A 5 month adventure on land and sea

Shipboard Meanderings......March 15-16 We have 2 days at sea before we anchor in Slawi Bay and have to take a tender from the ship to land on Komodo Island. Sailing slowly west through the Timor Sea with Australia to our south and the islands of Indonesia to our north it was a very calm relaxing 2 days. It's still hot, but it doesn't seem as bad, maybe I am finally getting used to it. But as we get closer to the equator the sun seems to get more intense. We have 3 ports in Indonesia, so we decided to exchange some US dollars to Indonesian Rupiah. $1.00 US=14,000 Rupiah. So, exchanging $300.00 US we had about 4,200,000 Rupiah. For about 3 days we were Indonesian millionaires, but it's all in perspective. It was rather fun having all those bills. Indonesia readily takes US currency, but sometimes it's easier to have a little of the local money. More than half of the ship staff call Indonesia home, and you could feel the excitement among them as we were getting closer t

Shipboard Meanderings........March 11-13 After leaving Cairns, we have 3 sea days before our next port of Darwin..... Our last port of call in Australia. After the last 2 back to back ports it will be nice to relax and rehydrate before we land in one of the hottest cities in Northern Australia. Our reef pilot is still onboard and will guide us slowly north through the Great Barrier Reef, the Coral Sea, and through the Torres Strait. He will leave us in Darwin. We were sailing in very shallow water with small islands and reefs exposed on either side of us. Every once in awhile we could see old shipwrecks on those reefs, wondering what their story was.  The weather is still hot, but the rain is finally dissipating. It was a very interesting sail. We also had our Captain's dinner. Every world cruiser who is on for the entire voyage is invited to a dinner with the Captain. Now I'm not saying we get to sit with the Captain, but we get a picture with him and he is dining in the s