Bohey Dulang to Maratua

Morgan and me sneaking up on a turtle.

Not sure if anyone reading these bogs has clicked on the tracker link above-but that will show our route to date if you’re interested. Actually, not sure if anyone even reads these blogs!

Little bit of sailing footage below.

MOrgan taking the kids for a sail, drinks on Kanaloa

After our lovely relaxing stay at Bohey Dulang-could have easily stayed there for another week, we moved on to Tawau. This is our last stop in Malaysia before we head over the border to Indonesia. Tawau also had a yacht club which we anchored out from, but as with most of the ‘yacht clubs’ we visited on the way round, they are really a drinking establishment (disguised as a yacht club)for the local Chinese business men who can put away a fair bit of whiskey. We spent 5 days here along with 10 other rally boats headed this way. It was a good chance to provision and rumour was that it also had a fuel barge. Definitely a rumour as we jerry canned 600 L of diesel by dinghy out to the boat in 35 degree heat. Fun aye?

We also wanted to hire a car and get our alternator bench tested but weren’t having much luck with either. With Warren getting mildly frustrated at this point, we checked out a nice little cafe in town where two young Chinese guys were having a coffee next to us. Seeing an opportunity I started up a conversation with these two, slowly heading the conversation to hire cars and alternators and after a few furious phone calls they had a hire car organised for us and Warren was whisked away with his alternator to a bench testing place. Why are males so bloody adverse to asking for help or directions.

One night we were having dinner at the Yacht club with the other boaties and saw in the distance a very fast dark moving sky. We looked at it for a while and then suddenly there was a mass exodus back to boats as a 30 knot squall raced in. These squalls hit so fast. One minute its calm and balmy next minute its howling. We just got back to the boat in time, the sea picked up and boats were dragging all over the place. The bottom, as one boat put it, was like black yogurt, so holding was shit. We started our engines and motored into it while one of the boats whose owner was at the airport dragged 400m into the ship wharves and I think he was pretty lucky to still have a boat when he got back. These squalls normally don’t last long but they can be pretty intense, just very glad most of us got back out to our boats.

Giovanni and his sister Adrianne from Italy joined us in Tawau. Giovanni has sailed with us on Mustang on numerous occasions and is a mad keen fisherman, speardiver and freediver and a marine engineer. Handy.

From Tawau (where we cleared out of Malaysia)t was a short hop around the point and up a river to Nunukan, Indonesia. We prepared ourselves for a long, drawn out day clearing into Indonesia, but, as we employed an agent-basically someone who does most of the paper work for you, speaks the language and knows how the system works, the process went quite smoothly. In the immigration and customs offices which are small with a handful of staff, we even got treated to fish balls and banana fritters as they had a mini deep fryer on their office table and were busily cooking away. Yup, they do things differently here. This appeared to be pretty normal behaviour, so we gladly joined in. Can imagine that happening at NZ immigration.

We have had some of the best sailing in Indonesia but don’t get me started on the bureaucracy. Immigration etc while travelling on a boat is vastly different then entering a country by plane. Usually upon entering a new country we have to search out quarantine, harbour master, immigration and sometimes health officials. If you’re lucky the different offices may be in a 30km radius. Some towns manage to hide them really well, and you’re off on a wild goose chase heading out to the mountains to the immigration office only to find out it moved 15 years ago. It usually takes a day to clear in and sort out immigration etc but can drag on for days. Years ago In the Indonesian Island of Flores it took us a entire week taxiing back and fourth into town 40 km away just to get a 1 month visa extension. They drip fed us the information we required and while I was considering shooting the puffed up …………………officious little prick who seemed to enjoy our protracted agony, Warren was his usual calm self. Probably why he deals with all that.

Anyway that is just a little anecdote to give you an idea of how frustrating it can be. Not to mention that every island (there’s only 17 500 islands in Indonesia) has their own interpretation of the rules and the national database is erratic to say the least.

It was a pretty grotty river anchorage at Nunukan so we left asap and headed down to Maratua Island, a beautiful horseshoe atoll with pretty spectacular diving and snorkeling on the outside reef. Initially we anchored in the channel next to a small resort island within the atoll-again look at the tracker if you want to see exactly where we are- with a 3 knot current. Giovanni suggested we go ashore and try find a recommended cafe about 5 km along the island and then go for a snorkel on the outer reef. So armed with all our snorkeling gear in 37 degrees heat we headed for the shore. Not being too excited by a 5 km walk in that heat I stuck my thumb out at first vehicle that came along. It was an empty dump truck, we gave the Italians the front seat while Morg and I pole vaulted into the back of it for a breezy ride.

The resort we anchored near was run by a lovely young Malaysian girl who had studied in Germany and was also a dive instructor. She organised a dive trip for us the next day to the outer reef. Beautiful diving, with a compilation below. The skippers plan was to stay here for a couple of days but the the crew mutinied and we ended up staying for a week as it was just so pleasant.

Just one of many beautiful beaches at Maratua.

Morg and I got the wing foil out and I even managed to get up tow foiling albeit with some spectacular crashes which, when I finally surfaced after checking that I had all my body parts, I’d see Morg pissing himself with laughter in the dinghy. I’d then remind him of the 45 yr age gap. For those of you not familiar with foil boards, the foils are razor sharp and my main concern when ditching is to jump as far away from these speeding machetes as possible. I am also aware that I’ve lived most of my 9 lives.

Thats all for now.