Making landfall in

the Anambas

Islands

B

ack, back, back!’ I shouted, as a wall of rock

about 3m beneath the water’s surface reared

up from a deep blue lagoon. I could see the

bright colours of sergeant majors and parrotfi sh

swimming beneath us.

Jamie slammed Esper’s engine into reverse.

We were on our own in the middle of the

uninhabited Penjalin islands in the north-

eastern corner of the Anambas archipelago, half way between

Malaysia and Borneo. We couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

Situated in the South China Sea, halfway between mainland

Malaysia to the west and Borneo to the east, Kepulauan

Anambas falls under the sovereignty of Indonesia. Its isolated

position means the islands have remained almost untouched

by tourism, and very few yachts have visited the area. But

with a new port authority in the capital, Terampa, all that

is about to change. Yachts can now arrive and be issued with

a 30-day visa to cruise its islands without having to obtain

an Indonesian visa beforehand. Only Pulau Bawah, on the

southern tip of the group, has become a private luxury resort;

no anchoring is permitted, and yachts are discouraged with

fees of around $5 per foot per night to use its moorings and

go ashore. But this is a one-off at the time of writing, and

elsewhere we saw only a couple of basic hotels in Terampa

and a few home-stays on the island of Jemaja.

Anambas is the dream destination

for many world cruisers – remote,

undeveloped, sparsely inhabited and

accessible only by boat. The tiny islands

and their spectacular bays fringed with

lively reefs provide good shelter from the

prevailing winds and fetch. The warm,

gin-clear water is fi lled with rainbow fi sh,

turtles, rays, sharks and coral gardens. All

kinds of birds, insects and other animals

get on with their lives in the subtropical

rainforest covering the hilly islands. We

watched sea eagles, kites, frigate birds,

and various types of terns through the

binoculars. Swiftlets, their valuable nests

farmed here for bird’s nest soup, sang

from the rigging while our cat, Millie,

eyed them from the cockpit. Monkeys

(how did they get here?) played on the beaches.

We were delayed, and it was late in the season when we

raced from Pangkor in the Malacca Strait, round Singapore

and up the east coast peninsula of Malaysia to the sleepy

island of Pulau Tioman. As the murky water of the straits

turned bluer and clearer the further east we sailed, the

ubiquitous jellyfi sh from Thailand to Singapore disappeared

and were replaced by boiling shoals of jumping fi sh. Checking

out from Tioman, a 24-hour passage took us through water

criss-crossed with container ships towards Jemaja, before our

fi rst stop in Anambas.

When land appeared on the horizon, it was through

thunderous clouds and curtains of tropical rain. As we crept

closer, a waterspout swept along the shoreline. The weather

in this part of the world is dictated by the monsoons. From

June till early October, a fi erce south-west monsoon rages

across the Indian Ocean, bringing strong westerly winds.

It is followed by an unsettled transitional period when the

wind is unpredictable, often with heavy squalls, until it fi nally

settles into the north-east monsoon in December. The logical

time to sail in the Anambas is from July to September when

there should be a consistent south-westerly wind from which

you can shelter in plenty of natural bays scattered across the

islands. It would be a lively place to sail during the north-east

monsoon because the fetch builds and the winds can be

violent, often interspersed with tropical cyclones and even

typhoons coming across from the Philippines and Vietnam.

We arrived in mid-September.

At customs, I asked the offi cials which of the islands

we shouldn’t miss. We only had 30 days, and although it’s

a small group covering an area of around

637km², there are enough islands and

islets scattered here to keep you occupied

for months. They pointed at the edge

of the chart on their offi ce wall. ‘Penjalin,

it is most beautiful,’ they said.

UNDER THE SEA

So here we were, two weeks into the trip,

trying to fi nd somewhere to drop the

hook. ‘I think we better move further out.

It means deeper water but it’ll be safer,’

said Jamie. After an hour of dropping

the anchor twice, snorkelling out to

check its position and then fl ying the

drone overhead to see exactly what was

around us, we determined that it was too

dangerous to remain in the middle of the

group. Using the drone to scout for a good spot as you actually

enter an anchorage is a nice idea, but with one eye-balling and

the other steering, we would need someone else to operate

it. We agreed that if a squall blew up or some awkward fetch

found its way into the bay, we would have little time or room

to manoeuvre and we might end up in a dangerous situation

in the night. We both like a good sleep, so moving further

out was the right decision. We dropped the hook in 21m

on a coral-free bottom. After feeding Charlie, a remora

(suckerfi sh) who had been travelling with us for six weeks, we

sat back to take in the view.

Penjalin is Blue Planet gorgeous. Virginal white-sand

beaches lie to the west and south, acres of coral stretch towards

ANAMBAS IS A DREAM DESTINATION - REMOTE,

UNDEVELOPED, A ND ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY BOAT

The islands have

remained untouched

by tourism, making

them virgin cruising

grounds

ADVENTURE