Wednesday 5 November – off to Batanta

I said goodbye to Alex last night, Rowan said he would be awake at 5am to see him off. Rowan woke up at 6am and discovered that Alex had been picked up without us hearing the boat or anything! We hear he had quite an eventful trip to Sorong with the engine breaking down, changing boats and running out of fuel! At least we know he arrived in Bali safely. We headed off pretty promptly to our next stop Batanta, where there is a popular Manta Ray cleaning station. Rowan also discovered there were 6 boats anchored in the area, including a couple we met in Bora Bora, and bumped into in Fiji and NZ, on their catamaran Navisana. This is the most yachts we have seen since Vanuatu.

We managed to have a very slow sail across to Batanta, it was only 12 miles, but took us all morning as we had one and a half knots of current against us and the wind never got much above 8 knots. Anchoring was a little tricky as all the good spots had been taken, and the water is really deep. Rowan found a review of some guy who had anchored further out in the bay in 30ms of water, we found the spot and dropped anchor thankfull that we got a good hold, It is the most chain we have ever put out. We had a little relax and then headed into the Homestay where we were joining Navisana for supper. Turned out that all the yachties were coming for drinks and supper too. Not too surprisingly we met more South Africans, living in Australia, and one couple who run a backpackers camp at Vic Falls in Zimbabwe. It was a very sociable drinks event on the pontoon with a magnificent sunset. The guy Patrick we met at the marina in Waisai who had the fancy carbon catamaran made in China, was also there, he still can’t sail and doesn’t know when his boat will be fixed, he can only motor.

Nico who runs the Homestay filleted the fish we were having for supper on the pontoon. They clean all the fish they eat here, the sharks have learnt to come and scavenge for scraps. He knows all the different sharks that come there and a couple he will feed from his hand. We had a delicious supper, bbq’d fish with loads of good vegetables, the aubergine was particularly good in a rich peanut sauce, most probably our best Indonesian meal to date. It was good to catch up with Chet and Jessy on Navisana. They sailed around Australia after NZ, so came up the southern route through the Torres Straight. They gave us tips on going to see the Mantas tomorrow.