Komodo National Park is our location in this video. We spend a week sailing around exploring, snorkelling and climbing peaks. At any given time during a normal year there are 8-10 thousand visitors in the area. Its pretty special to explore these well known places this year as we are virtually alone. The water was crystal clear, the currents strong and because of this the plastic waste in the water and on the beaches was noticeably less.
We had some great sailing along the way and in typical fashion I choose a time when the wind was blowing 26kts to get Marie to steer for her first time. You'll have to watch pretty much till the end to see that though. Also a slide show of my favourite images.
Enjoy!

Closed Captions (CC):
I've got corn on my teeth? No. Good morning everyone,
welcome to another episode of Sailing Learning By Doing.

This week we are in Komodo national park,
Labuan Bajo on the western tip of Flores Island.

We're going into the park to spend about a week
looking around. It's pretty famous everyone sort of

has you know, knows about the dragons and the
mantas and the the Padar lookout and things

like that. Obviously there's hardly anyone here so
that's a pretty cool thing for us we get to check

this all out. So anyway just enjoy this video, we're
not going to talk at all we're just going to put

a couple of good songs on, show you the footage
we're going to collect hopefully and we'll get

back to you later with our actual thoughts and
our experiences in the park.

Right now we're about to head off. We're on a mooring buoy and the
wind is pretty favorable for where we want to go

so i'm going to pull up the mainsail and i'll
show you show you how we sail off the mooring.

So we're on a mooring here,
we've been here a couple of days

and as we're about to head that way and obviously
the wind's coming from this direction we can sail

straight off this morning. We won't turn the engine
on, we just pull up the mainsail, throw the mooring

rope off, drift back a bit get round to the right
heading, pull out the head sail and off we'll go.

Okay bye bye mooring.

So good to just sail off the mooring, It's sort of pretty, i don't know it might be

pretty lame but to get from point A to point B
without turning the engine on it's pretty cool,

because like normally we put the engine on at
least just to lift the anchor well you know, to

to drive the anchor winch but on a mooring boy
you just drop it, reverse back a little bit,

turn on and boom you go and there's no noise and you're sailing it's pretty cool.

We're going through a super narrow part here,
that's komodo island there, this is i don't know

a small island. We're only in seven meters of
water and the current is just crazy here,

look around and we're sailing not motoring.

oh look at this crazy current here.

We're doing eight knots.

We're ripping along, it's about 26, 27 knots of wind,
we've got first reef in the main and a reef in the

head sail and I picked this moment to let Marie
steer for the first time ever while we're sailing.

She's loving it! It's
awesome we just left Labuan Bajo,

heading towards Lombok whew!
Sailing is freaking amazing!

So it's the first time i'm steering with
the sail out, it's pretty different feeling.

Normally it's super smooth and right now it's
not at all. You can really feel the elements

like the waves and the winds, they try to push the
boats in the opposite direction than what i want.

It's good feeling? wow yeah it's good feeling
but it's a bit hard. yeah i picked my moment

Yeah i picked my moments,

giving her the first time steering in 26 knots
of wind now and we're doing eight and eight point

three knots boat speed but yeah trial
by fire. She's doing good look at these muscles.

Nah it's awesome having a good day.

So we had
an amazing time in a Komodo Park. We spent

some time in a place called the Turtle City so it
was super good corals, a lot of turtles to swim with.

Pretty beautiful place. We also visit Padar. We
plan to visit Rinca but it was close for

the moment they had a project to build a hotel
it's pretty bad for national park but yeah it was

super good place. Crazy landscapes and
colour and a lot of animals. Really liked it.

Best place ever. Feel comfortable? Super comfortable!
Nice little patch of shade, Spinnaker bag to sit on, beautiful.

Yeah, super beanbag spinnaker.

We are probably doing
the same speed as in the crossing

like around seven knots but this is clearly
better. Not heeling too much, not crazy swoles?

Swools? Swells?

Yeah, not crazy swells and yeah that's perfect
nice good position enjoying the wind I really prefer that.

This is beautiful.
We're doing seven and a half knots

nearly downwind, no swells, no waves, it is
beautiful but if i'm honest i do probably prefer

the eight and a half knots in 35 knots of wind
and surfing down waves, makes you feel alive.

This is definitely like a holiday feeling the
other one is more of a on the edge but heartbeat

to the roof sort of feeling and that's more
my style but it's good now we're both happy.

We really loved the the time here in Komodo but to be
honest I like the time in Labuan Bajo more.

Komodo, Its yeah, I mean you've all heard of Komodo
you've probably not heard of Labuan Bajo but

Labuan Bajo is a little town that where the airport
is where people arrive in komodo national park

and for us it was just cool in Labuan Bajo because

it was our first sort of view of westerners
since we arrived in Indonesia and we could get

a cappuccino, it might sound like we're tourists
but you really appreciate getting a pizza at a

restaurant for example. We hadn't had one of them
since we left Europe in early march and getting

a proper made coffee and it was just cool. It was
nice and we as you've seen in the past videos we

explored around a little bit on Flores island,
Ruteng and those places. Komodo itself was uh

i mean in my personal point of view it was a
bit of a let down but only because i'd heard

so much about it and yeah it was awesome
the water is super clear here

and really really not much plastic so they
were high points but going to Padar which

you know i've shown you in this and
here's a picture of it that famous view...

I'd rather go to somewhere that's not quite
as beautiful but i have the feeling i'm the

first one there you know i'm not i'm not
the first one anywhere but when there's

800 concreted steps taking
you to the top of something

even if the view is the best in the world to
me it doesn't really light my fire just because

i know that there's been three million
instagramers up there before me and i'm not

having the feeling i'm seeing something special in
a way even though it is special and Komodo park's

sort of like that everywhere. I'm not going to get
the best footage or the best views of a dragon,

you know, i'd rather go somewhere else along
Flores that someone without a boat can't get to

and really explore something and have a unique
view of it so that's my take on Komodo but yeah

definitely amazing amazing place. We have a
boat and we can go wherever the hell we want so

we get the exploring vibe a little more.
Anyway i hope you enjoyed this video um

yeah mostly just images here's some pictures
as well in the little slideshow at the end.

Next week we'll be, well we don't even know yet
um we don't know where we're going to be tomorrow

to be honest we're just heading towards Lombok
and we've got some visa issues we've got some

covid issues i got my second
positive rapid test yesterday.

Obviously i don't have covid, i've got
a negative pcr swab test but there's something in

my system that kicks off these antibody rapid
tests, so while i don't have covid people who

take the test and see a reactive test get all
hyper and think i'm a white person carrying the

disease so yeah that makes things complicated
and when we arrive in Lombok we'll probably get

hassled for that too but anyway
that's all in the future see ya.

Byebye!