Pulau Tulai is situated about 6 nm from the Tekek Marina. After breakfast and ordering nasi goreng takeaways, we motored out of the marina. It was around 11am, the tide was its highest and the sea breeze was picking up. With a direct northwest bearing, we put up our sails. It was great. We made 6 knots. As we turned the headland and entered Pulau Tulai's Western Bay, we turned on the engine and brought down the sails. Ahead, a few fishing boats already picked up mooring boys.
Water in the bay was clear blue. I glanced at the depth indicator and it showed 10 meters. I wasn't too worried. Relax Lah has a draught of 1.4 meters. As we moved deeper into the bay, the rocks at the bottom turned to coral and then to white sand. Meanwhile, the depth indicator still showed 10 meters. I was getting a bit puzzled, since the Navionics chart on my iPhone shows MLWN of 0.5 meters. But I had no reason to doubt my depth indicator. We set anchor.
Eddy grabbed a life jacket and somersaulted off the pulpit. Next came Danny, who a few minutes before that was on the onset of getting sea sick. Then a funny thing happened. Danny found that he could stand in the water. "This cannot be 10 meters!", he hollered to me up the cockpit
The words struck like thunder. My eyes jumped to the depth indicator, which was still showing a depth of 10 meters. Something was very wrong. Immediately I told Danny and Eddy to pick up the anchor and put it back on the boat. I put the engine on forward, towards the direction we came from. The boat did not move. I put the engine on reverse. Again the boat did not move. I asked Danny and Eddy to push the boat. It didn't budge. It was obvious we were grounded. I asked the guys to climb up the boat and put their weight on the starboard side (where the engine was). Again I tried to motor forward and backwards to no avail.
After a few minutes trying, I gave up. I had a close look at the depth reader, which was still showing 10 meters. But then I noticed the word SIMULATION flashing at the bottom left of screen. I turned it off and on again. There was a message, NO CONNECTION TO THE TRANSDUCER and after a few seconds the message went away. I check the connections at the back and true enough, the wire connecting the inducer to to set was undone. I fixed the connection and now the screen shows 0.4 meters (without the word SIMULATION). OK, now I understood.
It was now 1:40pm. The boat was leaning on its starboard side. I told the crew the bad news. I moved the anchor to the direction I expect the tide to come back in. This would ensure that the coming tide would not push us further into the shallows.
Since we came in at high tide plus two hours, we need to wait for the tide to ebb for 4 hours and for it to flood back, another 4 hours. We can expect to leave the bay around 10 pm. I offered Danny and his son, we could get them a lift back to Tekek with passing fishermen boats. He said, he would rather stay. We carried some essential supplies to the shore, which was about 150m away. Danny and his son, Jonathan put on a bonfire using dried branches and twigs.
If I had a choice of a place to be marooned on, then Pulau Tulai would be tops on the list. We had shelter, in the form of rock formations. The afternoon heat, the sea breeze and the swaying coconut all conspired to make our eyelids heavy. But I was too worried to sleep. What if water gets in the boat, what if it did not float, what if the keel was damaged.
Slowly but surely the the bay started filling up with water again. Slowly, Relax Lah was rising with the tide. I made a few trips to the boat to check if it was dry inside. One or two small buckets managed to seep in through cracks in the window. I quickly bailed the water out. I was relieved. Overall, there was no danger of sinking. Around sunset, we started carrying stuffs back to to the boat.
We motored out the bay around 11pm and reached Tekek Marina around midnight.
Lessons Learned:
1. Always know what the tide is doing (ebbing or flooding).
2. When entering unfamiliar waters, do it in a flooding tide. If you get stuck, it will be a matter of minutes rather than hours for you to get unstuck
3. Always double check your equipments. Batteries, cables etc. And be wary of warning signs
4. If in doubt, deploy the inflatable.
5. In case of discrepancies between chart and equipments, trust the charts!
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