Thursday Island to Tual - 5 days, Fishing Fleets Galore, 4 fishing nets and a Fish and !/2 later!

We departed Thursday Island with a brisk easterly which was exactly what the Doctor ordered.  However, getting away from the island is a matter of planning. 

You are advised to wait for the current/tide to be in your favor...or you will be a month of Sundays.  Fortunately for us...the wind and the tide were going our way.

Traveling with a buddy boat is something we have seldom done in our 15 years of cruising.  But if it is something you are going to do,

the good crew of Sv Jams, Murray and Carol Clarke are about as good as it gets.  They are just flat out good people.  They are caring and sharing and despite the unfortunate fact that their boat is undeniably faster and Capt. Murray is hands down a better fisherman…(both facts are not always easy to admit). 

 

Murray and Carols  beautiful aluminum hulled Van Der Stadt, Jams, despite a shorter waterline, has a taller rig and therefore  more sail area and the coup de gras a New Code Zero sail…so just do the math.   

The good news is that KaijaSong was always within hailing distance and knowing that there was a friendly voice on the VHF to check in just somehow makes the hours pass quicker. 

The first three days were quite uneventful.  Winds lightening the farther west we sailed and by day three we were motor-sailing.  It was day three that things started getting interesting.  We had heard from friends who had made this trek to stay south of PNG to avoid the fishing nets.  We determined early on to follow the advice and set a course that would keep us a minimum of 60 miles south of the coast.  

 This proved to not be enough…we ran over our first net with some consternation and luckily saw it pass behind us.  We immediately altered course farther south.  We continued south until we were now 100 miles south of the PNG coast.  It was like sailing thru a mine field.  There were fishing boats everywhere.  Luckily Carol on Jams was able to tune in her radar to spot boats and floats we were not able to see.  Despite using radar and their guidance, we still managed to run over and collide with three more nets before running the gauntlet into Tual.   

We had been dragging lures for 5 days we only managed to catch 1 fish, a lovely Maui Maui, 

and a half a tuna...it appears that some bigger fish got him faster than I could reel him in...oh well...you can't get em all! 

Given the number of fishing fleets, vessels, mother ships, smaller liners and netters it is no wonder that there are so few fish available for us cruising anglers.

In the wee small hours of Sunday November 11, we sat bobbing in the dark outside the channel leading into the Kai Islands.  We could just make out the shape of the boats blocking the entrance and it appears they had strung their nets across the entire channel.  They were unlit and showed no signs of moving.  After a couple of hours of zig zagging back and forth they finally collected their nets and we transited thru.

We had arrived in Indonesia!