The bridge at Kuala Terengganu was opened again for us to pass out on the morning of the 25th of May, and the fleet of a dozen boats headed north - motoring yet again.  It is only 30 miles from KT to Redang and we were there in under 6 hours.  Most of the fleet had anchored off Long Beach and it looked a bit crowded so we opted to join Aussie boat, Wodan, a bit further south where an island  gives some protection from easterly swells.  Our pilot noted that you would get wash from passing tourist boats, but that didn’t prepare us for the reality.  It was like being anchored in the middle of a motorway with fast motor boats going through in a constant stream.  They didn’t even slow down if they were passing between us and Wodan, anchored about 50 meters away.  Things calmed down after dark but they were back by 0730 the next  morning so the two of us lifted our anchors in unison and went in search of somewhere quieter.

Wodan in the motorboat superhighway
Most of the boats off Long Beach had suffered an uncomfortable swell in the night, so we all found ourselves in the most protected bay on the island to the north east.  Here there was an expensive resort shore, where we had been told we would not be welcome and a number of warangs (simple cafes selling local food) on the beach.  It wasn’t as busy as the first bay but here the tourist boats bought loads of visitors to swim with the turtles in a large roped off area of the bay, and to be sure the customers got a good experience they fed the turtles.  The warangs then fed the holidaymakers lunch ashore.  We snorkelled early morning and late afternoon noon to see the turtles when there weren’t to many local boats around, and had lunch ashore in one of the warangs, but quickly decided this wasn’t really our sort of place, and what we had read of Perhentian suggested more of he same.  We decided to head back to Kuala Terengganu and see if we could check out earlier than planned for our next destination, the Indonesian islands of Anambas.

We had been told that there was a small bay on the west side of Redang which was much quieter and where turtles went ashore to lay their eggs, so we stopped there on our way south.  We were rewarded with some quite nice snorkelling then, as it got dark, we heard splashing around us and on our mooring.  Once the sun was down we used our binoculars to watch a turtle, a dark spot against the white of the beach, making her way up to lay.  Such a special moment.  In the morning there were two sets of tracks on the beach so another female had gone ashore later.