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By Jim Banks...

Day 1

It's restocking day and we head into the Kupang markets early. The markets are alive with people and I take my camera for some fun. The locals love having their picture taken and it creates a lot of laughing with each other when I take pictures of them. We stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and chicken, rice and eggs.

After lunch we pick up Benny, Dom and Hamish for the airport and take them to the harbour. Back at the boat we haggle with the a local harbour supply crew for better transport prices for the fuel and water. They're charging too much but we're pushed for time and don't really have the time to transport it ourselves and so after much haggling we finally give in to their high fees.

Day 2

First light sees us sailing along the leeward coast of Rote. We know the swell's only small and we head out to the outermost island to check a left on the bottom corner of the island. It's only small and the offshore is blowing a lot of chop down the channel and into the wave. But the boys are keen and head out. The waves are pretty ordinary and opt to watch from the scout boat. The waves don't suit Dom at all but Benny manages to pull a few moves. Harley's joined them but right at the end the strong offshore blows the board up into his face and he cops his first surfing injury, a major black eye. There's no point staying here so we keep moving and head over to our favourite little left point to anchor for the night.

Day 3

The waves are small but clean and I suggest to the boys to come for a surf as the tide changes but they're more keen to go spearfishing at the drop off I'd showed them earlier in the morning. Julien and I head out for an idyllic mid morning session. The waves aren't epic but it's a perfectly offshore and the chest high sets are peeling down the reef for about a 100 meters. The wave bends around the reef nicely here and it's ideal for pulling high speed moves on the face. The boys return form their dive all stoked with a massive cod that Damo's shot. They paddle out to join us for a surf but they've missed the tide change and the waves drop right off as the tide races out.

Day 4

The swells a little bigger today and there's good waves early, but we make the mistake of waiting for what we think will be the better tide. We still get some ok waves but the winds not as good as yesterday and it's a bit of an ordinary session. But the morning's not a complete loss as a family of manta rays swims by the boat. We dive in to swim with them and get a buzz from them as they glide around with silent graceful swoops of their giant wings.

A little later a really large one launches itself right out of the water next to me as I sit on the deck of the boat enjoying the morning sun. Right on dark I take Julien out for a solo sunset surf and it turns out to be a surprise session as chest high sets reel off perfect barrels across the outside shelf in the fading light.

Day 5

It comes up windy and stormy through the night. Rain squalls lash us through the night. We wait through the grey morning to see if the wind will change but no luck and so pull anchor and head off to the lee of the main island. Just as we sail away a head high peeler teasingly reels off. A parting gesture from our home for the last 3 weeks. Back at the main island we stock up on a few essential supplies before we head out across the channel to a couple of very remote islands. A couple of hours after dark we pull the anchor and head out into the night. Part of our safety strategy is to arrive at locations in daylight so that we don't run into any uncharted reefs or even islands themselves. Most places here don't have navigation beacons and it wouldn't be difficult to run aground on a dark night.

Day 6

Even though the winds died, the ocean is sloppy and it's a rocky crossing. I wake in the middle of the night and wander out onto the deck under the full moon. There's no land in sight any where and it's a strange eery feeling as we roll across the sloppy oily ocean. Even the moon appears quite haunting tonight and I feel like I've slipped into Coleridge's the Ancient Mariner's Tale or maybe Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean. A little later on I spot a first ghostly glimpse of the northerly most island of our destination and by first light we are sailing through the channel between the two islands.It's rough in the channel with the current making the ocean even sloppier and we get a couple of solid rocks that sends things flying, including thermos #2 which becomes another shaker full of jangling fragments of glass after one particularly hard rock. Right in the middle of the roughest part, a Tengirri hits our fishing line and pulls the hand line clean off the boat. It gets caught in our scout boat that we are towing behind us and Bahal dives into it to save the line, and hopefully, catch the fish. It's a mad caper. The scout boat is surfing the steep, choppy short interval swells and weaving like crazy, tossing Bahal all over the place. He cops a couple of solid slams against the side of the boat and we see him wince in pain. But he doesn't give up and starts pulling the fish in. But halfway through, the line goes slack and the tengirri has got away. Getting back out of the scout boat turns out to be as mad a caper as getting into it but finally Bahal times an upward surge of the scout boat and lunges up onto the back of the Lambo.

