Saturday 21 September Medana Bay, Lombok

Medana Bay Marina is a small enterprise run by an Englishman Peter and his Indonesian wife, Mrs Ace (which is pronounced A-chey) on the north west corner of Lombok. The next big island in the chain is Bali. It offers great protection from southerly winds, 15 strong mooring balls and 10 basic pontoon berths.

Early morning mist Medana Bay, Lombok

It had been a day of no wind so we'd been motoring and as we approached I was on the fore deck looking out for uncharted reefs and David was lining us up on the leading line for a safe transit into the anchorage. We spotted Lorrigray and moved across to say hello to Lorraine, David pulled back on the throttle and the engine stopped and wouldn't switch on again! There we were mid channel with a boat on either side and no wind to fill sails. Fortunately I was already positioned at the windlass and we were in 25m of water. David steered us away from Lorrigray with the remaining momentum and I let go the anchor hoping it would hold. It did and we were safe while our Chief engineer jumped down into the engine room to investigate. He mentioned the engine had felt sluggish for the last few miles and had failed to respond to increased throttle which made him think it was a fuel problem. Sure enough twenty minutes later when he'd changed the main filter, cleaned and bled the injector pumps and done more fuel supply checks the engine fired on second attempt. He is a mechanical genius and gets us out of a doody situation quickly and without drama. We lift the anchor and continue on to pick up one of the mooring balls for the night. It goes against our philosophy to pay for a mooring ball when you can anchor but David needed to go check over the engine again to ensure it was a fuel problem and it was resolved and when the charge for a mooring ball is $10 and the charge to anchor $5 it was worth it. This is the first time we've paid for either a mooring or berthage since we were in Fiji a year ago.