I woke up to the sound of loud noisy put puts zipping back
and forth across the glassy harbour that was covered with lots of rubbish. I
spent the morning catching up on my blog while we waited for Untung and his
wife to come out for a visit.
Unfortunately, my phone died this morning containing all my
photos, so I hope I can get it going again somehow and get my photo’s back.
Eventually we got a call from Untung saying to come to the
beach as his family were having a picnic on the foreshore, so we headed off in
the dingy to find them.
In the shallows there was so much rubbish it was wrapping
around our legs, it was putrid and I couldn’t wait to get out of the water.
We wandered up the rubbish strewn beach to where Untung's extended family had some mats laid out over the footpath under some shady
trees. The entire area was covered on trash and it looked like we were having a
picnic at the tip. There was no way I could enjoy myself in these surroundings
and I couldn’t wait to go back to the boat.
Little kids played in the water not having known anything
different than swimming in a soup of trash. I’ve seen a lot worse in the
Philippines but it not something I can ignore and it just revolts me.
The Indonesian government should charge every person
entering the Komodo National Park a $10 trash levy and then pay the poor local
people $1 per large hessian bag of rubbish to be incinerated in a high
temperature furnace to produce electricity. This would provide employment,
income, cheap electricity and would be an ideal solution to cleaning up all the
rubbish.
After a while we politely asked Untung
and Rani if they would like to go out and see Sirocco and then we all piled
into the dinghy and motored our way through the plastic soup in the shallows
out into the deeper water to Sirocco.
While on Sirocco, our friends on Lyre came sailing into Labuan
Bajo. I directed them to a place between Sirocco and another yacht from Darwin
and moments later I saw them in the corner of my eye going high speed directly
for the inshore reef.
I quickly jumped up and yelled waving my arms like a lunatic
and luckily, they saw me just in time to apply full reverse just meters from
running aground or even worse, smashing the mini keels off.
Eventually after a lot of messing around they got themselves
anchored up and we arranged for a water boat to come out for them as they were
running dangerously low on water.
We chatted for a while and had a couple of beers before
heading back to the jetty to drop off Untung and Rani and
to fill a couple of jerry cans with diesel.
The pink jetty
Filling the two jerry cans seemed to take forever, and once
full, I took them back out to Sirocco and emptied them into the main fuel tank.
I repeated this process three more times and then we motored into the main
waterfront district for dinner.
The water front is so
putrid and I was dry reaching the whole time I was there refueling
Hard work carrying
heavy jerry cans down the steep rock wall
Take a look at this
dick head. After taking the photos, I decided to go for a brisk walk to get away from the blast zone.
The water front and
town is quite clean and tidy, it’s just a pity they dump everything into the
ocean
We had a nice seafood dinner again, bought another ten
coconuts and said goodbye to Untung and Rani around 20:30 and headed back out
to Sirocco in the pitch dark using Google Earth to find our way back.
We were both really tired and it wasn’t long before we
crashed out.
PS: I got my phone working again, but I lost all the photos
I took of the filthy rubbish in the shallows and on the foreshore, so you are
going to have to use your imagination.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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