Kinabatangan River trip

Time to leave Sandakan.  We had been warned that the waters of Sandakan were heavily fouled with dumped wrecks, artillery, machinery or whatever dating back to the Japanese occupation during WWII.  Well, we were to find out first hand.  Over a period of a few days, one by one the rally boats left the anchorage but, when it came to our turn - yup, you guessed it, we were well and truly stuck.  What is it with us?  Ots & Lil, don't laugh!  Crossing the Pacific, we endured a bit of a reputation for having to dive our anchor so often to the point that some cruising friends would say that if they wanted to be sure to well and truly set their anchor, just drop it where Calypso did; guaranteed holding.

On this occasion, it was a bit deep to work while free diving (18 metres) and revoltingly dirty waters so we shuffled back, forth and sideways for an hour and a quarter, but eventually managed to free it.  It was obviously wrapped around something metallic, we could see shiny scraped patches all along the chain.  We'd had another bad squall a couple of nights before when several of the boats dragged and we prided ourselves on the fact that we had 70 metres of chain out so didn't budge.  Well, no wonder!  Every day is an adventure.

Our next destination was a trip down the Kinabatangan River and the timing of our departure was fairly crucial as we had to get to the river mouth sand bar at high tide (preferably a rising tide) in order to make it over the shallows.  We were now running late and the tide had turned, however we crept over slowly with less than half a metre under our keel in a few spots and met up with Saol Eile who had anchored a bit further up to wait for us so we dropped the hook behind them.  However, our troubles weren't over just yet as a little later, we wanted to move a couple of miles further up the river.  Saol Eile went ahead while we fiddled around with a few things but when we went to turn on, nothing, dead, nada, zero, zilch.  This has happened before and Paul simply cleaned up the fuse, replaced it and 'A' for away but not this time.  He went through everything, replaced the fuse, it popped, put in another, it too popped.  Damn, stranded.  Putting two and two together and coming up with five made us think that we'd possibly blown a couple of diodes in the alternator when we were trying to extract the anchor earlier.  Not good.

However, as luck would have it, we got onto the radio and discovered that Mick off the Australian boat Zoa was an electrician and after discussing the various symptoms, he agreed to hop into his dinghy in the morning with his magic box of tools and come back down the river to see if he could assist.  

He was with us before seven the next morning so we had the coffee on and the chaps got to work.  A couple of hours later, we were back in business.  Thank you Mick, thank you so much.  He determined that there was nothing wrong with the alternator but was puzzled as to why we kept blowing fuses.   In the end, it was a simple matter of the original fuse's natural attrition and our replacements were too small.  What we thought were 75 amp fuses were actually only 7.5 amp.  The old eyes aren't quite what they used to be and we couldn't see that damned little dot between the numbers in the dim light of the engine room.  He cleaned things up and replaced it with one slightly too small but sufficient to get us over the hurdle until we can find the correct ones in the next town.  We had visions of being stranded up a rarely travelled river deep in the jungles of Borneo with no motor and certainly no wind, but we were on the move again, thank goodness.

The Kinabatangan River is a winding, shallow and muddy one and we had to zigzag our way up to avoid the many sand banks and massive floating logs.  We anchored at half a dozen spots to simply enjoy the atmosphere and look out for proboscis and macaque monkeys.  Fireflies also added to the evening ambiance.  These little fairy lights twinkled in the trees as though someone had decorated them with strands of LED Christmas lights; magnificent. 

One objective was to go in search of pygmy elephants.  The vegetation further up the river is thick rainforest and the bird sounds are quite amazing.  We saw rhinoceros hornbills, storks, cranes and beautifully coloured kingfishers as well as a many eagles and other raptors but, sadly, no elephants and no orangutans.  At one point, we dashed over to where another boat had sighted a couple of elephants but past experience has taught us that, despite their size, they are capable of hiding behind a blade of grass.  We could hear them crashing through the shrubbery and a lot of trumpeting but couldn't quite catch a glimpse of them.

A side trip by dinghy up an oxbow river took us into a placid lake with dozens of proboscis monkeys playing in the trees.  We took our evening drinks and drifted around to watch them vying for whichever branch they'd chosen to settle on for the night.  It seemed that the least comfortable branch was the most sought after.  How they sleep like this is beyond me.

Although we'd have loved to see more wildlife, we had no complaints; the trip up was absolutely gorgeous, wild and unique.  The varying vegetation included vast areas of nipah palms, mangroves and thick rainforest growth.  The beauty of this meander was in the serenity of the scenery with all its wonderful sounds, far from the madding crowd.  Another great pro was that the barnacles on our hull must have had a bit of a tough time.  The upper river was primarily fresh water which is not quite their cup of tea and every once in a while we touched bottom, sure to give those on the keel a bit of a fright.  

Now to head back to civilisation (of a sorts).

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