Tuesday 18 November – it is never just plain sailing!

We got up and planned to do a lot of snorkelling as the plan was to leave early tomorrow to pick up our eggs, fruit and veg from the Lodge. We did two really long drift dives, the first started off not very interestingly and got better and better. Pockets of coral were brilliant, some struggling but the rest ok. Lots of fish life of all varieties and think we saw at least one fish I have never seen before. The best thing was seeing lots of Hawksbill turtles that are so nonchalant, chomping on the coral and then dashing off at the last moment when they see us. So sad that these turtles are listed as critically endangered, especially having seen the chopped up turtle meat selling in Biak market. We explored the waterways between the island and found Rob and Pip back at their little beach, she was marching up and down the beach getting some steps in. We headed back to the big island near our anchorage and snorkelled all the way back to PolePole, surprisingly one of the best patches of coral and fish this morning was right at the entrance to the anchorage.

We were glad to be back on board by 2pm as some big dark clouds loomed. Rob and Pip returned to their boat, the wind picked up and we heard a funny noise and we started drifting backwards. The next minute we were over the coral, Rowan started pulling up the anchor and it did not seem to be holding as we were still drifting back. We were in real trouble hovering 2.5m over the coral, another meter back and we would be touching, thankfully Rob jumped in his dinghy realising we were in a pickle, he released us from our stern lines and picked them up as I continued to pick up the anchor so we could leave the anchorage. We had over 80m of chain out, so it took a while to pick up and suddenly I realised we had no anchor on the chain. We had lost our anchor, which is why we had started drifting backwards. Our anchor is essential, and a very expensive one, Rowan will definitely dive down to get it, but we could not hang about in the squall, now we cant anchor we had to keep going. We have a back up anchor on rope, but it needs attaching, and getting out from the bottom of the locker, not something we could do in the squall. Rob got the lines back to us and we decided to head back to the Lodge, as we were heading there tomorrow morning anyway. It was a complete white out in the open sea, and I suddenly spotted we were heading for what looked like a ferry boat. Our AIS is not working, so other boats can’t pick us up on the charts, we think it got damaged from lightening and hope to get it fixed in Sorong. That was another scare that we did not need, in all this drama.

Thankfully the weather cleared a little when we got to the anchorage at the Lodge, there were no other yachts so we had plenty of swing room to manoeuvre in. Rowan got our spare anchor all sorted, it has 10m of chain and the rest rope. We had to tie two 50m sections of this special anchor rope to make it long enough. Thank goodness we had this all on board, Rowan has had it all since we first started sailing and now we finally get to use it. We got it all over board and thankfully hooked That was all way too much stress after our lovely morning snorkelling!