Two "no name" anchorages

Once we had left the beautiful island of Kroko, we travelled westward along the north coast of Flores Island passing more volcanic mountains, some obviously dormant but others showing definite signs of recent activity.

It seemed to get greener and greener the farther along we ventured and we finally stopped with Lop To at an anchorage which was purported to have excellent snorkelling but they were unable to happily secure their anchor so chose to give up and sail overnight to Maumere instead. 

 

We, on the other hand, chose to stay. The water was incredibly clear but it certainly wasn't a good place for anchoring. There was a very narrow strip where it was about the right depth but a few metres either side, it was either far too deep or far too shallow. After a couple of attempts, we held. We then settled down to our sundowners and to dinner but Paul wasn't very happy when the wind shifted to an onshore breeze taking us closer to the shore with it's hidden coral 'bommies'. In the end, he stayed up all night on anchor watch – not fun. There was a beautiful full moon which made it easy enough to see how close we were getting to the shore but it's no fun worrying all night long as to whether we'd have to pick up the hook and move off or not.

Fortunately, it all worked out and, apart from a very tired husband, it was quite a pretty spot. Despite this, we weren't prepared to suffer another night so decided we'd move on to another spot about 20nm further westwards.

There was no nearby village at that anchorage but as we were preparing to lift the anchor, we were visited by a very old chap paddling a tiny dugout who looked as though he was the poorest of the poor. He was hoping we could give him a mask and snorkel but we had none to spare so gave him a t-shirt instead. His eyes lit up and he produced an enormous toothless grin – I guess he really appreciated it.

The next anchorage, too, proved to be somewhat problematical. It was so deep that the depth sounder wasn't registering as we entered the bay and then suddenly it was only a couple of metres. We managed to drop anchor in amongst some huge old coral masses but it disappeared into a hole so the question was, are we going to be able to pull it up in the morning?

Snorkelling wasn't brilliant; most of the coral was quite dead. This part of the world suffers from cyclones at certain times of the year and with those and a few tsunamis over the past couple of decades, the corals have been severely damaged. Then, too, with the local population dynamiting for fish, it doesn't have much of a chance.

Although we dropped anchor is 30m, this is how shallow it was behind us

Our concerns about retrieving the anchor came to naught, it lifted easily and we were off to our next destination, Maumere.