Saturday 26 July Sukau village

river flotsam

It's taken us a leisurely three days to motor 38 miles up the river to the village of Sukau. This is as far as a masted yacht can go – power cables slung over the river hang too low for us to pass underneath. One could try but there'd be a heavy charge (both literally and monetarily) for knocking down the cable so we'll stay here and then retrace our way back to the clean sea water. Kinabatangan is water suspended in mud, orange mud, and thick with logs, sometimes whole trees and all kinds of vegetation sweeping down on the current. On a number of occasions we've had to use the boat hook to clear a small island of debris off the anchor chain. It's not always floral debris as we discovered this afternoon.

Frankie the crocodile leans on us

Earlier in the afternoon we'd been watching local celebrity crocodile Frankie cruising the riverbank searching for supper. When he disappeared from view we popped downstairs for ten minutes and came up to find Frankie just 20m ahead of our bow, his head pointed away from us and being swept onto our hull by the current. He must have known what he was doing because he was quite unconcerned when his tail and then head rested on the anchor chain. The current pulled his tail under the boat and we were able to watch his head drifting down our side until his tail hit the keel and he dived. What an incredible close encounter with an animal more dangerous than a shark. We're not too bothered about sharks when we dive but if we were to come across a croc I'd be very scared.

drifting under starboard side

A couple of days ago we were travelling along when we heard pygmy elephants (they're a little quieter than Asian elephants because they are 1” shorter) crashing through the trees. Nothing seen but I pulled back on the throttle to drift along and when I re-engaged there was a horrible juddering from the propeller. We quickly lowered the anchor and David investigated; most likely was a branch, or fishing line, around the prop or it could have been the gear box. If we'd been at sea we could have jumped in the water and visually checked the prop. In the river there is nil visibility to see the crocodile behind you. Fortunately David was able to turn the prop shaft from the engine room which seemed to free us. He did say I could have dived in a I was on the helm at the time of the incident. I declined.