Sunday 16 November – searching for fresh food

As the crow flies it was about 4 miles to the Eco Lodge that is getting some fresh food in for us from Sorong. We had to go a very long way around an island to get there, as the gap between the islands was too shallow for us. It was an unbelievably hot day, not a breath of wind, so we motored the whole way. It was a wiggle though shallow areas and some islands. The interesting thing was out in the sea here away from the limestone/karst islands these islands are very different, it is soft sand and beaches again. We found there was quite a big population living out here in three different big villages. We finally got to the anchorage and found another yacht there. The Eco Lodge (not sure what made this different to a Homestay) looked pretty empty. We got our anchor down in 25 ms of water, thankfully it held well. It was midday and we were desperate to cool off, so decided to go for a snorkel. On the way we stopped to say hello to the other yacht to see if they had any snorkelling recommendations. Turns out it was an American man with his French wife, they gave us some tips where to go, they have been here over a week. She was very self conscious as she has just lost her front tooth, an implant, she thinks she swallowed it. We invited them for a drink later and suggested they join us for supper at the lodge too.

We had a long snorkel around a little island, the visibility was not great at all, but there was loads of amazing coral, very abundant and colourful. Not a lot of big fish, but lots of smaller ones and definitely a couple we haven’t seen before. We also saw a proper sea snake, ugh gives me the heebie jeebies as they are really poisonous. As we were snorkelling we felt the rain on our backs, when we finally got out, the sky was really dark and a squall was approaching. We got back to polePole just before a downpour. The good thing is they never last too long and then it is clear skies again, it does cool things down a bit which we are very grateful for.

Ted and Anne Marie came over at 5pm for drinks, my goodness they were full of stories. Firstly she said they were recovering from a terrible ordeal. Turns out they had been at some outer islands near here with another boat anchored near them. The man was a free diver, he was with his new partner of 9 months, he was free diving and his partner went snorkelling. The partner suddenly realised she hasn’t seen her man in a while, and in a panic asks Ted and Anne Marie to help. They called the Misool diving company who operate in the area, pretty promptly 6 divers arrived, they found his body, but he was obviously already dead a while . His dive computer recorded he had done 5 dives, the last one going down to nearly 40ms. The dive boat could not take his body, so the poor woman had to sleep the night with him on the boat, before a skipper could be found to take the boat to Sorong where they could deal with all the logistics. What a nightmare this had been for them, the guy who died was only in his 40’s.

Ted is in his 70’s and Anne Marie is our age, she has had a very exotic life. She said she was a troubled anorexic teenager and decided to rescue herself by going away to French Guiana, where she lived in the remote jungle teaching with her boyfriend. I think she said for 10 years, the relationship floundered and she moved to French Polynesia, where she met and married an older American man who ran a dive company. He died in his 80’s leaving everything to her. Ted is divorced and was looking for crew for his boat, she answered his advert 10 years ago and they have been sailing together ever since. They joined us for supper at the lodge which has no guests at the moment, is it was just the 4 of us. It was basic food, with some very tasty fish and good satay chicken. Our fresh fruit and veg parcel arrives on Wednesday.