Christmas Island

Indonesia requires yachts to have a permit to transit their waters. We chose not to follow that line, and we used the main shipping channels and not stopping. First we had to head NE for a day before clearing island and turning South. Sometimes sailing, sometimes motor sailing we were able to make good progress....had we known the future we would of sailed more and motored less !!!!!!!
Clearing Indonesia via the quiet Sunda Strait (we had heard horror stories about the ships here and the currents) We set course for Christmas Island.
Surprise, surprise Christmas Island eventually came into view along with an Australian Warship which came to say hullo and shadowed us to Flying Fish Bay which is the only anchorage on the island.
Customs, Quarantine and Immigration met us under the coconut trees on shore and were very enthusiastic that we had actually arrived with the correct visa !!!!!!Seems as if we were the first and only to get it right. All formalities went well, leaving us to wander around. Two other yachts were at anchor also. Internet coverage and speed was almost useless...but we perservered and were able to tell family and friends of our safe arrival and expected departure.
Supplies to the island are by airfreight...which adds $7.00 per kilo to costs...so a lettuce can cost $20.00, but ca packet of 20 cigarettes for $2.00 (two), and good whisky for $15.00
The local supermarket was had quite a lot of marked down/out of date stock....but they gave us cordial sachets they could not move....so now Brian has 1500 litres of red cordial to drink !!!!!! :)

Relaxing on board it was noticed the inner forstay seemed rather slack...as weawatched it came slithering down to the deck.....when we had replaced the rigging Brian kept one of each of the original......but after six years he had no idea where in this HUGE boat it was stored....three day later we found it....hiding with a 20kg bottle of freezer refrigerant,the spare hot water cylinder etc etc....(god we have so much unesassary stuff onboard :(......) and of course all the stuff we took out would not fit back in again.
And now Murphys Law kicked in........the wire we wanted wasn't one of the ones we had kept, as the original was in too bad a state to save. :(..Crying didn't help...swearing sort of helped......