Yangello

Taking our time heading south again from Wayag, we stopped in at Yangello on our way towards the big town of Waisai where we will be able to reprovision at the local markets.

Yangello is the location of a “homestay” that was being constructed when Covid closed down international travel. A homestay is an Indonesian holiday resort on a low key scale, typically built on stilts over water in traditional materials, and are popular throughout Raja Ampat. This one at Yangello remains incomplete, with only 3 of the 5 huts built above the floor, and only one that looks to have been completed, with another 2 only stilts in the water.

The interconnecting boardwalk winds through the mangroves to a location with all tide access and a large platform. From there, access across the island to a beach faces out to the west towards the excellent coral ledges that surround the island. This was the best coral we have seen yet in Indonesia, with huge schools of fish, rays, sharks, and a wide range of hard and soft corals in clear water that drops off from the intertidal zone to around 50 metres in a shear cliff of limestone.

Again we found the beaches that are exposed to the weather to be covered in plastic litter, and on approach to the island, when passing through a line of debris on the tide, had to stop twice to clear sheets of plastic from the outboard motor on SeeBeeZee, as we dodged the larger items, such as garden chairs and shoes, that were visible, floating about the mass of clear bags and plastic cups and bottles.

The weather is starting to break now, after months of calms. We are now getting breezes some afternoons, and frequent storms and showers of rain, one of which kept us awake until late last night as winds of over 35 knots tested our anchor in the deep water over broken coral rubble.