Just a quick update…
I arrived at Pulau Mantanani today.
It was a bit of a slog, I left at 7am and arrived at 17:00 and spent 30 minutes trying to find a spot to anchor.
On the way I passed Kinabalu Mountain, which looked lovely in the morning mist, I think it’s the tallest mountain in SE Asia.
It was quite rough later on during the passage and I couldn’t motor then as the wind and waves were on the nose and slowed me to just 2 knots, so I had to tack back and forth for 4 hours, mostly steering by hand. It was while the boat was heeling heavily, and was racing along with a double reefed main and just the staysail, that I began to doubt the wind speed indicator, that was showing 10 knots of wind, and in fact, when I thought about it, it hadn’t been above 10 knots for a very long time. I expect it’s faulty and will have to be replaced.
You can see on the map below there are two islands, Besar and Kerchil, which means big and small. I went for the small one as it was recommended to anchor south of the lighthouse, however there isn’t a lighthouse here anymore, did they mean the new radar station? You can see on the google map how the two islands sit on a big oval lump of rock,.Closer to the shore, its solid shallow coral. I have a sonar depth sensor which shows me the sea floor surface, and I can usually spot rocky areas, and eventually I found a very flat area, dropped the hook, and went about setting it in, it was looking good until I upped the revs to test it, then it dragged along rock, and quickly came to a stop. It’s dug in now, but is it under a rock, or worse has the chain wrapped around a rock? I quickly dived over the side with my snorkel, but the light had almost gone, and I couldn’t see much, but it did look mostly sandy there with a few rocky bits. We shall see tomorrow at 7am, when I try to leave.
I decided to try my new fishing apparatus on this trip. 
As you can see I have an assortment of plastic fish, but now the secret weapon is being deployed…
The aeroplane! I have been assured this will do the trick. I have three of them, so no more buying fish for me.
Sadly things didn’t work out too well, the aeroplane kept dive bombing and in 8 hours I didn’t get any bites. Worse than that, the fish seemed to be mocking me, several times they put on a jumping show alongside the boat. There were big tuna, leaping out of the water repeatedly, right next to the boat, sometimes I swear they were imitating the dolphins in dolphin world, they seemed to be doing synchronised jumps just for me! all the time I had two lures trailing behind. I’m beginning to see why the locals might have turned to using dynamite instead of hooks!
Paul Collister