September 2023

Hello again Boatbloggers® and welcome to another action packed edition of The Boatblog® brought to you direct from darkest Indonesia.

In the last few weeks we have seen whale sharks…

Mantas…

And that’s a black manta too – very rare.

Dragons…

Komodo dragons of course. Not the ones with wings that breathe fire.

And even a fish riding a bicycle.

But strangest of all is this rare and unusual creature.

The visitor!

We have been so far away from home that it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to come and join us, so it was great to welcome Nick as our new crew, even if it was only for a week.

In the last blog we were in Wakatobi, and we were sorry to have to finally say “Sampai Jumpa,” and move on, but we were given a great leaving present by Gita & Nazma who had been our guides during our stay.

Not a bad likeness I reckon.

It was just a short gentle day sail to our next stop of Pasar Wajo.

Once again when we arrived we were given the most fantastic welcome, with music, dancing and speeches by the Regent and other dignitaries.

It wasn’t long before Ju was volunteered to play with the band in a traditional hat.

On the island, “Terima Kasih Pasar Wajo,” has become quite a hit.

Balloon animals seem to go down well too.

All those years as the better half of Mr Ree & Sir Prize have finally paid off.

We went on a tour of the island.

Which had to include the fort at Baubau, which remarkably is the biggest in the world. The centrepiece is a giant stone pineapple which we’re told represents the character of the islanders. A hard skin, but soft and sweet on the inside.

One of the local specialities is Coffee Beer.

Apparently it gets you drunk and wakes you up all at the same time. Genius.

Our next port of call was Gili Bodo which is about 260 nautical miles south. So to break up the journey we stopped for a couple of days at a beautiful little atoll called Taka Lamungen. The reef is almost totally submerged, so it feel like you are anchoring right in the middle of the ocean.

Gili Bodo was spectacular.

Which is more than can be said of Ju’s photograph of the monkeys on the beach.

You’ll have to trust us here, but that little dot right in the middle on the shoreline is a monkey.

The snorkelling was amazing – it was so clear that it was like swimming in gin, which is something that Ju used to do a lot of.

Ju saw some unusual coral just off the boat, so mindful of capturing a unique picture for our readers he dived down to see what it was.

Not some new species of fish after all. Looks like Lyn’s bikini had got blown overboard.

But alas we couldn’t stay for ever as we had to rush to Labuan Bajo where we were meeting Nick who was flying in from Cape Town.

We asked him what he wanted to do while he was with us and as we were just of Komodo National Park he said, “Dragons, mantas and whale sharks.” On the good ship Domini your wish is our command. So at first light the following day we set off to find the Komodo dragons.

They are about three metres long, and we were warned that they are very dangerous. Apart from them being massive, with claws that can shred your skin with one blow, their bite is deadly poisonous. They can kill and eat a buffalo, so they’re not to be tangled with lightly.

Hmmm. Doesn’t look so terrifying. As Homer Simpson said when he was looking at a sleeping crocodile at the zoo, “I’ve seen plays more interesting than this. Plays, I tell you.”

Apparently they way they kill their prey is that they give it a bite, and then wait for the poison in their mouths to go to work. Then they follow the dying animal for up to a week waiting for it to keel over and then it’s dinner time. Not a nice way to go, but it’s a technique that has recently been adopted by the KGB.

Next up – mantas.

No sooner said than done.

Only one more for the bucket list – whale sharks. Unfortunately they were a couple of days sail away on an island called Sumbawa. But we weren’t going to let a little thing like that stop the intrepid crew of Domini, so we weighed anchor and headed west.

We anchored at a secret location and were picked up before dawn by a local fisherman who took us to one of the squid boats where the whale sharks had been seen for the last few days.

These fish – apparently they are neither whales nor sharks, but it’s still a good name – are incredible. The sheer size of them is hard to imagine.

There must have been about twenty of them, and they come right up next to you. This one looks like Lyn’s walking on it.

We hope you appreciate the restraint that the editor is showing here. That’s only three photos so far. We could have put literally hundreds of pictures of these amazing animals.

The pictures are a bit fuzzy because of all the plankton in the water, which is of course why the whale sharks are there because that’s what they eat.

Wow!

And now it’s time for a new feature – The Boatblog® competition. It’s called Spot the Fish. What follows are a series of pictures of various fish that are all experts at camouflage. All you have to do is spot them.

Number 1