On our way out from Alor, Bette Lee was able to get enough cellular signal to pick up her Sailmail emails. Incoming was a message from our friends Mark & Laura on Sabbatical III about a gorgeous, UNINHABITED anchorage off the small island of Adonara with beautiful clear water, nice reefs plus active volcanos nearby!
Liking the sound of that, we adjusted our heading and did the calculations only to find that at best we'd arrive right about sunset. Not ideal. We poured a few more revs on the engines in hopes of arriving in time, but in fact the sun set about a half hour out and as we approached the pass, dusk came on faster than we could. Even though a rally boat had slipped in about an hour before us, there was not enough light to see our way in.... especially when the depth sounder popped up with 10' when the chart said we should still be in 135'!
And so we were forced to turn around and continue on. Very sad. Perhaps had we just been a few meters to the right (the charts for the area are notoriously off), we would have made it in. But it simply wasn't worth the risk.
However, after we got all the sails re-raised and set, it had gotten dark enough that we were able to see the fiery lava vents on the surrounding mountainsides blazing like hearth fires in the dark.
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