Quiet - Hoga Island, Sulawesi Province, Indonesia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 24 Aug 2010 20:41
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05:28.882S 123:45.699E
On August 17th, bright and early the morning after
'the incident', we filed out through the Wangi Wangi Island lagoon reef
pass behind three other rally boats with another six
following behind us. Most were headed for the more placid Hoga Island
a short 30 mile motorsail to the southeast.
Ahhhh......now this is what life on a sailboat is
all about. Hoga Island: a small island populated with
only a laid-back dive 'resort', a beach bar consisting of a picnic
table with a blue tarp overhead (serving only Bintang beer and french fries and
only open if enough boaters/divers happen to be around) and lots
of clear blue water filled to the brim with coral gardens and fish. Oh,
and the occasional fisherman in a wooden sailing canoe selling live giant
shrimpish looking things with black and white stripes, huge painted crayfish and
what looked like a big slimy white squid, but turned out to be cuttle (sp?)
fish, didn't hurt the overall ambiance either. We spent five days in the
blissful quiet - no call to prayer, no 3am music, just the chatter of boaters on
the VHF and a brisk 15-18 knot wind blowing through the rigging. We caught
up on sleep, watermaking, laundry, email, reading - basically all the
essentials.
We did a fair bit of snorkeling above the
marine park protected reef surrounding Hoga Island. Since our underwater
camera committed suicide off the coast of Australia, we have no underwater
pictures to show you, but at least our above water pictures have improved with
the purchase of a new camera from the Darwin duty-free shop when we left
Australia. The snorkeling was almost as nice as that in the Banda
Islands. We floated over the drop-off of the reef (which plunges from 3
meters down to 50 in the blink of an eye) generally feeling confident that no
sharks would appear as we stared down at a huge variety of coral and schools of
small fish darting around causing the large number of loner fish to make
way. Usually, the smaller reef sharks patrol reef drop-offs, but the
Indonesians seem to have eaten most of the larger fish that hang around reefs,
so we're guessing the number of sharks in the area is relatively
small since there is nothing for them to eat. Over-fishing is one of
the many environmental issues the Indonesians face. We hear that dynamite
fishing is still practiced in some places. Dynamite fishing - meaning
dynamite is used to blow up part of a reef so all the stunned and/or dead fish
can then be collected by the fisherman. Yeah, not too good for the
environment. Between the over-fishing and the propensity to throw all
garbage, including every form of plastic, into the sea, we wonder how much
longer the sea and all its creatures will survive in this part of the
world. Hopefully someone in Jakarta is paying attention. Even off
the coast of Hoga Island, which is part of a marine park, we saw streams of
trash floating in the water when the current ran in a particular
direction. There's nothing we hate worse than to see plastic floating in
the water. This from two people who used to spend a lot of time
supporting the manufacture of plastic bags. Millions of
pounds of plastic bags.
Picture 1 - Don enjoying a rest on the lovely Hoga
Island beach with a few anchored rally boats in the background.
Picture 2 - A typical Indonesian motor
vessel. This one came complete with its own method of land
transportation.
More on our overnight trip to, and subsequent
3-day stay near, the island of Bone Rate later.
Anne
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