Kamatal Part 3
30 July 2011 | Kamatal Island, Louisiades, PNG
Steve
As a reminder to the reader, cruising in the tropics around coral reefs is dangerous. If you run into one of the many coral heads jutting up from deep water, you may well sink your boat. Between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM on a sunny day it is quite possible to avoid this fate by carefully watching the water. The different colors of the water indicate the different depths. Dark blue is deep. Light blue is 30 to 50 feet. White blue is less than 20 feet. Yellow is coral less than 20 feet. Light brown is coral less than 8 feet, and so on. After 3:00 PM, it becomes increasingly difficult and then impossible to see the uncharted reefs. We needed to be anchored soon, or spend a night at sea. With this in mind we decided to see what this man Jimmie could show us, although our expectations were low. With that, we tied Jimmie's kayak to our stern and welcomed him aboard. He walked to the bow of Endless Summer and pointed across the channel toward his island a mile or so away. We approached cautiously, as Jimmie pointed the way. The reef came into view, and the bottom came up fast as Jimmie pointed for us to go more to the right. Reef was close by on both sides, but we were indeed still in deep water. We radioed to Sea Level just behind us, "40 feet, 50 feet, 70 feet." Jimmie pointed to go hard to the left and the sun caught the water revealing a large area of sandy bottom in 30 to 40 foot depth. We had indeed threaded our way through the reef and were in a protected lagoon with plenty of room for our boats and more. We grinned with relief at the happy sight, and dropped our anchor. Over a cup of cold water, Jimmie explained that cruising boats come to his island every year as part of an Australian Rally to the Louisiades. He invited us to come ashore and see the, "yacht club", and then to our amazement he said, "you must be tired, I will leave you now." After the long days of constant visitors we couldn't believe our ears. "Did you hear that?" we said to each other. "I will leave you now." After a swim in the beautiful lagoon, we and the crew on Sea Level took our dinghies outside the reef and snorkeled along the steep drop off. We couldn't believe our good fortune. Only a few hours earlier we were facing a long night at sea, and now we were anchored in a perfect lagoon among a cluster of beautiful small islands waiting to be explored.