Selmat Sele

We have now travelled up from Misool to Sorong, the gateway city to the Raja Ampat provence on the western tip of the big island of Papua.

From Misool, we came up through the Selmat Sele. Selmat is the bahasan word for “Straight”, so this is the Straight of Sele, which is the name of the point at the south-eastern entrance to the channel.

After motoring all day in glassy conditions, we arrived at the entrance late in the day, with a heavy tropical downpour chasing us in. We stayed the night in the little side channel at Seget just inside the southern entrance, and hoped we would get the tide to carry us through early in the morning. Fortunately for us, it worked out that the high tide at Seget mid morning coincided with the low tide at Sorong at the other end of the channel, so that we had a strong current carrying us through. At the end of the day, we had travelled over 40 miles over the land, but only 30 miles through the water.

The land on either side of the channel was built up with infrastructure related to oil and gas exploration. There were many tugs and barges, and of course the usual long fishing boats. I believe the fishermen from Misool collectively send their catches up to Sorong by longboat each day. The land along the Selat was low, with many scattered islands along the meandering channels.