Finally we are out of the wild channel and motoring down the leeward side of our destination island. As we come round the the last point there it is. Distant peeling almond eyes are reeling away at the far end of the bay. As we get closer wecan see the sets are obviously overhead and we head up into the corner of the bay in anticipation of a killer session. But luck's not with us and by the time we hit the wave, the wind's swung too east and the tide has got too high. I knew that there was a possibility of the tide getting too high but I hadn't factored on the wind going funky and sending big cross chops down the channel and into the wave. It's difficult not to be disappointed.

Meanwhile Dom and Benny like the look of a wedge over in the corner of the cove and head on over. The boys are stoked with the wedge and head back out after lunch for the dropping tide. They report that it gets real hairy as it gets crazy shallow on the dropping tide I'm still obsessed with long left and try a late session as the tide drops. The winds blown a cross chop into the swell. Get a a couple of brief runs along the edge of a very shallow reef but after only a couple of waves I decide it's not worth the risk and I opt to wait for a better day.

Day 7

We get in an early morning session at the wedge. Benny is calling it his favourite wave now. The boys love the wedging take off and short intense barrels. I remember liking them at their age. These days I like the long ones....but the swell's dropped and there's none of these around today. We need to restock so we head over to the larger island. It takes a few hours of sailing to get up to the port of the main island and we anchor in a channel just off an idyllic beach. Despite the small swell, there's a nice right peeling on the north side of the channel. It's pretty obvious that it would have it's day and on the other side of the channel there's also a nice left peeling along the edge of the reef. But the waves are tiny, too small to surf and we head into town to get supplies.

Day 8

We head back to the smaller island. The surf is still small but Benny and Dom are still having fun at the wedge. I take the scout boat around the headland to check the bombie lefts that we can see from the boat. It's obviously a series of shifting peaks that don't seem to offer much wall but i had spotted a few peeling barrels and was curious. From up close it's a mess with huge ripples running across the waves and I write it off for now. But after lunch Dom also spots the peeling barrels and we all head back over for another look. With the high tide, the ripples that tearing up the waves previously have gone and it's looking pretty surfable. Benny, Dom and Hamish head for the inside bowl while Julien and I are drawn to the outside peaks.

The way the waves are breaking here reminds me of Hawaii as the peaks stand and pitch out translucent aqua eyes. There's a lot of sand in amongst the reef here and it makes the water a beautiful pale aqua colour. The outside peaks are a little elusive but it turns into a surprisingly fun session and I get barreled nearly every wave. I can hear Dom and Benny hooting from the inside and I head over to try the inside bowls. I take a set and it it gets shallow real fast as I fly through the pitching bowl but the wave holds up and I manage to pull out at the other end unscathed.

As the tide drops we head back to the wedge in the corner to score some late afternoon backdoor barrels and it's a good session with Hamish scoring some good shots. We head back up to anchor off the village in the evening in the hope of getting a clam anchorage but the east winds are blowing a stack of windswell around the corner of the island making it a rocky night and at one point during the middle of the night there's a whole lot of banging and crashing as the congas go flying.

Day 9

The swell hasn't changed and we surf the wedge again. I spot some seriously peeling barrels at the bombie and Julien, Harley and I try the bombie again on high tide but the current is crazy today and we get sucked out to sea in a matter of minutes. Luckily Bahal is nearby with the scout boat and we call him over to rescue us as we get sucked off the bottom of the island and out into the Indian Ocean. Back at the wedge a series of big sets pour through at high tide and Dom and Benny are getting excited in anticipation of some serious barrels on the lower tide.

Low tide turns it on again and Dom and Benny return to the boat buzzed from the intense barrels. After last nights rocky affair we anchor at the break overnight and during the night I wander out onto the deck to gaze out at the night. I look over the side of the boat and all around me the water is twinkling with millions of tiny phosphorescence. I'm used to seeing the phosphorescence light up as the boat cuts through the water at night but I've never noticed the whole ocean twinkling like the stars in the sky. I wonder if there is something special going on here. Or maybe I never noticed it before...

