x360 Journal

For several hours I paddled around the myriad of islands trying to find a sandy beach I could pull the kayak up onto. But being around low tide by this time, and fullmoon low tide at that (so VERY low), all the islands were completely exposed by reef making access impossible.

It was just starting to get dark when one sandy beach stretching as far as the water came into view. But, on getting closer, I also noticed a powerboat tied up to a wooden jetty painted in the colours of the Indonesian navy. Great, a lookout post. The prospect of sleeping the night in an Indonesian jail now became all the more a possibility!

After slipping past under cover of dusk I continued on, eventually finding myself on a narrow stretch of beach with just enough room for the kayak between the high tide mark and a sheer cliff behind. I'd got rid of all my camping gear, so I had no shelter or means of keeping the bugs at bay, plus the only food I could locate in the back of the kayak comprised a warm can of Heineken. I don't normally like Heineken, let alone warm. But tonight I was it's biggest fan.

At midnight, just as the tide was receding enough to lie down on the sand and try and get some sleep, the rain started. All I could do was stand under a bush with a makeshift rain-jacket made out of an old sack keeping me slightly less damp than if I was out in the open. Six hours later I was in the same position, just much wetter. By first light the visibility north across the straits, in the direction of Singapore, wasn't looking good. The rain was still coming down in sheets and a thick blanket of fog lay over the water obscuring all from view, including the giant ships that presumably were able to still navigate via radar.

I couldn't cross in these conditions. The prospect of missing my 11.15am window of slack water was looking increasingly possible for the second day in a row. A sensation of mild panic quickly spread throughout me as I realized that I really couldn't stay another day illegally in Indonesia. Even if I managed to keep undetected from Indonesian navy and police, the Singapore immigration authorities would want to know where I've been for 2-days since stamping out of Batam. 'Paddling around in the shipping lanes between the 2 x countries? I don't think so.

So what would this mean? I'd have to get stamped back INTO Indonesia (a nightmare scenario) and then wait for the conditions to improve to cross again in a week or so, or try for Malaysia instead. The costs involved with such a plan, not to mention the huge inconvenience for all involved and my GREAT desire to leave Indonesia, made this almost impossible to consider for any length of time. It was just too depressing a thought.

Slowly the rain eased and as I started to ready myself and the kayak to head out and rendezvous with Kenny and Phil at 10.30, the dark grey bank of cloud over Singapore, much to my joy, started to yield to a lighter patch of cloud underneath, rather like oil separating over water. This could still come together I thought.

In essence I had just one shot at this, otherwise the Indonesian leg of the expedition, with all the years of planning, thousands of dollars spent and months actually executing it, would have failed.

Kenny Brown came through on the VHF radio loud and clear. 'We're waiting just off a yellow mooring buoy about a mile southeast of our rendezvous point. Over.'

As I paddled north towards their approximate position I realised the direction I was heading would have them stationed within full view of the Indonesian navy lookout station on the island I'd passed the previous evening. This was all we needed. If they sent out their patrol boat I could see us being detained for a few hours at least and miss out tide-window again.

I was seriously considering, should they come out to hassle us, to call their bluff and just keep on paddling towards international waters. Anything to get of Indonesia. Would they shoot me? Probably. They'd think I was smuggling and Kenny would get the ideal ending to his documentary with me getting mown down in a hail of bullets.

No, not a good scenario either. We meet up, Phil lobs me an apple and a Mars Bar. We're a little ahead of schedule, but I'm able to make headway against the current at around 2.5 knots good, so we head for the shipping lanes. This time we don't even bother with getting permission from the ASIC port authority. The skipper of the support rib, having navigated these waters since a child, picks the optimum time between ships and away we go, easy as pie. I'm impressed at how this guys knows which way the ships will go. 'This one will go behind us'. 'That one ahead of us'. How he knows this I can't fathom as they all look too damn close for me!

The crossing goes like clockwork, and by 11.30 we're out of the shipping lanes and nearing a pair of islands called 'The Sisters' where immigration is waiting to stamp us into Singapore. This takes a matter of minutes, and we continue tracking NW towards the island of Sentosa where a re-do of the press arrival on Tanjung Beach from yesterday is kindly being set up by Speedo and Royal Sporting House.

The tide is already starting to change, and the last couple of miles is harder going against an ever increasing easterly-set tide, the same tide that caused so many problems the day before. So I thanked my lucky stars that we'd started the crossing a little earlier than originally planned. The extra time had afforded us the bare minimum window to complete the crossing. Any later and we would have run into the same problems as the previous day, only on the Singapore side of the fence.

At 2pm my kayak finally slid to a stop, except this time on the clean, white sand of an artificially constructed beach on island of Singapore. It was a strange arrival in many ways. The press were there to do their thing, and the only familiar faces were those of Kenny, Phil and Stuart from the previous day. The reception was warm, thanks to the efforts of Speedo, Royal Sporting house and our own Steve Smith working to organise the whole thing remotely from back in Salcombe in the UK. But it seemed a little hollow not having at least a few of the other teammembers there; April, Chris, Lourdes, Jansen and Ina.

On the flip side I was hugely relieved, and quite overwhelmed by completing what has been without doubt the hardest and most challenging leg of the expedition to date. The little light at the end of the tunnel - that is the meridian line of longitude in Greenwich, East London, that has been so faint for so many years - is starting to look a lot brighter now the expedition is, for all intents and purposes, on the SE Asia mainland, and starting to head home at last.