We were up very early this morning and I disconnected from
the mooring at Serangan at 07:00 heading for Gili Gede. I had some passage
notes for the crossing which relieved the stress a bit, but time would tell which
way the currents would be flowing.
Our first destination would be Nusa Lembongan, but first after
clearing the harbour we had to head north for about five miles, hugging the
coast on the twenty-meter contour to try and minimise the effect of the head
current.
Once again there was no wind and for a change, we had nice
blue skies, so we would be motoring. We
then changed course to head for the north eastern tip of Nusa Lembongan which should put us on a course with the
least standing waves and most consistent currents.
Out in the middle of the Badung Strait the strong current
was quite evident and there was lots of flotsam in the water and I had to
concentrate intensely to avoid hitting a solid log and the many plastic bags
and other rubbish floating in the water.
At one point, I took my eyes off our heading for a few
seconds and there was a loud bang as a large log hit the port bow and was
deflected under the hull. Luckily there was no damage and the mini keel
deflected the log away from the propeller and rudder, but it gave us a shock
and was a good reminder to be on guard.
We overheard people talking on the radio that a fisherman
had discovered a smelly bloated floating body with a Gopro still strapped to its
wrist close by. It turned out to be a missing Italian tourist who had drowned
several days ago. Thankfully it wasn’t us who came across the body, as I couldn’t
think of anything worse.
We made it to Lembongan without too many issues and even
though I would really like to have pulled up there for a couple of days, we
were rapidly running out of time and needed to keep moving.
We passed a very big and expensive luxury power boat that
was half sunk on its mooring. As previously mentioned, you just don’t see this
sort of thing in Australia, but over here if its not your problem nobody seems
to care or get involved.
Imagine the shock the owner will get when he comes back with
his family or mates for a couple of weeks holiday on his luxury cruiser. Or
maybe its uninsured and the owner has abandoned it to avoid salvage fees?
Reluctantly we continued on and crossed the channel between Nusa
Lembongan and Nusa Penida. There were strong currents and lots of standing
waves and overflows. We were now in new territory as I haven’t been to Nusa
Penida before and I was really keen to drop the pick for a day or two and hire
a couple of motorbikes to tour the Island, but that will have to wait for
another time.
The coast line of Nusa Penida in the south is extremely rugged
with huge surf smashing in from the Southern Ocean while the north coast has no
bays or natural harbours and a constant swell washing up onto the beaches or
sea walls. The water depth drops off really fast also, so there are very few
places to pull up for the night.
We watched people struggling to load an already heavily overloaded
supply boat in the large swell before the passengers were loaded. This dangerous
practice occurs here every day and its no wonder so many people lose their lives on these treacherous waters.
There are many moorings, but these are all privately owned.
I would have to do some research to see if I could hire one for a few nights
some time if we come back.
We hugged the north coast of Nusa Penida until we reached the
Lombok Strait where we set a course to the south west corner of Lombok and
headed for Banko Banko.
This part of the crossing would see the strongest currents, largest
standing waves and the most shipping traffic so I had to be careful as many
lives have been lost on these treacherous waters.
We came close to many tankers and ferries and experienced
some pretty wild standing waves and overflows, the first we have seen since leaving
the Kimberly.
Without too much drama we finally approached the coast of
Lombok and headed into the small archipelago of Islands hidden in the south
west corner. I cruised around checking out the nice beaches and looking for
potential dive locations and places to explore in the dinghy.
There are quite a lot of pearl farms here and I had to weave
our way through them and I marked some way points as I went to make the passage
easy next time I came through.
Finally, at around 14:00 and 48nm, Gili Gede came into sight
and after a call on the radio we were directed to the T-head on the floating
pontoon for the night and tomorrow morning we will move back to our previous
position in the marina.
Our friend Bob from Brave Heart was waiting to take the
lines and said he will be heading over to Gili Asahan to test his diving gear
if we wanted to join him. I said we will meet him there as I wanted to get our
dinghy in the water and setup first.
After a bit of looking around, we finally found Bob and I
dropped Putu off on Gili Goleng for a swim while I took the dinghy out to drift
along the reef line. The coral and visibility was reasonable and we stayed in
the water till around 17:30 when Bob suggested we head over to the south side
of Gili Asahan to have dinner at the Nautilus restaurant.
Sounded good to me even though I had no shirt and was
dressed in my diving outfit. Luckily no one cares around here and we enjoyed a
few beers and a lovely meal in this beautiful little resort on the beach.
When it was time to leave it was pitch black and I had to
follow Bob back as he had a chart plotter. I could have used my phone to
navigate but following Bob was much easier as we weaved our way through the
pearl farms.
Needless to say, we were pretty wasted by the time we got
back on Sirocco and it wasn’t a late night.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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