Sailing is a very satisfying way of moving from A to B. It can be very frustrating and compared to other new forms of transport very slow. It gives me a very nice sense of achievement though, arriving somewhere new, knowing that I harnessed the wind and worked with nature to reach my goal. Join us this week as we cross the Lombok straight, well known for its boisterous sea's and strong current.
Enjoy!

#Indonesia #Learningbydoing #sailing

Closed Captions (CC):
good morning welcome to another episode

of learning by doing

we are here in south lombok the gili

islands we're anchored right off gili

gaday at the moment

and today we're going to cross the

lombok strait and go to

lembongan which is a small island just

off bali

the lombok strait is pretty notorious

actually it's

well known for pretty big waves and

mostly

current the indian ocean is in the south

and the pacific ocean is in the north

and one of them is higher than the other

i can't remember which but it creates a

huge current sometimes six to seven

knots currents mostly heading south

when the tide changes it heads north a

little bit but not as strong

and that depending on where the wind's

coming from obviously can cause quite

big waves

um today is not supposed to be too windy

so it should be fine

and it's only about 25 miles to the

west side of lebanon but yeah we'll show

you we'll take you along today

on this little little trip and we'll

show you what's going on over there

[Music]

[Applause]

hmm

[Music]

all right we're just motoring out

between all these islands there's a

bunch of islands around here

uh the wind's starting to fill in now so

i'm gonna put out the fishing lures and

then

pull the sails up and we'll uh switch

off the engine and get moving

it's about 30 miles over to to our

anchorage in limbo

so i know it should take half a day we

haven't caught a fish since we left raja

ampat

six months ago we caught lots of plastic

there's too many fishermen here and not

enough fish but it's also our fishing

equipment

i haven't had any really updated fishing

equipment since leaving three years ago

from australia marie bought a couple new

lures but

yeah i'm using old gear and it's pretty

trash so it's probably also why we're

not catching fish

anyway you definitely don't catch any if

you don't try

so we're going to try all right let's

see if that works

theoretically we should have a bigger

chance out in the strait of lombok

but there are about 3 000 little fishing

boats out here every single night with

nets and long lines so

oh yeah there's a lot of water moving

between here and a lot of food so maybe

there will be a fish

so we've got about 10 knots of wind now

but i'm expecting it to pick up a bit

more

as you can see we're still sort of in

the shadow of this um

this is the lowest peninsula of lombok

out in front of us

there's um yes no no land obviously so

it should pick up a bit more

i'm gonna put up the mainsail now i've

actually attached my

gopro max a 360 camera to the top of the

sail to the headboard

and uh this should give some interesting

footage it should probably look a bit

like a drone shot but from the top of

the mast

so i'm quite interested i haven't

checked that out yet so i'm going to

pull it up there

this uh

okay i was ailing we only got

eight and a half knots of true wind

right now but yeah

another couple of miles we passed the

headland into the strait

we're doing five knots actually which is

pretty good there must be a little bit

of current here for us being five knots

and

eight knots of wind but yeah whatever

it's all good

all right we got the wind we actually

haven't been sailing for around two

weeks now

as you've seen the last couple of videos

we're on land in lombok

and um just enjoying holiday actually

hanging out at the islands

eating a really good pizza and italian

food at eco lodge on

giliasahan little plugs there to you

guys yana thanks very much

so good and yeah anyway it's great to be

sailing again

we've got full sails up

probably a bit overpowered now but

we're doing nine knots nearly eight

seven or eight eight and uh yeah it's

probably time to put a reef in now i can

feel the boat starting to round up a

little bit but it's

nice to let the boat pull us a little

bit yeah yeah we need to reef now

anyway sailing is so much fun as always

loving it

yeah so as you can see then by the trail

through the water

it's a bit of a zigzag so that just

confirms that um

slightly overpowered so basically when

it's overpowered the boat wants to pull

up into the wind

and it'll do that for a second and then

the autopilot will just

you know drag it back on course you sort

of start doing asses

which isn't very efficient and it's um

pretty hard on the autopilot and

uses a lot of battery power so yeah

we'll put a reef in and we'll probably

just go as fast but uh

i'm under control so i put a first reef

in the main

and yeah we've lost about half a knot

we're still doing

seven seven seven eight um but yeah it's

much more comfortable

the swell is starting to pick up now so

it's coming straight up the channel

but it's really nice it's straight on

the side about 90 degrees to us

but i would say it's about a meter meter

and a half

but a long period you know so it's we

just go slowly up and down

there's barely any chop we've got

what do we got 20 20 knots of wind but

it's pretty calm it's pretty beautiful

sailing right now i think this one will

pick up a little bit more even

as we get towards the middle of the

channel yeah it's very nice

marie just sitting down here with her

feet in the

count my water bites

oh we're a few miles into it now we're

about

i don't know a third of the way maybe

now we've got 18 miles to go so yeah

a bit over a third of the way and yeah

it's just going well the swell is

just rolling through marie's feeling a

little bit sick now

um beside on to the swell but it's not

too bad but it's just

just we haven't been out actually

sailing at all for the last two weeks so

i think she's just feeling it a little

bit

but she's lying down now over here

[Music]

