an Indonesian incident

New Years eve I thought about an incident that happened on that day in 1984. Cliff and I had taken the catamaran out on the ocean to celebrate the New Year by ourselves. It was a nice day but later turned pretty ugly with high waves and wind.
We tucked into one of our favourite spots, 3 Palms cove we called it, quite early that afternoon.
It was not long and we got company of a few young guys  on a ketinktink , an Indonesian outrigger canoe. They were hoping for an invitation on the cat, but because it is sooo  hard to get them off usually and you never know what they might have in mind,  we did not bite. They hung around for quite some time looking over what was on the cat and saw we had a radio, scuba gear, mattresses, nice big ice igloos and all kinds of other stuff. They finally left and we walked around the shore for awhile and later on got to bed when it was dark, not waiting for midnight. The weather was getting rougher all the time.
Around midnight Cliff woke me out of a deep sleep and told me to be very quiet. He snuck to the front of the boat and hauled up the anchor line very slowly as not to make noise. Then the chain came and it clunked so he heaved on it as fast as he could and started the engine. He had seen those guys from the afternoon come, cut their engine and swim the ketinktink towards us. We flew out of that cove, the guys in hot pursuit. The water was really rough and since there was lots of coral I had to be at the front of the boat looking out for that. It was very shallow. One moment I was looking up at Cliff on the stern with the engine and the next I was looking down on him.  We were lucky that the stars were out and we could see where we were going. We were also lucky that our outboard was more powerful than theirs because after quite awhile we were able to outrun them and they turned back. We ran for a long time before we felt safe enough to anchor again but believe me neither one of us slept that night.

ThreePalm cove

Another anchoring spot

Coral in the water (the camera does  not do it justice)

That was my story for tonight.

Good night everybody :-)