Matilda's Journey: Extra stop: Hoga Island August 12

Sunday, 14 August 2016

Extra stop: Hoga Island August 12 - 14 2016

We moved from Wanci to Hoga Island August 12 2016. Its approximately 35 nautical miles and we tried ever so hard to sail it but the wind angle, the reefs that seem to stick out for miles and the chop all meant that sailing was useless unless you wanted to take hours and hours to tack 35nm’s. The risk of entering between the reefs late in the afternoon forced us to motor in for safety.

We anchored at 05 28.82S & 123 45.89E in 22 meters of water. Be careful when entering through the reef marker on your port side it is not on the edge of the reef. Also when we entered (August 2016) there was a broken cable floating on the surface. It is approx 60/70mm thick and roughly 20/30 meters long floating on the port side. Lucky for us the fleet who was already anchored at Hoga had radioed the hazard to us early. It turned out the cable actually runs along the coral patch and must have broken off at some stage – no idea what its purpose was.

Hoga is a national park and is used for research and has divers come from all over the world who stay for several months at a time to study. A lot of what we saw was the old dive center and is now left to decay on its own.

Once we arrived Beez Neez came over for a quick hello and then we followed them shortly after for a snorkel. Wow its amazing here, the fish are abundant and the coral is very good. The sheer drop offs are incredible. We saw a sea snake and 3 lion fish! The island is magnificent.

Dive boat

Jetty looking towards the island

Our tender tied to the jetty in about 3-5 meters of water and crystal clear.

Quite a few of the fleet left the next day for an atoll named Tomia, 30nm’s further down for a snorkel but we decided to stay on to explore the island, make bread, bottle the brew and chill for a day before an overnight run to Flores.