I have come to the conclusion that good seamanship is no substitute for blind luck. Sunday evening, with a day and half more until we arrived at Labuan, Borneo, our six days of boringly calm weather turned nasty. Wind of 25-30 knots, with heavy rain and limited visibility descended upon us with little warning. We had to hand steer because the wind was directly behind us and the autopilot couldn't be trusted not to jibe us. With such strong winds, an accidental jibe would break something, for sure.

Compared to some nasty storms we've encountered elsewhere, this wasn't much of a much; and compared to our New England weather, it really wasn't cold out here, but it's all relative, and we were both shivering with cold and groggily tired when the wind finally eased six or seven hours later. 

The weather remained cloudy and wet, with poor visibility through the night. However, there wasn't a whole lot we could hit since we were still two hundred miles from land, out of the shipping lanes, and too far for even the fishing boats to hang around, so we had little to worry about. By morning the seas had settled down and the sky, though still overcast, was at least not a black looming presence. 

Monday evening, with just 50 miles to go to reach port, the night was absolutely perfect. The full moon lit up the sea like the night game lights at Yankee Stadium, the sky was clear, the seas were calm. And then, 30 miles from the Brunei coast, a mass of confusing lights; wall to wall oil rigs, or so it seemed. 

If people know of Brunei at all, it's because before Bill Gates the Sultan of Brunei was the richest man in the world. All of his wealth, and his country's, is derived from oil. If you look on a map, you will see that Brunei is a tiny country nestled between the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Labuan is a Malaysian duty-free island that services Brunei and the oil industry in this area, and is just a few miles from Brunei. 

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