Final Voyage: My Last Leg

I arrived back onboard as people were still in their morning meditations, finishing deck yoga, and others were waiting by the coffee pot for the last REAL coffee before the voyage.  We were supposed to leave at 11 AM, but during morning meeting we pushed the time back 4 PM.  After shipshaping the galley, the deck, Bosuns, and my bunk, I had some time to call my mom for her birthday and change my flight from Singapore to the UAE; two important tasks I had been putting off. 

We finally set sail and began our journey around the west coast of Bali, towards the narrow straight with a 6 knot current protecting Bali from Java.  I was exhausted from my evening with mason and Stefanie, but I did my best to force myself to stay awake and see as much of the Balinese coast as I could during the daylight.   

My first official shift began at midnight (0000 to 0400): Sailing from Benoa, off the west coast of Southern Bali, we were hit by several squalls accompanied by unrelenting rain.  When I was at the helm, I was completely soaked through, and when inside, I was constantly mopping up leaks, moving buckets, and trying not to be surprised when another spot started dripping.  At the helm, I motored us through complete darkness, rolling fog, and unknown sea.  The only time I could actually see the weather all around the ship was when the blinding lightening turned everything white, burning the shape of the bolt in my line of sight.  Alone in the rain, cold and wet, I sang to the constant bass sound of the humming engine and the splashing percussion of the falling rain.  The only interruption was the deafening claps and booms of thunder telling me we were only getting closer to the storm.

I woke up around sunrise, just as we were entering the narrowest part of the channel.  Rounding the furthest north-western tip of Bali, we turned down and made our approach on Menjangan.  Off the coast of Menjangan near the Ganesha Temple we dropped our final Blue Marble, completing the journey from Malta to Menjangan.  Everyone was excited to see the island we would be diving off of for the next two months and anxious to get to the bay and set our anchor.  As Laser and Carol sped off in the Zodiac to check the entrance of the bay and mentally prepare Mir’s navigation route, a Brutus whale breached along side of our ship; it was a sign to Gaie that we were home!

Inside the bay, it took us three attempts to drop our anchor in the right spot.  The first time we let it out over 300 ft, which then had to be completely pulled in so we could move to another spot.  The anchor has to be manually winched up, which is quite a lot of work (it didn’t help that I was still feeling my night out with Mason and Stefanie).  By the time we finally set our anchor in a place we were happy with, we had winched in around 600 ft of anchor chain…a great endurance workout!  Again we were quarantined to the ship while we checked in with the local marine police, who kept visiting us, showing off their machine guns.  The police were looking for any reason to tax us, which is incredible since they had a huge stack of papers in front of them showing that we had cleared into Jakarta, the capital, and Benoa.  Everyone is out for their own interests! A weight was finally lifted when we were officially at Menjangan, anchored in the bay out of harms way.