The tides of the sea are the veins of mother earth
Logbook entry Twenty seven th of december 2017
10.15 We are sailing in the Lombok strait between Lombok en Bali. The current at the moment is enormous. There are whirlpools in the water everywhere. We sail from one whirlpool to the other. Yemaya is shuddering each time we sail into a new one. There is too much current. We never have experienced this much current. We are not making any progress. We can not even reach the Island anymore we just left. We Can’t go back. I realize we aren’t going any further either. Being In the middle of one of the biggest veins of mother earth is just too much for us! So I altered course. We are going to try our luck close to the Land. I hope we can find a countercurrent.
12.40 We found the countercurrent. We go very Fast Now. And even in the right Direction!
The current in the Lombok strait can be as much as ten knots. The Lombok Strait is notable as one of the main passages that exchanges water between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
The water in the Pacific Ocean has a higher temperature and lower salinity than the water in the Indian Ocean. The Indonesian Throughflow transports Pacific Ocean heat into the Indian Ocean and this serves as the a global heat conveyor belt. The high flow supports a rich diversity of organisms and habitats and has therefore an important ecological function. We saw Golden Fish jumping out of the water.
Shows how the water flows around Indonesia
The Lombok strait is also part of the biogeographical boundary between the fauna of Indomalaya ecozone and the distinctly different fauna of Australasia. The boundary is known as the Wallace Line, for Alfred Russel Wallace, who first remarked upon the striking difference between animals of Indo-Malaysia from those of Australasia and how abrupt the boundary was between the two biomes. Biologists believe it was the depth of the Lombok Strait itself that kept the animals on either side isolated from one another.
I Feel very privileged we can sail in this Amazing Area. Although as is mentioned in our logbook, it is not always easy to do so.
We saw fisherman with little multihull sailing boats battling with great succes against the enormous currents. I will write About It In the next blog post.
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This water tastes quite nice. I wonder what vintage it is.