Finally a glimpse of Java

Luckily we anchored when we did.

The bridge at Surabaya.we anchored this side of it.

Passing under the bridge the next morning revealed an array of fishing nets, stretched across the bay, including what could tentatively be construed as “the channel”.At any rate we had laid our courses through the deeper gutters and these were festooned with substantial net arrangements.

Having passed under the bridge this is what we encountered. Well actually, several of these- right across the 'channel'

Masses of smoke, really precluded seeing much of the coast

Picking our way through in daylight was easy .It would have been the thing of nightmares in the dark!

We were aiming for an anchorage in what appeared to be the only possible location for the evening and spent the day sailing through a naval practise mine field and firing range.

The mine field didn't appear to be in use!

Practise mine  or buoy for fishermen?

Hour after hour we passed, what I believe were the huge buoys that the fisherman use. Constructed mainly of polystyrene boxes, lashed together and over netted, and bizarrely painted mainly green- perhaps fish can't see green, I don’t know. Peter reckons they were “practise mines”, but I have seen similar creations in Thailand, so I'm going with the fisherman theory. 

The possible anchorage turned out to be a tiny bit exposed in the end, and as we had really been planning on stopping to do a bit of fuel jiggling, we decided if we couldn't , we wouldn't.

We had previously planned to do it in Surabaya Harbour, but the wind against tide, even first thing in the morning had made that an untenable proposition.

We actually did sight Java the next morning, 16miles from the NE corner, there was the volcanic mountainous backdrop we hadn't been able to see for most of its 520nm length. The exception being as we had passed through Surabaya..

That there is a volcano,poking its head through the smoke

Low lying coast line just visible as the  smoke clears

To top it off- wind, and from a direction we could actually use. A rare commodity indeed!

We blasted out into the selat which separates Java from Bali. Decisions decisions, sail on using the wind or head south through the selat and approach Benoa Harbour from the South ,or continue across the North. Calculating that the current would be against us in the selat we chose to go north about .

About 40minutes before dusk we encountered the first of the “mobile homes” or floating cubby houses, aka FAD’s. Hmmmm, maybe we should have gone the other way!