Day 99, Year 3: Rock and Roll Anchorage
Date: Hari Sabtu (Saturday), Bulan Agustus 16, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Same Old, Same Old
Latitude: 08 degrees 26.037 minutes S
Longitude: 122 degrees 24.745 minutes E
Location: Pulau Besar, Flores Island, Nusa Tengarra Province, Indonesia
Same anchorages work and some don’t, and this one is in the latter category. After a couple of hours of delightful sailing and another couple of motor sailing, we arrived here mid-day and have been rocking and rolling ever since. Add to that the fact that the snorkeling was not good and Pulau Besar gets a 2 out of 10 rating from us. The guide book that is available for this part of the world is called ‘101 Anchorages Within the Indonesian Archipelago’ and it costs $90AU. So it is not cheap and
it is full of errors. We didn’t buy the book, but we did copy pages (shhh!) from the one Scot Free purchased. It indicated that this anchorage has excellent snorkeling, but if it is here, we sure couldn’t find it in our two trips out. I think our next snorkeling will be in the Komodo Islands. The area there is a marine park and the coral and fish have been protected. We will just look forward to that.
This little island has a village that we can see from the anchorage. It is a Muslim fishing village and it is a busy one. The local long boats with an inboard motors went past us all day long going to and from the main island. Many of the boats were filled with women so I am assuming they were going to market. Every one was quite friendly with smiles and waves, but no one stopped by the boat. The last two anchorages we have been in were not near villages, but we had fishermen stopping by constantly
offering bananas for sale or looking for handouts. A t-shirt, a Coke, a hat, or a pair of reading glasses make great give-aways. Many want cigarettes, as it seems everyone in Indonesia smokes, but we don’t have those. At yesterday’s anchorage a young kid, probably twelve or thirteen, helped us find a place to anchor and we have him a Coke and New Hampshire Public Radio hat in thanks. He was so happy to get these things and beamed mightily when I took his picture.
When we got to this anchorage today, only one boat was here. It was Cankata that we met in Kroko Atoll a couple of days ago. We wanted to repay their wonderful hospitality and asked them over for sundowners tonight, along with Shirena who arrived later in the afternoon. But unfortunately it was just too rolly to enjoy anything on Windbird this evening, so we canceled the gathering. Tomorrow we are going to the north coast of Flores to the anchorage where we believe the next Sail Indonesia activities
will be happening next week. There are a couple of inland tours that we want to do from that base, so we will get there and gather information tomorrow and begin our explorations on Monday.
