Anchoring Roulette: Explosive Edition

Here’s a fun one from Indonesia!  It cracks me up once a year when it shows up on my feed.  

After 72 hours at sea with no sleep—not even leaving the deck—this was supposed to be a safe anchorage. The kind of stop where you imagine yourself collapsing like a beached seal, belly up, dreaming of still water and sleep. It had been a rough passage of squalls, lightning, strong winds, and fishing gear to dodge at every turn. I was running on fumes and pure delusion.

I rolled up to this bay I was aiming for at the crack of dawn. Opened up my charts on Navionics and zoomed in, trying to line up a spot to anchor, and suddenly the screen lit up with little obstruction icons like confetti at a New Year’s party. Curious (and maybe a little too sleep-deprived for my own good), I tapped one open—and there it was, in all caps like a bad horror-movie jump scare:

TANJUNG LALANSOAI – PULAU OSEInformation: FORMER MINED AREA. Mines could still present a hazard for vessels anchoring, fishing, or engaged in submarine or seabed operations. They are not considered hazardous to surface navigation.

Translation: “Sail on through, sailor, but whatever you do, don’t drop that anchor unless you’d like to star in your own Fourth of July finale.”

That jolted me awake faster than a triple espresso. Between the sheer number of those markers in the exact spot I was trying to tuck into, and the fact that every inch looked like a “don’t touch” button, I realized there was nowhere safe to put the hook. And to make it even better, my Starlink wasn’t working—so I couldn’t even Google, ‘Hey Siri, how often do yachts explode on leftover WWII mines in Asia?’ Brand-new to this region, no local knowledge, no advice to lean on—I just took it at face value: nope, not today.

So I kept on keeping on. Another two days, another 48 hours tacked onto the journey, but hey—better late than kaboom.

Just another day at sea. 😂🏴‍☠️😂

Once I finally got the Starlink kicking again, I was able to confirm the reality. In truth, the odds of me actually dragging my anchor across a live WWII sea mine are about the same as finding a working payphone in the middle of the ocean. Most of these fields were cleared decades ago, and while the charts still throw up the red spots as a caution, the practical risk today is slim to none. Still, the warning isn’t just for decoration—there have been rare cases of old ordnance turning up. So yeah, scary or not, it was definitely not the place I wanted to test my luck after two sleepless days.

Days Sober: 2,091