Saturday 14th May 2022 - Do’o Island to Darwin

I woke around 09:00 and cooked up some sausages for breakfast. It was another hot calm day at sea and today I lowered and removed the Indonesian flag and raised ONLY the Australian red ensign. Today is exactly three years to the day that Sirocco departed Hillary’s Yacht Club and after 2 ½ years in Indonesia, today she is coming home.

I did some washing and then packed away all my dive gear and also some clothes that were drying on the life lines. I then spent several hours cleaning the second bathroom that was still a mess with lots of mould and horrible black goo on the floor.

Every item in there had to be individually cleaned and wiped down with vinegar. It came up spotless and that was the last of the major cleaning now completed and the boat is looking like brand new again.

While I had the bleach out, I washed a lot of stains and bird shit off the forward deck area and did a few other chores. I was pretty exhausted after all that work and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.

We sailed past a few logs and coconuts floating on the water and at one stage we went past this huge tree trunk. I would hate to hit that at night. I steered very close to it and there was a massive amount of quite large fish sitting under it including one very large fish, but none of them were interested in the fishing lure.

To help pass the time, I setup some cans on the life lines for target practice and we had pot shots with the air rifle.

For dinner I cooked up a heap of spicy chicken wings again that were very nice. Luke went to sleep right after dinner and I woke him up around 22:00 for his first watch while I got a bit of shut eye as I had the grave yard watch starting at 02:00.

Track Sirocco’s progress

 https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Sirocco