Diving day three was the first time we met the whole German group, so there were seven Germans + Thomas Indo-German + two of us + Sukono in the tiny dinghy, total 11 person. (Those Germans are not small built. If I’m quite big sized Asian woman, at least on height and hmm..probably width, I was ‘tiny’ among them). On the first dinghy trip to the boat with that much load, we were fine.
Today was special because we were going to drop by to local village, since the Germans wanted to buy hand-made traditional cloth after the first dive. Since taking out and putting in wetsuit are always tedious for us, we decided to keep our wetsuit on, hands tied on the waist and put in a T-shirt (hubby even wore his booties) while everyone else changed into short and T-shirt. We boarded the dinghy and I had very good feeling that we had at least 75% probability of sinking. Nope. We were safe. Lurking around the island, this was probably the time when I felt like exhibit in the zoo the most. The locals, probably the whole village were surrounding and following us. Luckily, those Germans were certainly more an exhibit than us. I would just grin when they were whispering around of whether we were Korean or Japanese. If we were in Bali or Menado I would have frown a bit but in Alor, we really look different, so fair enough. Sukono told us a bit of story about the village and at least everyone then know these fishy smelling and weird looking creatures are Indonesians too.
After those Germans were done with their shopping, we boarded the dinghy. I sit at the extreme right on first tier and hubby sat on extreme left on the last tier. Sukono started to run the engine, the surf was big. Probably few minutes battling the wave, I saw it coming. The dinghy was obviously heavy, it was manageable as proven before but the surfs were certainly a big factor that made it rocky and unbalanced. I reached down to my croc and put the straps behind so I wouldn’t lose the shoe when it capsized. After I finished putting the strap slowly, sure enough the right side of the boat started to tilt up. (means right side was lighter, and I was on the right : ))) I thought of jumping but didn’t want to get caught in the middle of flipping boat, one leg out and one leg in. So I just went with the flow and was under the boat when it capsized, avoiding the rush of human sardine of three Germans on my left. There were some bruises on my hand because I was protecting my head from the boat edge, everything else was fine.
After the boat was capsized, I quickly pulled myself under, then went to the surface outside the capsized boat and human range and looked for hubby. He was calling me and we exchanged okays and grins, then I was busy catching floating shoes of the Germans that passed in front of me. Everyone was okay, and indeed, almost everyone except Sukono, Thomas and Carlyn, were enjoying it. It was bloody hot day, so dipping was refreshing, and it was not a serious capsize. Eventhough we couldn’t reach the seabed, it was not far deep. We were also only like 200 meters away from the shore, and we are divers that shouldn’t be afraid of water by now. In fact, knock knock first, when you know everyone is safe and have nothing to worry about, it was kind of fun highlight of the day for me. Remind me of those old days when we practiced flipping and recovered flipping various type of boats in my outdoor adventure university organization.
Everyone started doing water treading and we cracked up looking at Tom who was holding his camera up in the air and grinning. He was the most cheerful of all, I am really impressed that he managed to save his camera and looked like he enjoyed every minutes of it.
Hubby, Thomas and Sukono with help of some others were working on flipping back the dinghy, and they managed to do it. I busted out laughing when I looked back at the kampong and we saw probably close to one hundred of kampong kids had already jumped to the ocean, screaming, laughing happily and swimming to join us. I bet it was hilarious sight for them.
A local fisherman paddled his boat quickly to us and asked us to hold on to his boat, then he jumped to the sea, went up our dinghy and started help scooping the water out. That is the spirit of helpful Indonesian villagers that I admire from time to time, meeting them through my difficult and limited facility trips, while they don’t hesitate for a second to lead a helping hands, even put our needs below theirs, which is amazing.
I didn’t see where it was coming from, another much higher and bigger wooden boat full of locals was suddenly near to us. They were passing by and came to help. One by one, we were pulled to the boat. It was so high, that it’s damn difficult to climb up and probably impossible for me to do without help. The guys pulled me up. It’s a very unique boat where the middle part is much lower with high railings surround it, so everyone was standing. Too bad I couldn’t take a picture.
The boat unloaded us to our big boat, except Thomas and Sukono who were still struggling to get the dinghy working. They couldn’t, the engine was spoilt, then the helpful villager and Sukono paddled it back to the big boat. Much to my amazement, after the dinghy reached the boat, Thomas and Sukono boarded the big boat, that guy jumped back to the ocean with his paddles without saying a word. He then swam back to his boat that was still in the location where we capsized. Wow, bless his kindness and genuine effort. How do you reply this kind of selfless help? And he was really great swimmer. The distance was not that near and the sea was not calm.
For many of us, eventhough there was a bit regret when we were in the kampong but didn’t have camera with us, it was a real bless. Such a coincidence, everyone who left the camera behind all had DSLR and the only two who brought it with them to the island were using compact. Tom’s was safe but Ramona’s was totally spoilt because her bag was completely dipped under water and it was not waterproofed or dry bag.
That’s the capsize. For the journey home, we still board the same dinghy with the same amount of people, plus three big underwater camera (those are damn heavy) because the sea was calm. The only way to go was using paddle (only one!) since the engine was broken. Poor Sukono, the few German guys tried to help with their hands. What is normally took five minutes, took us probably more than twenty minutes to reach.
