Thursday 23 October – back to Waisai to pick up Alex

We were a little nervous about picking up the anchor, thinking it might have snagged on a log or something, but luckily it came up like a dream and we were off back to Waisai. We are picking up Alex who we met in NZ, he is a friend of the family who cycled with us in the South Island. We booked into the marina which is near the ferry dock, it has a terrible recent review on No Foreign Land so we were a bit weary about it, also looks quite difficult to get into. We arrived about midday, anxiously trying to beat the squalls that were lurking everywhere, a very overcast day. Luckily the weather was with us, but we had a very narrow squeak with some coral missing it by a metre I reckon. A poor chap on a jetty, nothing to do with the marina caught my eye who was telling us to move over, thank God, it was so close. It is a very narrow wiggle through, with no warnings from the marina, which did not bode well. Finally after raising them on the vhf, we had about 6 people out to catch ropes all giving different instructions. It is Med mooring so we have to put the anchor out and then reverse in. Thankfully that went well and we were secured. A diver went out and put another enormous rope out onto a block under the water. Thankfully they are taking no chances. We are so wide there are no berths wide enough for us, so we are tacked onto the end. Reviews say there are rats and mozzies…. We won’t stay too long, Alex arrives tomorrow and we will leave Friday morning after a 4:30am Bird of Paradise tour.

There are only two other boats here, and then plenty of dive boats that belong to the resort, it is a Dive Resort. The two yachts are extremely expensive all black carbon boats. The one is a monohull with a Croatian skipper for the Mexican owners. The other is a brand new 60 foot HH catamaran made in China costing over £5 million. It is co-owned, the one owner is an American who has lived in Indonesia over 40 years, he has a lot of businesses in Indo and married an Indonesian. When their two kids got to school age they moved to Perth and he commuted back and forth to his businesses in Indonesia. This is where he met his Australian co owner of the boat. The poor guy they have had the boat 6 months and it has endless problems, including the hydraulic system for getting the main sail up. So they can’t sail and not sure how they will get it fixed.

We went and had a swim in the resort pool hoping to cool down but it was like a warm bath, still it was pleasant lying out there watching the birds going back and forth. Around 5pm the sky was filled with the huge bats. Apparently they come over every evening.

The guy on the big cat invited us over for drinks in the evening, it is an impressive boat, the layout is open plan like ours but much bigger and grander, but has some crazy design too. The steering wheel is inside behind the mast, so you always have to lean over to see out around the mast, all the ropes are at the mast so it has two doors out to the trampoline, but in bad weather that looks very tricky. There are 4 cabins, so each family has a hull. Not quite so spacious downstairs. It is just the American guy and an Australian friend who is helping him out on the boat getting it sorted. We went out for supper with them at the resort restaurant which was a very good meal. The American guy is fluent in Indonesian which was impressive.

We went to bed feeling very nervous about the rats! The Croatian has caught four!