Tuesday 3rd May 2022 – Watu Boga Beach

 I decided to stay at Watu Boga Beach for another night as this place is just so beautiful.  

After a relaxing breakfast in the cockpit taking in the spectacular scenery of this stunning place and looking at all the fish and coral in the crystal-clear water, I decided to go scuba diving.

 I loaded all my gear into the dinghy and headed off around the north east point where I dived in about 10 – 15 meters and drifted back towards the bay tethered to the dinghy.

 

The coral was OK and there were quite a few small fish and for a while I was stalked by a motley coloured white tip shark. After my tank ran out, I jumped back in the water and went snorkeling for most of the day. While snorkeling in the bay back towards Sirocco I found a large filleting knife in perfect condition, probably belonging to one of the local fishermen here.

 

Heading back to Sirocco I came across a large gill net strung across the bay and it had many small fish in it struggling to survive. It was really sad to see, but these people have to eat and make a living somehow, I guess.

When I arrived back at Sirocco, there was a local bloke sitting on the back step of the boat and a large fishing boat had anchored with its stern only a couple of meters from my bow. I politely asked him to piss off and anchor somewhere else in this huge bay. I wonder what he was thinking?

The man on the back step left as I returned and I asked Luke not to let anyone on board while I’m away.

We would be the first bule they would have seen in 2 ½ years and no doubt it would be a very rare sight to have a foreign vessel anchor here, but were they just curious and wanted to hang out close to us or were we in their favourite spot or were they casing us out to see what they could steal after dark?

These people are super friendly and I think they were just curious to see us and they don’t care if their boats knock together (like we do), and I think it was just an innocent action.

 After a shower and a bit of a feed, I decided to go up the mast to check the foresail furler swivel to try and figure out why the furler was binding up and not working. It looked as if it had been assembled incorrectly when I had the rigging replaced in Perth just before heading off to the Kimberly and the forestay cable has also been damaged. It had been unwound a bit near the top crimp, so I am not very happy about that.

 

I was pretty tired after snorkelling all day, but had a fantastic day snorkelling while getting lots of good exercise. After dinner we had a relaxed evening playing music till late.

  Track Sirocco’s progress

 https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Sirocco