TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

Horsburgh Lighthouse (or Horsburgh) is located on an outlying small island (a.k.a Pedra Branca meaning "White Rock" in Portuguese) near the entrance to the east of the Straits of Singapore. The lighthouse was named after Cpt James Horsburgh, who was a hydrographer with the then East India Company. Horsburgh is located about 54km (34 miles) east of Singapore. It was raining in the morning as we set off for the long anticipated trip which was planned as far back as 3 months ago in August 1998. There were four of us; YK, Kenneth, CC and myself.  
 Soon, we were on our way to the suppossedly rich fishing grounds near Horsburgh Lighthouse. This locale is considered a good fishing ground for recreational fishing because commercial trawling is supposedly not permitted.  
 We reached our first fishing spot at exactly 5.00 pm local time. Looking around, we couldn't see actually any lighthouse but who cares, it was the fishing that we were coming for, not a visit to so...

Mapur Island is administratively considered part of the Bintan group of islands which are in turn part of the Indonesian province of Riau. Mapur is located in the South China Sea just east of the main island of Bintan. This trip in late July/early August of 1999 was my first fishing trip to Indonesia. A 45-minute ride onboard a fast Catamaran ferry brought us from Singapore's Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Bintan. From here, we transferred to a speedboat before boarding the fishing boat, a fine 50-ft fibre-glass sports fisher.  On the way out to sea, we encountered extremely strong waves and had to "take cover" near a small island. At around 6.00pm local time, we moved out again and soon reached the designated fishing grounds for this trip. Strong waves continued to hit the boat causing everybody to slip time and again as the boat pitch and roll to the wishes of the sea. We had to grab hold of rails as we move around the boat. Falling into the sea in such cond...