Heading back to Aus

After everything that's happened, the days in our little turquoise paradise are numbered - swimming in clear waters will be a long lost memory once we get to Darwin. Reluctantly, we finally peal ourselves away from our little Kai islands paradise and head to the local provincial capital Tual to clear out of Indonesia.

Tual does not yet have any corona cases but we don’t really feel like walking around after the welcome we got in Banda, booking Jhord our local contact, to drive us around town to complete the formalities.

We settle on 10th of April as day of departure and Jhord drives us from immigration to customs to harbour master to get stamped and we chat about his legal studies, small kids and life under corona threat.

Tual is a really interesting looking city and we’d love to explore more but all we manage that afternoon is to leave the country legally. Indonesian bureaucracy is a slow moving beast.

With our passports finally stamped by customs and immigration and a harbour master clearance for the boat, we are free to leave.

On our last night, we say farewell to Phillip, our German sailing friend we met in PNG and start the engines early in the morning of the 10th April. Australian Border Force has been notified and have told us we will be required to self-isolate on the boat in Darwin for two weeks. We already knew this from other returning boats who started arriving in Darwin from the end of March. We are prepared, or so we think.

Just before we leave Tual, we hear from Storyteller, reporting they got intercepted by a small but armed pirate vessel near Saumlaki, following them for hours. Our passage plan immediately changes to give Saumlaki a wide berth and we head to Darwin without stopping anywhere. We stay well offshore after leaving the Kai islands, and make it to Cape Don on the Australian mainland three days later.

The passage itself is fairly uneventful, we enjoy some calm weather and beautiful cloud formations. The most exciting thing to happen is the Australian Border Force plane fly over and the associated radio exchange. They patrol the northern border diligently.

From Cape Don, it is another couple of days sail through the murky green waters of the Van Diemen Gulf, where it is imperative one works with the strong currents or suffer the consequences (i.e. go backwards).

We survive this too, and arrive just as the sun starts setting over Darwin on the evening of the 15th April, tired but relieved. Our relief is not to last.