Day 10

Swells smaller again but still fun. The fishing boat finally gets it's motor going and moves on. The winds really blowing and I get the feeling that the strong winds are holding the swell out. I start to wonder how long we want to wait here for. There's supposed to be swell but it's not showing. Still waiting for the long left to break. I've been waiting 20 years to surf this wave. During the late eighties I had a picture of a friend standing in double overhead barrel here. It was stuck on my fridge door for about ten years. I knew that I would get here one day. But I was in no hurry. I knew how remote it was and that it would be a long time before the hordes got here.

Day 11

I don't sleep well through the night and spend most of the night awake. This often happens before a new swell. It's like something in my body somehow detects that there is a swell coming and my body just wants to be awake. This has a positive side that i'm often up and at it real early so by the time first light appears i'm wide awake and ready to go. The negative side, like this morning is that sometimes by the time morning comes i'm so tired from being awake nearly all night that I fall back asleep in the morning and then sleep in.

We had heard that the swell was supposed to come up today and I was looking forwards to seeing the lines of swell sending spinning almond eyes along the reef towards us as we sailed up to the line up, but sure enough, after getting the Lambo underway, I fall back asleep and miss the sail up to the line up. By the time I reawaken, the boys are hitting the wedge and we can hear them hooting the set waves from out on the boat. Despite the fact that it's pumping, Julien and I get into a long discussion regarding next years options for a boat. Then we head down to the long left. We head for a section midway where it seems to slow down a little. We jump into the line up just as a set approaches and my first wave is a head high long walled peeler. A section looms up and it's too fast to go around it. The only option is to pull in. The waves aren't quite so hollow along this part of the reef and the barrels pretty high and tight. Never the less it stays open and winds along the coral shelf at high speed, twisting and turning as it hits different parts of the reef. I'm determined to get as far as I can and to my surprise 50 meters further down the reef, it slows down momentarily to let me out and back onto the face. I'm pretty happy. Not too bad for a first wave.

During the surf a couple of well overhead solid sets come through. They break further off the reef here and are not as hollow as the head high ones. But they offer long walls that we race for 150 meters on average. Halfway through the session I get another 50 yard barrel that starts of high and almond shaped but then really opens up and goes top to bottom. Harley is paddling back out way down the line but the barrel is long and I nearly pick him off at the end of it. It's an amazingly long wave. Further up the point spinning barrels hurtle towards us at breakneck speed for maybe half a kilometer. It's probably 4 times the length of Desert Point and faster! I check the map later. It's pretty much a mile long....and on the big days could well peel past the point and into the next bay....and maybe even past that bay and into the harbour when it's huge.....who knows...

We had been surfing for a couple of hours before it suddenly goes quiet. The big sets stop and the medium ones get few and far between. A little disappointed but still stoked with what we've had, we head back to the Lambo. Back at the wedge the boys are buzzing on the larger sets it's been throwing up. The tide fills in through the middle of the day and we chill on the Lambo waiting for it to drop. By mid afternoon, the tide has dropped enough to head back out, but unfortunately the swell has dropped also. It's still pumping at the wedge and the boys are stoked as we drop them off. We head down the reef to this mornings waves but it's small now and so we try further up the reef closer to the start of the wave. It's still showing some size here. The sets are well overhead and are much more solid than where we surfed this morning. But the swell is too straight onto the reef and it's unmakeably fast. I try a couple but once again the rewards are not worth the risk and we head back over to the wedge.

It's firing some serious overhead thick wedging barrels and the boys are charging. I try a couple but can't get the lineup sorted. It's super tricky as the side wash bounces off the cliffs and creates a launch into the wave. But you've got to be in exactly the right spot to pull it off and I'm either too far out or too far in. But the boys have put the time in surfing it all week and have it totally wired.

