Saturday 18 October Frewin island

A week has gone by since we arrived to anchor in the lee of Frewin island.  We left Kabui bay last Sunday morning with the aim of finding somewhere to stay close to the dive site of Five Rocks at the entrance.  Near the dive site it was all deep, deep, deep and exposed to the southerly swell.  A mile south from the dive site is Frewin island where we had shelter from swell and less than 30m depth.  It turned out to be even better than our first impression as we found excellent snorkelling and diving close by.  Hence staying a week.
On our first full day we were joined in the anchorage and on an excursion by Sidewinder and Zorana.  While they snorkelled the wall on the small island south of Frewin, Frewinbondo, David and I had an excellent dive. The clarity must be almost 50m, plenty of hard and soft corals, fishes yet almost no current.

Frewin island

Skunk clown fish

After this the daily routine was the same; diving and snorkelling, sometimes drinks on one boat, sometimes on another.  Zorana left to go to Sorong and Brick House and Emma Peel came in there place.
One afternoon an enterprising local dive boat owner approached us to offer day tours. We took Mr Matthias's offer and booked him to take six of us across to Cape Kri to dive the most well known sites in Raja Ampat.  Suzie (Sidewinder) arranged with the dive resort on Kri island for air tank fills which enabled us to do three dives in one day; Sardine reef with clouds of fish, sharks, huge bump head parrot fish, current swept Cape Kri and a final dip at the more sedate Yenuba bay where there more fish then you could shake a spear gun at. (Spear gun fishing is illegal in the park so this is just a literary analogy.)  When you see barracudas in large numbers and a school of black tip sharks pass under you, you know this is a good place.  It was a fantastic day and probably the best coral diving I've ever done, certainly the best for a very long time.

Wobbegong shark

Clear, clear water

On our last day at Frewin we took the dinghy over to a village on Gam island and met Martin and his wife Nelly who run a small homestay, or guest house.  Both of them speak excellent English, a result of working as missionaries in Papua New Guinea for more than 20 years.  Returned to their home village and surrounded by family they've begun their new business in a house built by the government. Indeed every house in the village is a modern brick house built by the government.  It's very neat and clean. We met a man building a new canoe – the long, narrow hull is carved by hand from one tree and then bamboo outriggers are added for stability.

Nelly and Martin Luther

Martin and Nelly gave us tea and fruit while we chatted about life on the island, in Papua and in Indonesia.  In remote areas finding people who can speak English well and therefore communicate easily is not common.  Most of the time our conversations are in basic English and even more basic bahasa Indonesian but we get by with body language and writing in the sand.

Frewin anchor  00 28.20S   130 41.42E   22m sand