having a sleep on the spinnaker and i'm

actually going to take a look at the

outboard

it's been being bit of a bastard to

start the last few days

normally it's sort of one pull or maybe

two

and a couple of times the last few days

i've had to pull it 10 times to get it

going so i'm gonna

take the spark plugs out and give them a

clean it's always good to have a little

little mission something to do while

you're sailing keep them busy

yeah it's a little bit uh a little bit

black and oily so i'll give it a bit of

a clean with the wire brush

and uh hopefully it'll feel good again

well that was a pretty quick little exit

job uh we'll see if it makes any

difference tonight when we

put the dinghy in the water if it isn't

that then it will be something to do

with the carburetor there's probably

some some water or some condensation in

the

diaphragm pump or something but tip

number one

always do that easy obvious things first

and then if they don't work move on to

the more difficult ones

[Music]

[Music]

well we are flying right now you can see

in the distance there nusa penida

that's the bigger of the two islands out

here off bali

and lembongan where we're going to go is

just on the west side of that

so we're actually going to sail to the

coast basically

up around it we could have gone a bit

shorter straight across the top but

we haven't seen this island before so

we're going to sail quite close to the

coast and then just hug the coast around

the top

yes 22 23 knots of wind and

we're doing 9-3 right now

flying along one reef in the main full

jib

marie's liking the wind in her hair but

she's probably liking it more when we

get there

that was a little rhyme actually getting

pretty good at that bust the rhymes

didn't catch any fish yet but there's

still time

still staying confident till the end the

bitter end probably

but uh yep yeah beautiful sail we just

had

cream like uh just nice little rollers

and uh

consistent i think we never dropped

below six knots

and uh yeah beautiful another 10 miles

to go to the anchorage

[Music]

because when we turn the corner we're

going to be going straight into the wind

then i put the headsail sheets through

the inside track

helium has an inside and outside track

so for upwind it's inside that means you

can bring the headsail

closer into the mast basically and then

the outside tracks for anything

anything more than 90 degrees more than

a beam reach i'll put it through the

outside track and then you get a bigger

slot

between the main and the headset

foreign

so we just came around the corner in

limbo

and we could have just motived straight

over there but we're going to sail

we're sailing all day but yeah now we're

in the in the currents there's this

weird currency you can sort of see like

little whirlpools and probably on camera

it looks like nothing like

all things in the when you're sailing

big waves look like flat water on camera

but

super weird currents around here we're

probably doing about five knots but

we're only doing two knots over the

ground

so a bit of a current against us and the

gps is playing up

on my phone and on the both chart

plotters it's showing us about

100 degrees off where we are actually

which is sort of strange but um it

doesn't really matter we can see where

we need to go

on our you know the paper maps we can

see that the

point where i want to go and anchor on

yeah we're just going to have to battle

down pretty slowly against this current

and then we'll take straight over and we

should get straight in there

all right so we've now arrived in

and we're trying to find a mooring

it's pretty rolly in here and it's um

the wind's coming from there and the

swells coming from there so it's not

ideal

uh there's a mooring boy just behind us

but that was really rolly so we're going

in a bit closer

it's pretty shallow though it's only

eight meters now and it's

getting shallower but closer we can find

the mooring boy that probably the camera

will be

okay well that's us we found a good

mooring we're in about

five and a half meters of water here

pretty close actually there's kids

surfing just behind us there's a surf

surf thing right here so we there's a

bit of a swell going up and down here

but it's not really rolly as such

so it's it's pretty good yeah so it's

been a pretty fun day

a few currents and whirlpools around at

the end but uh

yeah fun day sailing nothing broke

that's always the main thing if i get

somewhere

and nothing bad happened and nothing

broke you don't have to fix anything

i'm stoked and marie didn't end up being

sick so that's always a bonus

and yeah great day hope you guys enjoyed

that

just pure sailing today no as

the norwegian

legend up there would say no

just sailing

um yeah this obviously wasn't as rough

as what he does but still

we didn't do anything else and we just

sailed so i'm just going to jump in the

water now and check this mooring boy

i'm definitely pretty mistrustful of

mooring boys

i know when i anchor i know my anchor

gear is good my chain's good i know

i put out the right amount of scope and

i've never ever dragged

on my anchor touch wood but i take a lot

of care i don't have insurance on this

boat so my insurance is

is me taking care when i'm anchoring

boring boys are handy especially some

places you can't anchor you're not

allowed to

but there's no

there's no information on when it was

last checked or you know

is the shackle 10 years old or whatever

so if i'm on a mooring boy

i jump in the water and check it because

if it breaks in the night we end up on

the reef

no one's going to say oh sorry here

here's a new boat they're going to be

like

yeah your risk so i'm going to jump in

and check it

[Music]

hmm

well that's a pretty heavy duty mooring

that um that chain was pretty good and

uh yeah it's about a 10-ton

concrete block down there so beautiful

feel safe and can sleep well so once

again

thank you thank you thank you to all our

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anyway thanks very much see you next

week bye