it was windy at 5am as we prepared for our 50km crossing. Unusually so for that time in the morning. We got out the sat phone and checked for a forecast from Karel. Winds of over 20 knots were forecast for the afternoon from the NE which would be a sidewind pushing us back towards the exposed coast that we were trying to avoid by doing this crossing. We discussed options and decided to stay put. Back to sleep for me for a few delicious hours then a bit of reading. At noon Sandy spotted a local wooden canoe heading for the island. A short strong man gingerly stepped out and introduced himself as Alex, the owner of the island. He stayed and chatted with us for a while. I got my dictionary out and tried to communicate. The the wind came up and it was too strong for Alex to canoe back the 2km to the mainland. He was stuck with us! Eventually he tried to paddle across, stopping to bail or his canoe frequently as waves splashed into it. After 5 minutes I noticed he was heading bac k to
the island. I walked down the beach to meet him and saw that one of his outriggers had broken off. As he landed, timing it skilfully between sets of waves, the smallpiece of wood that connects the other outrigger broke.

I was treated to a skilful display of how you can fix a boat using just fishing line if you know how. A new Bailer was made from a water Burke and he headed off back to the mainland one more, but not befoe he showed me around his Island. We may be here tomorrow as well. It .looks windy again

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Sandy and I paddled about 70km over the last 2 days along the South coast of Raja Ampat Islands. It's a really pretty coastline, limestone cliffs, white sandy beaches and mangroves, all with a rich Green background of shrubbery and a diverse world of colour under the water. Wooden longboats with flimsy looking outriggers put by on a small motor or are paddled skilfully with heavy wooden canoe paddles.

Today we saw 3 pods of dolphins, hunting tightly together, their curved fins gracefully piercing the surface to the same beat. Twice they jumped clean out of the water to take a closer look at these unusual long red things.

Tomorrow we cross 52km to mainland Papua. It could be a long day but hopefully the prevailing northerlies will come good.

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Sandy and I are 3 days in to a 5 day paddle around Raja Ampat, a side trip that Sandy describes as a holiday from her expedition from Germany to Australia. I'm joining her for about 7 weeks until mid April when I'll fly home from whatever small airport that I'm nearest. I'm delighted Sandy has agreed to let me join her as we'd never met before. So far we've been together almost a week and are getting on well. It's interesting to see the systems used by other people who have travelled thousands of miles by kayak.

I'll be posting a few photos to this blog as weer go along so please follow if you are interested.

Thanks to iridium for the sat phone to allow us to do it. 

We have taken over! Thanks Andi Njo!

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