The Toilet, the Batman, and the Balcony Crowd

Baubau (BowBow) Stop — The Circus Costco Run

Baubau wasn’t an anchorage so much as a circus — and I was the poor sap rolling into town as the main act. Fuel tanks were gasping fumes, the fridge had all the charm of an abandoned cave, and the only thing standing between me and collapse was the mother of all supply runs.

The “dock” was a splintered plank lashed to the dirt path with a single chain, dangling like a loose tooth. No cleats, no security, no mercy. I parked the dinghy praying it’d still be there when I got back. The fixer I’d called (thank you, Noonsite phone number) waved off my paranoia. “Safe,” he said. And this guy was the real deal — plugged into everything. He knew everyone, solved problems before I finished describing them. Even invited me to tea at his place that night, but I was determined to get gone before dark.

Then the marathon began. First ATM stop, grabbing a wad of cash. Then fuel runs — twelve diesel jerry cans, filled and hauled. Back to the ATM again, then groceries — bags of ramen, rice, eggs, everything the boat had been starving for. One last errand: the pharmacy, where I grabbed antibiotics for my swollen, angry foot and a stash of ibuprofen. I was running my own personal triathlon, sprinting through town with sweat dripping down my back, each stop another event.

And that’s when the kids appeared. Forty of them, materializing from nowhere like they’d been waiting all week for a foreigner with a sack of instant noodles to parade down the hill. “Mister! Mister! Mister!” they shouted in chorus, like I’d just been elected Mayor of Baubau Chaos. Before I could react, half my groceries were snatched and sprinted barefoot down rocks — laughing, sliding, skidding, somehow not killing themselves. By trip two they’d organized a full-blown logistics network: runners climbing, haulers descending, a living supply chain powered by shrieks of laughter.

Each dinghy run turned into a ferry service. Twelve jerry cans and ten grocery bags took four trips. Each trip I ferried four kids out to the boat. While I stowed the loot, they turned Hold Fast into Disneyland. Cannonballs off the bow, flips from the davits, pirouettes off the dodger, trampolines across the deck. My floating home had been hijacked by pirates with the lung capacity of dolphins. Absolute mayhem — and somehow nothing broke. Just a chorus of “Jump again! Jump again!” while I shook my head, thinking: this was the wildest Costco run of my life.

And the encore? That night, the wind cranked up to 25–30 knots, and my chain locker joined the circus. The slope inside isn’t steep enough, so the chain piles up in a pyramid, binds, and jams the windlass. Which meant my night turned into a shuttle drill: sprint forward, kick down the pyramid, sprint aft, drive thirty feet, hit the button, repeat. Again and again, with gusts slapping me sideways. Exhausting, ridiculous, and the ocean’s way of reminding me: nothing is ever just “a quick fuel stop.”

Anchor Snag — Anchored to a Royal Flush

After half an hour of fighting the windlass, with fifteen feet of chain left out, it went iron-bar taut. The anchor refused to budge. Mud bottom, no coral — so this wasn’t Mother Nature. More likely an engine block, mooring gear, or some Indonesian mystery box rusting in the deep.

I tried everything. Backing off. Circling. Giving it slack. Nothing. Once it even teased me, letting me drift fifty yards toward open water, but the anchor still wouldn’t come up. It would lower, but not rise — like it had sworn an oath of loyalty to whatever was down there.

So I eased closer to shore, trying to get the mystery debris back under me, on the ground instead of dangling mid-water. The problem? Only a foot and a half under the keel, and just a hundred feet of forgiveness between me and the leeward shoreline.

Mask on, hammer and chisel in hand, I dove. The water was murky, the current tugged like it wanted me gone, and the light was fading. I banged, pried, cursed. Nothing.

Up above, a balcony bar was packed — Friday night, beers in hand, a crowd gathering. I could practically hear the play-by-play in Indonesian: “Look, the foreigner’s drowning for our entertainment!”

Then my Batman appeared. A little guy in wetsuit, fins, weights — clearly knew the drill. Slipped in like it was his backyard pool, disappeared below. Resurfaced once, holding up a toilet seat, pointing down. Yep — I’d anchored a porcelain throne. My ground tackle had literally married a toilet.

