Jocara Newsletter
Aug 24, 2004

It's 9 in the evening and the rest of the crew is in bed. It's my watch
until midnight. It's a beautiful night. The half moon is in a clear sky
and we're sailing along at 7 knots in her reflection. It's quiet here, no
fishing boats at all, just a freighter every now and then. Later in the
night we'll start passing oil fields. We left Liat Island early this
morning and at this speed we'll arrive at Merak, a port on Java, tomorrow
afternoon. John has to be very careful hopping around the boat, but his
foot is getting a little better. Alex has not got sick yet. I'm actually
feeling peaceful right now. Have we been gone only 2 weeks? It feels much
longer. It's been an intense 2 weeks with plenty of worries, but also some
wonderful moments. This afternoon I think I saw a guitarfish (a kind of
shark) cruising past the boat near the surface.

11:30pm Cannot keep my eyes open anymore! Half an hour more. Scan the
horizon, check the radar. Have a drink of water. Another 3 minutes have
past, 27 more minutes to go.

3:15am Another watch. I managed to get some sleep between watches. The
motion is quite gentle. The moon has gone down and it's very dark now. On
the port side are the lights of an oil field. There are other little
lights ahead.

4:30am It's spooky here. Lights that I cannot find on the radar. Lights
that appear out of nowhere. A light that looked like it just appeared on
the horizon was actually a little buoy with a flashing light which we
passed only 5 minutes later about 20 m away! There was also a kind of
streak in the sky. Did something get burned up in the atmosphere?

6:00 am. The east is getting lighter. Time to make coffee for John and
feed the cats.

8:30 am.  Caroline has gone to bed, The sun rises dramatically out of the
sea to our left, quickly bursting the buble of night and bringing the
temperature up almost immediately.  The wind continues to ease, and we are
now moving gently along on the last 60 miles towards Merak.  We are at 5
deg. 04.1'S, 106 deg. 18.5'E, just about to pass between a couple of
offshore oil fields.  Merak by sunset?  Caroline, John and the Jocara
Crew.