Day 7 of our passage was the third day of our continuous sail after leaving Jensen Bay in the Wessels.

After leaving the fishing fleet off Trangan in the morning, we headed NW towards the Kai Islands. Conditions were perfect, broad reaching across a flat sea with a 12 knot breeze.

Trangan, as part of the Aru Islands, is geologically part of the Australian tectonic plate. As the Australian plate moves towards Asia at a rate of about 25mm per year, the sea floor between Australia and Asia is buckling up like corrugated metal, creating the islands of the archipelago of Indonesia with lines of deep trenches between, and is the reason for the earthquakes and volcanoes of Indonesia.

As we approached Kai, the sea depth went from 30 metres where the fishing boats were anchored, to over 100m, and then our depth sounder was not able to seek the bottom, with charts indicating depths of over 3000m. Even within 5nms of the eastern island of Pulau Kai Besat the ocean floor is still 3000m deep.

We made landfall with Kai Besat soon after dark, and after battling the strong tides that run around and between the islands, we had an excellent view Besat at sunrise as we sailed the channel between Beat and Kai Dulah.