Wednesday 15 October – last leg to Raja Amat

We woke up at 5am to lightning and thunder, coming from the island, about 2 miles away. Ugh we got up and disconnected all the aerials, switched of Stinky and put our devices into the oven, hoping for the best. Torrential rain followed, at least the boat got a good rinse off. Wow the bird watching tour would have been cancelled in these conditions anyway, so I don’t feel too bitter about missing it. The forecast is for wind in the right direction for two days and then it turns against us. The later in the year we leave it the more chance of having the winds against us.

I’d like to say we waited for the rain to stop but the captain was eager to go, around 7am we started pulling the anchor up only to find it well and truly stuck. Rowan jumped in to asses the situation, luckily we are only in 10ms of water and with clear visibility he could see the chain had got caught under a rock ledge, we tried to manoeuvre the boat but had no luck. Rowan came back on board and got his mini diving tank out to go and lift the chain off the snagged rock. His tank was leaking air but he decided to just go and do it. After a couple of minutes he was back on the surface as the tank had emptied, but the good news we was we were free. We were just too impatient. We have a very big heavy anchor, so it requires a big effort to get it out the sand. Finally by 8am we were up and ready to depart, Claudette left just after 7am. At least the rain had stopped and the storm departed, we could exit out the reef with good visibility.

Of course the predicted wind never materialised so we had to motor, hoping we might catch some wind when we were out of the lee of Biak island. We had been going a couple of hours when we suddenly started noticing enormous uprooted trees in the water, some areas it seemed to be slowly swirling as the logs were all gathered together with plenty of discarded rubbish. So sad as we feel very remote here, we have left Biak town behind and there is very little sign of habitation or fishing boats, just these floating, soaked tree trunks. We had a lot of narrow misses, a few hits, but luckily very gentle as we crawled by. Some are virtually submerged, so hard to see in the waves. I wonder why they don’t sink if they get so waterlogged, you can see they have been in water for ages, covered in barnacles and growth.

It was a slow hot day, motoring the entire day, with he engines off for less than an hour when we got near a squall and had some wind, but out the other side the wind died again. We were lucky to see some dolphins, they must have been hunting as they had no interest in going in our bow wave. We also saw water spouts coming from some whales, we were too far away to identify them, but lovely to know they are around, just so sad their habitat is so full of rubbish. Rowan had the fishing lines out and caught another Mahimahi which he successfully landed this time. We gave the fish a quick tequila knock out, which I readily approve of rather than having it thrash about. That meant we had very fresh sashimi for supper with a salad. It seems ages since we have had a decent salad, we were able to get very nice lettuces at Hadi’s supermarket, and finally a ripe avocado! We were in heaven.

It was a very uneventful shift for me until just before midnight when Rowan took over. Good time to catch up on loads of admin.