I handed him a pry bar and hammer. Down he went again, staying under so long I lost count. When he came up, he spat words I didn’t understand — but the tone suggested they weren’t compliments about the water. After thirty sweaty minutes of underwater wrestling, he surfaced with a thumbs-up. My chain went slack.

I could’ve hugged him. Instead, I pressed some cash into his hand, and he slipped away into the night like a ghost. Legend.

FADs (Fish Aggregating Devices) — The Midnight Minefield

Leaving Baubau, I thought I’d cleared the chaos. Wrong. The waters between Sulawesi and Flores are littered with FADs — Fish Aggregating Devices. Bamboo rafts anchored to the abyss with enough polypropylene line to wrap the moon like a Christmas present. Some had dim bulbs, others just flags — and the flagged ones usually hid nets stretching invisibly for a hundred yards.

By day they’re hard enough to spot in a swell. By night? Impossible. Moonless sky, black water, horizon erased. My drill became ritual: kill the cabin lights, shuffle forward, let eyes adjust, scan for flickers of light. Pick a seam between buoys, commit, pray. Hit a raft, and it just thunks the hull. Snag a float line in the prop, and congratulations — you’ve become a tetherball pole in the middle of the sea. Only escape: mask, knife, and the hope you don’t slip beneath your own boat at 3 a.m.

I never had to dive — but I also never relaxed. I stayed on deck all night, eyes burning, scanning the horizon for pinpricks. Lightning nuked my night vision. Sea sparkles tricked me. Swells hid buoys until they were suddenly right there. Each one was a ghost, flickering in and out, taunting me.

Every time I threaded that minefield, I pictured the nightmare: wrapped up at 3 a.m., tethered by the prop, the current slapping me against the hull like laundry on a washboard. That vision alone kept me sharp until dawn.

Starlink Oops — The $200 Photo Dump

Because no passage is complete without a self-inflicted wound, Starlink and my iPhone teamed up to rob me blind. Somewhere offshore, my phone decided it was the perfect time to upload forty-thousand photos to iCloud. Auto-sync was still on. Starlink doesn’t forgive.

Fifty-seven gigabytes. Overnight. On Priority Data. At two bucks a gig. That’s the nautical equivalent of shoveling cash straight into the bilge pump and hitting “discharge.” By morning, my wallet was lighter, my mood darker, and I was muttering at myself: “Turn off auto-upload, you idiot.” Costly. Humbling. Unforgettable.

Charts vs Reality — Reef or Mirage?

Next stop was supposed to be a reefy inlet at Tambuna Besar. A quiet anchorage, maybe a dive. But the charts couldn’t agree if it even existed. On my computer, Navionics showed a reef. On my phone, the same program showed land. On the chart plotter? Nothing. A cartographer’s coin toss.

That morning I’d already passed a reef a mile off my port beam that wasn’t on any chart — waves breaking, clear as day, yet invisible to the data. With that fresh in mind, I crept toward the supposed inlet. Lightning lit the horizon. Nothing. Dawn broke. Still nothing.

The only hints were a few stakes jutting from the water like skeletal fingers. Maybe exposed reef at low tide. Maybe teeth just beneath my keel, ready to bite. But I wasn’t gambling the boat on bad charts. A hundred miles from Baubau, two hundred from Bajo, I swung wide and carried on. Sometimes adventure means knowing when to walk away.

Labuan Bajo Arrival — Phinisi City Lights & Starbucks Tears

Three days later, I rounded into Bajo — and into a city of masts. Four hundred phinisi boats, all wooden, all hand-built in Sulawesi, glowing like a floating Christmas parade.

These weren’t factory fiberglass hulls. These were living, breathing ships. Some two-masted, some three, bowsprits like lances, planks hand-cut and joined, hulls creaking with stories. From a distance they looked like pirate ships out of myth; up close, they were carpentry masterpieces. At night, every one of them strung with lights, the harbor turned into a lantern city adrift.

Ashore? KFC. Pizza Hut. Starbucks. My first Starbucks since Fiji. I nearly cried into my latte. Civilization in a paper cup. Bajo had dinghy tie-ups, groceries, dive shops — the works. But the real show was from my deck: four hundred phinisi glowing and creaking in the dark.

After the grind of Baubau, after the minefield of FADs, Bajo felt like the universe whispering: You made it. Welcome to Komodo’s front porch.