Tual in the Kai islands was our port of arrival back in October last year. After leaving Banda, we sailed for two days to reach the Kai Islands, passing through a severe storm the first night and being becalmed the second night.
The storm was the worst we have seen in Indonesia. The other two boats we were sailing together with both suffered damage as the winds reached over 40 knots for a couple of hours and drove rain so heavy that the boundary between sea and air was blended. We reduced sail to retain only enough job out to keep control of the boat. After a slow sail all day, we were near the island of Kur by sunset, but it was impossible to find somewhere to anchor. The water was 100m deep right up to the edge of the fringing coral. With no wind, we simply dropped all sail and set alarms, and drifted in the lee of the island all night, getting a restful sleep in the glassy sea.
Before heading in to Tual, we enjoyed the beaches on a couple of offshore islands. With a couple more days of Ramadan, we decided to stay at experience the festival of Eid in a moslem country. Each evening, we went ashore for a meal in a local padang or cafe, and as our language skills have been improving, we were able to pick and choose better now, and ended up with the most tasty feasts each night. While we missed the early morning celebrations of Eid at the mosque, a local found us wandering the streets and took us home for a meal, and took us to the mosque for his noon prayers.
While mingling with the people of Tual has been a most enjoyable experience, we can not tolerate their indifference to plastic waste. The harbour is so polluted with waste that it is necessary to stop the dinghy and clear plastic from the propeller every trip to shore, and some times more than once. The winds prevailing here now seem to drive a river of trash into the harbour and trap it under the stilt buildings of the local market.
We were invited into this house for a feast during Eid
Enjoying a feast at a street Padang style cafe
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