People may have noticed that the frequency of Khulula blog postings appear to be directly proportional to the amount of time Khulula and crew spend at sea…

Has anyone noticed this?

After two weeks of idyllic, unmoving, unsailing (word? Not a word?), full-sleep-nights and surfing filled days, we realized that the statement above could not be more true. Not only that, but we had not even provided a final position report for our penultimate passage completion destination of 2008, the fantastically quaint town of Nemberella on Roti (loosely translated from Bahasi Indonesian as “Bread Loaf”).

All three crew members were on the verge of having serious sense-of-humour failures on the morning of our arrival on good ‘ol Bread Loaf, mostly due to a distinct lack of sleep the previous eve. This lack of sleep, kindly gifted to us by mother nature in the form of 40 knots winds and super choppy seas, was magnified by the Indonesian fishing fleet’s anchoring prowess. Clearly these gentlemen were not expecting the 40 knot winds and must surely have been surprised to find their fishing boats had snapped the mooring lines in the black of the night. And who happened to be just downwind of these fishing boats on the loose? Khulula! It was a very sobering and ghostly sight to see a large wooden fishing boat, completely adrift, howl past the rail of Khulula in the middle of the night. While not allowing our mind to dwell on “what if’s”, a collision with that boat would have been the end of our trusty vessel Khulula.

So, needless to say, we were VERY on edge for the rest of the night, checking and rechecking the radar, scanning the horizon. At dawn we navigated a reef pass that could be better described as a washing machine rather than a channel. Imagine the chop from 40 kt winds colliding with a 4 knot counter current…

At 10 am we were dropping anchor in a spectacular, flat, calm bay with an epic surf break within paddling distance from the boat. Finally, our huge passage (3000mi plus) from Vanuatu to Bread Loaf, was over. Phew….

The last two weeks have been marvellous sun kissed and surf filled perfection.

The usually unsuccessful search for surf has paid off, big time!