9-10-11/03/2017 We basically headed south east stopping every 30-40nm. If you have a look at our track on Google Earth you will see the various stops. Many of the names of these places down the NE side of Bacan don’t appear to have names on Cmap, Navionics or GE, and if there are any I know you will blame my spelling for differences when in fact out there in wide world many of these places have multiple spellings.
For the most part this is where internet disappears and your left with 2G only until near Sorong or Waisai as we head to Raja Ampat, but we are not stoping other than for the night.
We start under motor usually get a bit of wind or a squall which give’s use a good push for a couple of hours and finish up motoring to our anchorage for the night.
It would be Kims birthday tomorrow and the plan was originally to stay put somewhere nice and make a nice day of it. However our stint in the rain a few days earlier ended up with me getting the flue, plus this place was not exactly clear blue water with white sand and as an added incentive not to swim there was also the odd Croc.
So in all Kim agreed to wait and celebrate it later.
12/03/2017 SE tip of Halmahera, Anchor on sand 14m, 2G if ya lucky. This was quite a nice spot, clear water, white sandy beach, plenty of shade. We had a good explore easily walking along the edge of the bush and the beach, looking at the various camps of fisherman that have come and gone. A quite large fishing boat wreck remains and to our surprise it is still moving.
13/03/2017 Dadawe, Anchor (no luck) Again this was one of those gambles only this one did not pay off and it came at a cost. Weda looked like a nice place if we could get inside the reef. Looking at Google I wasn’t sure but it did look like it was worth a try.
As we edged our way in through the channel the water clarity began to reduce, seeing and determining the risk of the numerous bombies first hand is challenge even for those that are old hands at it. Can you easily tell the difference between one 4m deep and one 2m deep. Kim has not had a lot of practice and telling the difference between ones we can pass over and ones we cant in differing visibilities is challenging.
Dr Smith: You are on a falling tide, you have a cross wind and some current, if you get sideways onto one of these you will………… thud !!!!! ……… Shittt .
Screensaver came to a very definite halt from 0.3knts which was about as slow as I could go and have any form of control. I tried a couple more courses……as can be seen on the image below left.
Dr Smith: What, your not giving up….. and if you get in there, you still need to get out…… just cause you only have 10-20m to go to clear water doesn’t mean all will be fine…… give up move on…. thud….. I told you …… now see if you can turn around in this mine field…. and get us out of here….
Yep Dr Smith won that debate and I carefully turned around and retreated. Watusi tried heading more north once inside and while relatively clear of bombies it was to shallow.
The next options was another one SE, but it looked less likely on Google to be passable. On arrival it was never going to work and we had already tried to find an anchoring spot on the outside to no avail.
So we are now left with an overnighter. Kim had wanted to do one, and was not concerned when I said she wouldn’t like it, but the night looked good, last night was beautiful with a full moon.
So with about 90nm to go and 16-18hrs before sun rise I was looking forward to a nice quiet moonlight sail. In 5-8knts of wind Screensaver crawled along gradually picking up speed. There was not a lot of things to worry running into although the big fishing hut in the middle going to Maju was still clear in my mind. Kim would her first overnight watch from Midnight through till 3:00am.
Around 10:00pm the rain, thunder lightning and gust to 35knts appeared from no where. This was most definitely not in my moonlight picture. I tried to use the Radar to navigate my way around some of it but i really didn’t work.
By the time Kims shift came along things were a bit more quiet and eventually we motored.
I had planned to go due east to Batanta and onto Sorong where I would collect other Google Images and additional fresh vegies before heading up to Wayag, but Watusi had another agenda so we end up heading east north east to Gag.
Screensaver 