Day 12

The swells dropped overnight and the winds really blowing. It's also overcast and grey and looking very uninviting. The boys hit it but don't last long. We pull anchor and head back to the village for a quick restock and prepare to head across the channel to Sumba. The winds really blowing and later in the afternoon rain storms and squalls come blasting across the lagoon. I have my doubts about crossing tonight, one of my concerns being the captain having to deal with the rain squalls completely obliterating the already limited visibility of the night. But he doesn't seem concerned at all and so we get ready to go for it. The boys feel like getting a little loose and head in to the village to grab some arak. We go with them and are taken to a very simple house where a man who looks like he's drunk a fair bit of arak himself pulls out a 5 litre container of it. It's cheap and we buy the whole 5 litres. Back at the village we hunt for some banana and papayas but have no luck. The weather's turned very stormy now and we're not sure if nobody's interested in going out in the rain to get the fruit for us or if there's just none available. We head to a small shop and stock up on soft drinks and biscuits. The rain keeps coming and we huddle around the shop waiting for it to stop. But it doesn't let up and pretty soon as it starts getting dark so we have no choice but to make a run for it. Back at the beach we can see that the Lambo is all secured for the rain and that there's very little chance of them seeing us in the fading light. The only option is to swim across the lagoon and Julien strips down and dives in. It's not far to the Lambo and it's not long before the dinghy appears and we're back out to the boat.

Day 13

The passage across the channel turned out to be far smoother than anticipated and by the time we hit the coast of Sumba at first light, the ocean is calm and glassy. There is a small swell running but it's still sloppy from the wind we've just escaped and without an offshore to straighten it out there doesn't appear to much happening surfwise along this straight section of coastline. In the distance I can see what appears to be a point and the swell is focusing on the tip of it, but as we get closer I can see that it's also suffering from the sloppy conditions. As we round it we pass a long string of left hand reefs that run down into a large bay. A little further on we pass a massive headland with a right point. It's super remote and wild here. It's all thick jungle and there's no sign of anybody. As we pass a long deep valley that winds up between a series of mountains I wonder if somewhere up there, there are some remote villagers that may have never even seen white people.

Further along we pass a nice right off the northern end of another island. It looks like an Angourie style set up, but the tradewinds are up now and it's onshore and messy. It's a very picturesque set up as it peels down into a rocky palm tree cove underneath the high mountain that finishes in a grassy headland. Certainly worth checking under better conditions. The island itself is incredibly picturesque and looks like something out an exotic paradise travel brochure as we sail down it's leeward coast. Small palm tree coves with white sand beaches line the aqua lagoon at the base of the high mountain ridge that runs the entire length of the island. A little further and we come to a small atoll island. Out on it's southern end a series of small lefts are peeling away but by now the trade wind is howling again and sending an endless stream of chop up the channel. We surf it anyway but as the wind continues to get stronger and stronger and we give up on trying to surf the windblown waves.

Back at the boat, Dom starts climbing the mast. It's pretty high and so far no one's climbed all the way to the top of the mast ladder. Most crew never get much past halfway. But Dom's on a mission and keeps going all the way to the top as we cheer him on. Not one to let an opportunity to take it right to the edge, Dom climbs out on the mast top spar and starts looking down like he's going to jump. Moments later he jumps as we all let out wild hoots. It's a gutsy effort and we all get a buzz from it. We pull the anchor and head back to the shelter of the larger island to seek shelter from the wind.

Back in the lagoon of the larger island some visitors motor out to us on a small boat. It's the local police, but there's no problem. We give them a litre of our arak and they go on their way. It's the final night of the trip and we break out the rest of the arak, the electric guitar and microphone for a bit of end of trip craziness.

Day 14

The winds still up this morning and we pull anchor and head up the coast of Sumba. It's a magnificently stunning island, with extensive mountain ranges and beautiful lush valleys. Long gold sand beaches fill in the gaps between massive headlands. Here and there we spot small settlements. There's something about this island that really touches me and I feel a strong energy pulling deeply on my heart. Rounding a massive headland, the wind dies and the ocean becomes glassy. A little further along we spot a small bay and we pull in and anchor. Leg 2 of the Odyssey is finished.