(Daniel) Considering the late night that I had last night.  I got up this morning extremely early, at around 8.30am.  The boys got up at the same time, except Fie who didn’t wake up. Together we made breakfast, and then went outside where the Land Rovers, now three in number, including the Wolf, were parked.

The two boats which the boys brought down were not designed for use on the sea.  One aluminium 6 person tub, and a more seaworthy looking fiberglass 4 seater.  it was a pretty calm day, so we decided to go out to the rocks a couple of km’s from shore, and try the spear fishing in that area.  I went and woke up Fie, so that he could get his 4 stroke engine out of his truck and start it.  Meanwhile the other three guys untied the fiberglass boat and I helped them to lift it off.

Now, remembering the tricky self recovery that I had to do a couple of days ago from this same beach.  I took the opportunity to warn everyone about the soft sand. They all nodded and listened to my tale of woe and warning.  But when I emerged from the shower about 15 minutes later, I saw Fie’s friends green Landie, which incidentally is the same one which hit me in the Jungle about a week ago, stuck up to it’s axles in the sand next to the spot where it had just towed the boat down to.  I couldn’t help but laugh, especially as it was still wearing the same nearly bald road tyres which the driver had changed to, after hitting a second vehicle a few days later!  The boys were forced to winch out using Fie’s PTO, but actually the road tyres performed better, as they floated on the sand, rather than digging in, as MT tyres would.  After a few pulls onto harder ground, the Green vehicle drove itself out of trouble.

I grabbed my snorkel, mask and the spear gun, and jumped in the boat with Thomas and the other friend.  They both seemed reluctant to drive, so I took the tiller of the boat, and drove us out to the rocks that held only a small lighthouse.  I found out later that these rocks are called the Rackit, and that is why the village is called Batu Rackit, which means Raft Village.  We communicated with Fie on land via the CB Rdios which Alan UK supplied us, these have been very useful throughout the trip, and I am sure will continue to be so.

As we arrived at the rocks, I jumped straight in and loaded the speargun immediately, then I dove down and tied the anchor rope in a safe spot. I dove down again after catching my breath, and immediately saw three large silver fish, which I recognized as good eating fish.  I aimed at the closest one and fired, the spear went straight through the fish, and into the one behind which was the same kind.  I swam down quickly and grabbed the spear, running out of air fast.  Both fish were impaled on the 120cm spear, and I swam for the surface, exited, then stuck the spear out of the water to pass it to the boys.  There’s two lessons here, for anyone that doesn’t know about fish, and spear fishing.  The first is that you should always grab the end of the spear that doesn’t have the line attached, that way the fish can’t get off, they just slide down the line.  The second lesson, is that when a fish is brought to the surface, it will put in that extra bit of flapping around as soon as it feels that it is out of water.  Ignoring these two lessons is what caused the first fish to fly off the end of the spear, disappearing into the rocks below.  Now there’s a third lesson here, but you see if you can spot it in the hour that followed.

I passed the fish and spear to the boys, who were still on the boat.  They are all fishermen, and were delighted to see the beautiful fish on the line, but unfortunately did not even see the first fish as it escaped.  Thus it has been resigned to the realms of a fishermans tale.  After removing the fish from the spear and reloading.  I went back down to the same area as before, however the fish seemed to be a bit more scarce, no doubt scared off by the commotion, but just as I came back up I spotted a red snapper, and managed to shoot it.  This time I grabbed the right end of the spear, and returned to the surface with the fish to cheers from the boys in the boat!

Once I had taken this fish off I decided to go and look for the something a bit bigger, after all I had five hungry mouths to feed.  I swam back down and looked around.  There were plenty of large parrot fish, but I wouldn’t shoot them, they are too beautiful, and the diver in me would never forgive myself!  Just as I was giving up hope on anything bigger, I saw something in the distance, just outside of the field of clear visibility.  I swam after it as fats as possible, as it swam away from me, it was big, I hoped for a big grouper like the one we got in Kuantan.  As I got closer I could see that whatever it was it was much bigger than the grouper, then I recognized it’s familiar shape.  It was a shark, and a big one, I would say around 2 meters.  It was a black tip reef shark, I have seen them before, snorkeling off Long Beach in Thailand, but never when on my own in the water a long way from anywhere.  I guess that it must have been attracted by the fish blood in the water.  Not to mention the fish hiding around here somewhere with a hole in it’s belly!  See lesson number three around here now?

I am a qualified Divemaster, but even my 180+ hours of divetime didn’t make me feel too good about this large sea predator swimming around.  I know that they don’t usually bite, but I also know that they can bite, and besides, here I was covered in the scent of fish blood!  I decided to return to the boat, starting to swim as calmly as possible back towards the boys and the small fiberglass craft.  As I swam, I saw the same shark swimming around me in circles, another bad sign.  He was obviously looking for the source of the smell, I just kept remembering that 1 drop of blood in 1 million litres! Maybe it was gallons, I don’t know!  Each time the shark circled, I found the same thought coming into my head. I could shoot this animal.  The gun was powerful enough, and a shot to the head would see us all eating shark for dinner.  But that was crazy, shark meat doesn’t even taste that good, and I love sharks.  Still something of the Malaysian hunter must have rubbed off on me!

This said, when I got back to the boat, I didn’t even unload the gun, I just passed it to the boys and climbed in!   I then realized that the anchor was still tied to a rock, and so I had to jump back into the water and untie it, as I did so I saw the shark again he was moving very fast, which unnerved me a lot!  With the anchor untied, I got back into the boat again.  Here was my mistake, as now I was out of the water, I had to unload the very dangerous speargun.  I tried to do it by hand, but it is considerably harder out of the water than in, and it’s almost impossible in the water anyway!  One of the boys suggested that I fire it into the water, and then reel it back with the line, I did this without thinking, and the line snapped, the spear flew off into the distance and disappeared.  I jumped back in after it, and swam around in circles looking for it.  To no avail though.  In the end I had to give up, and we took the boat back to the shore.           

Back on land, we winched the boat up to the house, and unpacked the fish and equipment.  I went and chilled out after my experience with the shark, while Thomas and Fie cooked the fish which I had caught. We ate these with Lemongrass and ginger.  It was just enough to feed everyone.  Afterwards we all slept for around three hours while the hottest part of the day passed by.  The other got up a bit later, but I stayed asleep, only waking up after dark.  The boys had set up fishing roads at the shore, which I went and manned with them.  Again we stayed up till late, without a bite from a fish, but perfecting our methed of catching crabs until we had a bucket full of them.  I knew I would sleep well after consuming plenty of beer over the evening! 

Just before we all fell asleep, I told the boys that I wanted to go back to the same place to fish tomorrow.  I still had a second speargun, and this trip for me is all about overcoming obstacles and fears.  Fie also mentioned that they had stopped at a spot on the unmade highway on their way to me, where there were many Asly people fishing, and that he wanted to return there with the boats.  He had marked the spot on his GPS. This was on the famous Kenyir Dam, apparently a beautiful spot.  I agreed to go the day after tomorrow with them.

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