Taking the rough with the smooth.

The Rough:

We’re in Sorong. It’s hot. After those deserted anchorages, Sorong comes on strong. The dirty, bustling city. Capital of this part of West Papua.

There’s a regional airport here with daily flights to Denpasar and Jakarta, so I’m here for crew changes. Dawn is flying home for some Guernsey time, Bryan and Matt are inbound from the US for some surfing time.

The anchorage is busy, all kinds of local wooden boats going in all directions, many appear to be sinking. We are rocked by wakes day and night. Apparently local kids will steal from an unattended yacht at night if hatches are left open. Plastic trash washes by, you would not want to swim here.

I’m ashore running errands. Smiling faces everywhere, “Hello Mister!” from all directions, children staring at me like they’ve never seen an elderly blond Englishman dragging his beach trolley down the street before. I pulled 60 kgs at a time in that thing, down the hot dusty road, loaded with beer and groceries, past churches, mosques, a hundred street-food stands and a thousand scooters.

I ride in a bemo mini van whose dashboard is so well decorated I can’t see the road. At the laundry I’m using Google Translate on my phone to sort out the details of our transaction. I also manage to fill a cooking gas bottle, get petrol for the dinghy and procure 200 litres of good diesel, which has to be paid for in cash on the other side of town, pumped into jerrycans, driven to the dock, delivered to the boat by dinghy and syphoned in to the tanks through a filtered funnel. That’s hot work. Sorong is exhausting.

We filled our shopping bags with fresh fruit and vegetables from the local market, overcoming language barriers and dehydration. Every time I returned to the boat I needed a cold shower and an hour or so to recover from the latest foray ashore. I try to never complain about things on this blog, if this lifestyle is sometimes uncomfortable it’s obviously self inflicted and I certainly don’t expect sympathy. I’m still new here, urban Raja Ampat is fascinating, frustrating and sometimes just indecipherable.

Finally we’re all loaded and ready to go. Tanks are full, we have a range of about 1300 miles now, even with zero wind. (Which is pretty much the long range forecast.) But it still feels good, the freedom, the potential for exploration and adventure. The larder is well stocked and the fridges are full. We are cleared for take off. Except that we can’t get the anchor up! We managed to foul it on a heavy cable which was laying in the harbour mud 20 metres below us. It had to be hoisted up from the seabed and wrangled off the hook, with the sun getting higher. Did I mention that it’s hot?

The Smooth:

We slip away from Sorong, the boat movement creates a welcome breath of air, out through the anchored ships and bagans, north into clear blue water. Just 35 miles away is a quiet bay on the southeastern tip of Waigeo.

We’re welcomed by dolphins. Our hook bites into the sand below, engine noise turns to silence. We’re in a whole other world.

As I dive in to the clear water, I’m washed clean of the dirty old town and it’s all suddenly so worthwhile. We have everything we need and we’re in a magic spot.

Anchored off a deserted jungly headland, surrounded by reef which grooms the north swell in to rideable waves. The bay is a sandy beach backed by wilderness, a spectacular rainforest backdrop.

No other humans in sight, until our new friend appears in a canoe to trade coconuts for dried noodles. And a Bintang.

We are are alone for days, empty waves peeling down the reef almost to the boat.

I was trying to wing in very light wind when a pod of pilot whales swam past to see what was going on.

This is Matt’s first trip on Escapade, and his first anchorage is now one of my all-time favourites.

We towed him into this one:

We surf, wing, tow foilboards and ride Foildrives.

Foildrive is an Australian innovation, an electric motor which bolts on to any foil and board. The little prop is controlled with a handheld trigger. It powers you on to the wave, then the foil takes over, allowing you to fly above the wave face, in this case from the outside reef all the way back to the boat. That’s a one-minute wave ride.

This is a new toy for Escapade. I started playing with Foildrive in Maui and realised it would be perfect to have one on the boat. Bryan thought so too, so now we have multiple batteries and foil options to play with.

The onboard inverter can charge two Foildrive batteries in 90 minutes while the sun is high, on pure solar power. While that happens we paddle normal surfboards, to get some exercise. Mellow longboard lines out the back for me, shallow barrelling inside sections for the boys.