E42 – WETAR ISLAND (WEST) TO KALABAHI (2/2)
Fishing vessels EVERYWHERE!
Continuing through the night after our passage across from Wetar Island, we found ourselves in a cloud of fishing vessels and FAD’s off the north coast of Wetar. Every vessel had a different lighting system, mostly a mish mash of colored flashing lights if they had any lights at all. The FAD’s were mostly not lit and I had a stressful night navigating through them.
As morning came, we found ourselves motoring with s strong south bound tide, south through the strait, to the west of the island of Alor in the backdrop of extinct volcanoes.
The ‘fjord’ leading east to the township of Kalabahi has enormous fishing bamboo structures dotted throughout and not lit, so go slow if you’re entering at night!
Kalabahi
Arriving at Kalabahi also meant we could now start to use the cruising guide we had onboard. The region we had covered from Saumlaki to Kalabahi was not covered in the book and therefore we were left to guess, using wildly inaccurate charts, what might be a good anchorage up until now. At least from now as we moved west, we’d have a 2nd opinion and some anchorage suggestions handy onboard.
Walking around the township of Kalabahi, a man introduced himself and spoke English which was a big plus for us as pretty much no-one spoke English at Kalabahi. He turned out to be a tourist guide of sorts and he and his wife came aboard, shared dinner with us and helped us get Dex Lite (The 2nd best diesel option in Indonesia, but not the worst) and we engaged him to take us to a tour to the hill tribes as a thank you. That turned out to be a lot of fun although I stressed being away from the boat and leaving her out of my sight, even for only 3 hours!
Wrapped in a drift net
In the morning, we woke early to find local canoe fishermen had managed to wrap a drift net around Starlight. They spoke no English, but we kept our cool and with a mask and snorkel provided by us, the calmly unwrapped the net and all was good with the world. When they tried to give the mask and snorkel back, I let the diver keep it as it was obvious they were very poor and maybe that gift could help them get better results and sort future problems.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie…
When Adi, our tour guide, took us to visit the hilltribe, I taught Tan and Adi a chant something only Aussies would know…watch the video at about 12:00 minutes to find out 🙂
