Rolling in Ambat Bay - Bali, Indonesia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Mon 11 Oct 2010 01:02
|
08:19.976S 115:38.668E
We left Bali Marina early on the morning of September 21 in
hopes that we would catch the north-ebbing tide through the Lombok Strait.
We motored out of our slip with no trouble in completely calm conditions and all
was fine until Don switched the switch to bring the bow thruster up.
What's a bow thruster, you ask? It may sound kinky, but it's just a prop
attached to the bottom of the bow of the boat that when activated, will push the
bow to one side or the other. It's indispensable when docking the boat and
turning tight corners in marinas. Ours is different than most in that when
not in use, it retracts into the bottom of the boat so nothing protrudes from
the hull. When activated, it lowers into place several feet below the
hull. Anyway, that morning, when leaving the trash-filled mucky waters of
Bali Marina, the bow thruster jammed when Don attempted to bring it up.
After clearing the marina, Don put the boat in hard reverse to try and dislodge
whatever was blocking the thruster from returning to its normal
retracted position. We figure a chunk of trash got lodged between
the thruster prop and the hull. We are not sure what particular
chunk of trash it might have been given that there were so many to choose
from. Maybe it was several dozen plastic bottles or a wad
of fishing net or a rotting piece of styrofoam or part of a dead
body. All of the above are real possibilities. We were
told that several weeks prior to our arrival, a floating dead
something had to be removed from the marina waters because the boaters were
complaining about the smell. We are not sure what the dead something was,
but maybe a chunk of it remained behind and lodged itself between our bow
thruster and the hull on that quiet morning. Luckily the thing let go and
went on its merry way after Don's third attempt at hard reverse. The
marina boat boys were a little perplexed as they watched us go backwards from
their vantage point on the main dock, but I'm sure they've seen wackier things
go on before.
We did catch a little bit of a favorable current as we motored
north around the east side of Bali in the Lombok Strait. That is until we
hit the eastern-most point of Bali where all the water from the sea north of
Bali starts to funnel down into the strait. One minute we were going
nearly seven knots and the next? Two and a half knots.
Wham. A good four knots of current against us for about two hours.
When this happens it's like peddling fast and getting nowhere. At
least it was a nice day to view the mountains and volcanoes lining the east
coat of Bali. And the hundreds of double outrigger sailing canoes lined up
nicely on dozens of beaches carved into the rugged coastline along the
way. It was good to see all the boats on shore and not out fishing where
we'd have to dodge around them. The Indonesians are a seafaring,
seafood-eating people. The number of fishing boats is
unbelievable. It seems especially odd to us after coming from places like
Vanuatu where nary a ni-Van ventures out to fish.
After 45 miles and nine hours, we stopped in a beautiful bay
for the night before heading on to another official rally stop at Lovina Beach
on the northern coast of Bali. The bay was beautiful, but the swell
rolling in was not and we spent the night twirling this way and that like
sausages as the boat rolled sideways from ear to ear. We decided this
particular night was worse than almost any other we had spent at anchor and
almost any other we had spent at sea. This was one of those rare times
when we wondered just what it was we were doing on a boat when we could have
been snug as bugs in our stationary queen-size bed at home. The next
morning, less than two minutes after first light, we were on our
way.
 About fifty of the hundreds of double-outrigger sailing canoes
we saw lined up on dozens of volcanic black sand beaches like this one carved
out of Bali's east coast.
 The morning fog lifting from the beach as we motored happily
away from the rolliest anchorage on earth. Storyteller visited this same
anchorage the next night and the rolling was so bad they hauled anchor and
carried on through most of the night to another anchorage (where the rolling was
almost as bad). When I asked John if he thought this anchorage was as
pretty as we did, he paused while he thought about it and said, "I never
noticed." It's hard to look out at the mountains when waves are breaking
hard a few meters from the stern of your boat and dinner slides off the
galley counter during a particularly nasty roll.
Anne
|