I was up early today as I was leaving the marina and heading
north for the Gili Islands. After breakfast I got the boat prepared, then I had
to wait for the marina staff to arrive so I could pay my bill and get the boat boys to
let the bow lines go so I can depart the marina.
It was meant to be an 08:00 start, but by the time the staff
casually rolled in it was around 08:45 by the time I got underway.
I was traveling with Fonster and they had moved off to a mooring
last night and were waiting patiently for me. As there wasn’t a breath of wind
again, I didn’t even bother getting the main sail out of the bag.
MV Fonster
The trip to Trawangan was pretty uneventful except for the bloated
dead dog we passed. There were the usual ferries, a couple of tankers and
numerous traditional fishing boat, some being under sail.
We experienced very little current along the way, maybe 1.5
knots at the most. The worst part was seeing all the rubbish in the water, but
we did come across a large pod of dolphins which was nice.
Sirocco through Fonsters port hole
It only took around 4.25 hours to travel the 26 nautical
miles to Gili Trawangan and I waved farewell to Fonster who was going a further five
miles to Medana Bay marina.
I had been told there was a mooring I could pick-up out front
of the Kokomo resort, so I headed over that way to see what I could find.
Gili Trawangan is a party Island and back packer mecca. As
such, there are boats of all description zipping around at full speed in all
directions and hundreds more on moorings, but through all the chaos, I managed
to find a free mooring and get Sirocco securely attached without any drama.
The next step was to get the dinghy prepared and into the
water. This is where things turned to shit. One of the tightening lugs on the
outboard had seized and no matter how much sweat, muscle and CRC I used, there
was no way I could move it at all.
The other lug was also seized, but I managed to get it turning after a while and I coated it in copious amounts of grease to help prevent it from happening
again.
It was so hot and my energy levels were draining and the
more muscle I used the more damaged the plastic tightening lug became.
Eventually it broke off and after I removed the remains, I was then able to put
a shifter onto the metal shaft and slowly start to rotate it. Before long I had
the threaded shaft out and lubricated with grease.
After about an hour and a half we were now back in business,
I lowered the dinghy down into the water, lowered the outboard and managed to
attach it by myself, fuel tank in and connected and over the side for a well
earnt swim to cool off.
The water was so nice, but there was a strong current
whipping past so you didn’t want to miss the ladder while drifting between the
hulls.
Later in the afternoon, I headed into shore and went for a
long walk to see how the place had changed since I was here last about ten
years ago. There was still a lot of earth quake damage, but most of it had been
repaired or new buildings gone up. It was good to see a lot of the new buildings
were made from bamboo which is such a beautiful traditional building material that
is also resistant to earth quake damage.
The Pearl of Trawangan resort
There was quite a lot of people about, but it was bloody hot
and I was sweating and exhausted and I just wanted to find a nice cool place to
relax before dinner. I found the perfect place directly under a large fan in
the front of a bar where I could people watch for a couple of hours while recuperating
on ice cold beer.
After a few beers, I moved across the road to a small restaurant
on the beach where I had some nice spicy Thai food under the trees. One of the
things I love about the Gili Islands is that there are no motorbikes allowed
and the only means of transport is bikes and horse carts. Apart from the pop
music blaring, the only noise you hear here is the odd bike bell and the clip
clop of all the horsed going back and forth.
After dinner, I followed my ears upstream towards the best
sounding music which turned out to be three local guys playing live, so I
pulled up a bean bag and ordered an ice-cold tall neck and settled in for the
night. These guys were awesome and belted out great tunes one after the other
till around 11pm by which time I had had enough.
The resort had locked the gate at the small jetty where I
had left the dinghy and I had to wait for some Asians taking selfies next to
the big love heart at the gate, then I had to climb through the big love heart
and up over the gate to get through to my dinghy. Of-course they took photos of
the crazy drunk Bule looking in disbelief. It all seemed perfectly natural to
me, but that’s the cruising life.
I weaved my way through all the boats in the dark finding
Sirocco just where I left her, and after securing the dinghy with a long stainless
steel lanyard to prevent someone from borrowing it, I retired to the captains state
room for the night to try and sleep in the hot steamy conditions with the loud
doof doof doof rolling across the water from the night club.
My $40 fan from Bunnings was worth its weight in gold and I was out in minutes.
At three in the morning I was rudely woken by some loud
banging on the hull. I immediately raced outside to find a massive high wooden boat
bow smacking into the port side of Sirocco leaving paint marks all over the
hull.
I wrestled with it for about twenty minutes before managing
to get both boats separated and things back to normal. Exhausted, I crawled
back into bed and immediately fell back to sleep.
Unfortunately, an hour later the same thing happened again
as the moorings were all too close together and as either the wind changed
direction or the tide changed, all the boats would swing or drift in all
different directions and often clunk into each other. Not a big deal for an old
fifteen-meter long wooden snorkeling boat, but not good for an expensive shiny
white catamaran.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
