Januari 16, 2017
"gidday! welcome to raja ampat!" "kalig islands is our firstdestination" "there is an eco resort we'retold" "beautiful!" we set sail from ambon in theearly morning. the conditions were absolutelyperfect to begin the 250 milesail to raja ampat! we had an epic day of sailingwith great, steady winds. we were so pumped to finally bethis close. it had been months of planningand sailing, and now we wereless than two days away.
as evening approached, it began to slack off and wefound ourselves motoring for afew hours. "well it's about 1 in themorning, and we are north ofseram. along the way to misool.finally got some wind "and we have about 10 knotsfinally after motoring for acouple hours but the strange this is.. i saw some red and blueflashing lights off in the distance.. and ireally don't like red and blue flashing lights.. so..
i er, we're runnin dark andwe're runnin silent.. i turned off the ais and iturned off our navigation lights i don't know.. just seemedkinda weird.. i don't know if it's theindonesian navy or somethingout here, but the last thing iwant is a visit from anybody like.. wondering why we'resailing around, even thoughwe're not doing anything wrong still.. but i think all is good.. they receded into the horizon,so they're not following us. maybe i'm paranoid"
"it's 3am.. so we've had a goodsteady breeze for.. the last 2 hours, and we'regonna be in raja ampat in like 4 hours!f *cking sweet!" "so 5am on the 21st of august2013 we are just about in rajaampat.. so it's pretty pretty exciting!looking forward to being here.. for a really long time.conditions are really good, thewind picked up.. we've had a good sail.. checkout these beautiful conditions!" "it is 6.30 i the morning,there was a full moon..
it was really beautiful, butit's disappeared now.. and the suns just started tocome up which is nice. and i've spotted land, which ispretty cool! it's pretty excited that we'rein raja ampat. it's still blows my mind. it'sstill strange that we're here,you know? i don't know.. time needs toslow down.. it's moving much too quickly!" our first island in raja ampatloomed on the horizon.. and then suddenly we were here!
we finally saw those limestonecliffs we'd read so much about. we had to keep a good lookout, because our charts weren't thegreatest. bumping into these jagged,uncharted rocks can ruin yourwhole day. but that's what makes this sucha sweet diving destination! massive currents are liftedfrom the ocean depths on theserocky outcroppings and support entireecosystems of coral and fish. this entire area was one solidland mass on our chart, when in fact it's actuallylittered with secret coves andawesome places to explore.
we dropped maggie in the waterand sent brady on areconnaissance mission to lookfor our home for the next week. winding our way through thesteep cliff faces we found aperfectly protected hole on theeastern edge of kalig island. the only problem is the wateris too deep to anchor normally. it's about 175 feet deep rightup until the cliff face whereit suddenly shallows to 6 feet. putting out enough anchor chainwasn't an option so we used a trick i learnedsailing back in the steepfjords of british columbia,canada. basically you drop your hookand back towards the cliff faceuntil it catches on somethingbelow. keeping the boat in reverse yourun stern lines and tie off to anything youcan.
trees, rocks, whatever you canfind. it works great foranchoring in small, deep spots! peacefully anchored in our ownlittle private paradise! we had arrived in raja ampat! knowing we'd be here for awhile i started preparing abatch to run through the still. the crew was already busydiminishing the supplies with afloaty party. "josje-rama's!" "good morning!" "it's time to go diving in rajaampat!" "are you awake?"
"nina pants!" "time to get up!""it's time to go diving!" "karin.. it's time to godiving!" "are you ready?" "i'm ready!" "morning" "good morning!""ready to go diving?" "are you excited?""yeah!""wohooo!" "whats the name of this site?""potato!"
"wedges"(laughing) "time to fill dive tanks" having your own compressor inremote locations like this iscrucial. (motor running) we pretty much run a mini-diveshop on delos, with enoughtanks, gear, and spare parts for the entirecrew to dive for months on end. we were stoked to be on ourfirst dive, which was only a 10minute dinghy ride from delos. the currents here can bevicious, easily running a fewknots or more. one wrong move ormiscalculation,
and you'll never make it back to the dinghy. so we dove in teams most of thetime, just in case the dive team gotswept away and needed rescuing. once we were down, the reef was spectacular! therewas an explosion of life,unlike anything we'd ever seen before on our voyage across thesouth pacific. we even spotted manta raysfeeding in the currents. these barracuda held stationaryin the current just waiting tosnap something up. some of them were up to 5 feetlong with some nasty teeth to match!
every square inch of everysurface was taken up by hardand soft corals. after seeing the condition ofthe great barrier reef ..over the past year, this waslike a breath of fresh air! over a week we ended diving 7different sites here, allwithin a 10 minute dinghy rideof delos. it was absolutely spectacularto see such healthy livingreefs and fish! later on in the week we got avisit from the patrol that'sresponsible for maintainingthis little slice of heaven. the locals have now realizedthe ocean is worth more alivethan dead! we took advantage of theirvisit to learn some basicindonesian and teach them a bit of english!
our new friends told us about amooring right in front of theircamp with a sweet dive spotaround the corner. it sounded good to us, so we began removing ourspiderweb of anchors and lines. the wind picked up so wedropped a second bow anchorduring our stay. we can't use the windlass asnormal for our second anchor, so getting it out of the thedeep water was a massive effort. "that first anchoring was theepitome of raja ampat.. just f *cking big cliffs, clearwater.. stern tied right up next to therocks.."
"snorkeling right off the back off the boat""yeah!""it was perfect! look at whatyou're able to look for.." "all the way up, even fromaustralia.. and you're just able to swim off the boat..""no-one around!" "naked all the time" "crazy how they have all thebioluminescence in the water" "we all went skinny dipping,and then shots!" "and now it's time to move onto.. what's the island called?" what's the island called?""yillet?"
"it's a village?""yep""it's meant to be a sweetmooring there" "and hopefully a beach too""yeah!" "white sandy beach would benice!" "and we'll be brewery liquor onthe next couple days too!" "oh yeah!""got our mash ready! there sheis!" "that's huge!""yeah that's 25 litres!" there was some mooring aspromised, and the beach looked prettysweet too! it had been about 10 days sinceour feet were on solid ground
so we wasted no time instretching our legs josje had a close encounterwith a sea snake. these little guys are one ofthe most poisonous snakes inthe world. luckily they're mouths arepretty small and normally theycan't bite you. we met up with our new friendsfrom the patrol boat and theyshowed us their place. all these guys live in thislittle hut right on the beach. there's no alcohol on theisland, so they spending a lot of timedrinking sweet tea. seriously,they just sit around smokingcigarettes, and drinking tea when not onpatrol.
they're obviously a prettytight group. the sweet tea was flowing bythe time the rest of the crewarrived to get in on the action. soon enough we had us a goodbon fire. they don't have much on thisisland, but strangely enoughthey have a strobe light forspecial occasions. like when a group of sailorsshows up for a sweet tea fueleddance party! our patrol friends gave us thelocation of their favorite dive spot which wasjust around the corner of theisland. just like our first dives itwas thick with fish and corals. it was so good we ended upspending another few days justdiving this one rock.
with much more to see, we dropped the mooring andheaded north towards tomololbay, to seek out our nextadventure. up next! the crew gets a paparazzigreeting from pearl farmers. and the indonesian army andpolice escort us to a sacredcave!
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