...

Arriving at Magnetic Island we were struck by how the island is made up of boulders

We went on some really lovely walks here, being lucky enough to see Koala in the wild

along with Kookaburras and Wallabies

The scenery was spectacular...

We made a day stop at Zoe Bay, and walked to the waterfall...

So the time had come to be even more vigilant and definately no going in the water

Heading to Bluewater Marina just north of Cairns it was time to reprovision before heading to Indonesia and sadly we also had to get a new outboard our Yamaha having corroded with a cracked block from the inside out.  Considering this was flushed regularly we were pretty disappointed!

The new outboard above, and a few boxes of essentials below hahaha

Leaving Cairns area

The fort lockout at Thursday Island...

We had various other anchorages we stopped at.

We had to cut short our time and head urgently to Horn/Thursday Island with a major problem with our inverter.  We have had to replace this.

 We are now checked out and heading off to Indonesia on Sunday.

So it is "Goodbye to Australia"...