Boats are the lifeline to Gili T. They bring water, food, building supplies, workers, and most importantly tourists. If every boat that came here dropped an anchor it would be an underwater wasteland with no coral left, which means no fish which means no tourists. Hence, we put in moorings ­–­ huge blocks of cement on the sea floor with a chain or a rope attached to a floating buoy so boats can tie off . Easy enough, right? Sure it is, until you show up to do it and wonder how you’re going to get all those 300kg sacks of concrete on that little fishing boat. Let me back up a bit to the first step … you empty a bag of cement, mix it and repour it back into its original bag but with a chain looped out of the top end with rebar slid horizontally between the links to give the chain support (fig. 2 ). Then you let them dry for a few days. Next, let the grunt work begin! We bent the rebar to sit flush to the sides of the cement bags and then rolled them into about 3 feet of water. Then we pulled up the boat and tied a mooring to each arm of the tri-rigger which means that we could only take 4 hernia-popping bags at a time (fig. 3). Next, we go to the desired location, make sure there’s no precious coral below, and carefully untie the first mooring from the tri-rigger keeping a heavy duty rope or chain attached to the loop in the concrete bag. After the first mooring is deployed it’s a matter of threading the rope/chain through the loop on the other moorings and dropping them so they all end up in one tidy spot. Attach the buoy and you’re done, until a large boat moors to a buoy meant for a small boat and drags it out to sea, or more often someone just steals the buoy (!!??#%**??!).

Figure 2	Figure 3

On New Year's Eve, while most people were rocking the beer by noon, we had a 2 hour tide window to drop 12 moorings and that is how I spent my day! By dusk I felt like a pretzel. By midnight I needed a walker to get around. It took 5 days for me to get my fingerprints back!

Just because Delphine isn’t busy enough with the Eco Trust, she decided to start a school program to educate the local children about conservation and ecology. Teaching the class in fluent Bahasa Indonesian, she explains the interrelation of everything on the planet and how one thing affects another, and of how humans have the tendency to push everything out of whack. It was an epiphany for the kids when Delphine explained that plastic bags were not made from trees but manufactured from the same thing their fathers put in their 2-stroke boat engines.…

One of the selling points of the Gilis is that there are no motorized vehicles of any kind on the three islands. Almost every travel website shows a happy couple laughing in celebration at the novelty of being pulled down the charming main street in a cidomo – a horse drawn carriage. The issue is that to the locals the horses are considered tools. In fairness, most tourists don’t really take the time to note the condition of the horse or visit the stables; they are on vacation. Because of the cost and the effort of furnishing fresh water, the horses are given only salt water that is mixed with feed and dumped into an old bathtub (that is rarely cleaned) for consuming. The locals also think if a horses is given water while it’s working, it will get sick. The minimum a horse will work is usually 8 hours and the temperatures regularly soar into the high 30’s C (95f+). And lastly, tight tack in the hot sun means that under the contact points, the skin is often worn away to bloody raw lesions that aren’t given the chance to heal. These factors combined means that there are quite a few sick, dehydrated, worm ridden horses that have multiple tack abrasions on their faces, neck, shoulders and haunches. (NOTE: Not all of the horses are poorly taken care of. There are a few owners who actually understand the value of a healthy horse). Being an animal lover, and the owner of five beautifully cared for steeds, Delphine arranged for a well known Balinese horse trainer to visit and conduct a free clinic to help mend the horses and hopefully educate the locals on how to make their “tools” last longer. Many of the locals were not interested, but we did end up treating 12 horses – not as many as we hoped for, but it was the afternoon and the horses were working. As it turned out several of the horses were not used to kind and gentle human contact. I was going to get involved but a horse tried to side-kick me in the head (I could feel the hoof blow by my face) so I thought documenting the professionals would be best instead.

While in the UK last summer I began to feel a bit out of sorts. My upper left side was sore and I was running a fever and got sick a few times. The pain would come and go so I just thought it was too much wine and cheese, something we missed from living in Asia and were making it up with a vengeance. Upon arrival on Gili T the pain came and went again. I thought I had another kidney stone and it passed. Then it hit again and stayed. I woke up one morning feeling slightly queasy and within 15 minutes I was on all fours retching my guts out. The clinic on the island is worthless, so Helen made arrangements to go to an emergency room on Bali. One of the lovely things about Gili T is that it is a small island, but when you are projectile vomiting it is the worst thing in the world. The three hour boat ride was sheer hell. As was the two hour taxi ride to the wrong hospital. Upon my arrival to the right hospital, they gave me pain killers that made me spew even more. Once the pain was under control they inserted a tube in my ureter from my bladder to my kidney (ouch) and sound blasted the stone. After a few days of observation they released me to a hotel to convalesce. They did, however, decide to leave the stent (tube) inside me. Oh, the pain! The second day in the hotel was bad. Very bad. I was having fever, convulsions and my pee was the color of red wine. I took myself off all the pain killers and, ironically, this made me feel better. I went back to the doctor for more sound thumping, the stent was finally removed (oh, the pain!), and I was given the thumbs up to go home. A month later on Christmas Day I got a gift I wasn’t expecting – two gorgeous little rocks – and I don’t mean diamonds.

Speaking of Christmas, Helen and I celebrated on the island. Originally we weren't too excited by the holiday. Then we got a "the package" from Will and Rosie (Helen's brother and sister-in-law). Included in it was a little red tree, tinsel, crackers and several gifts. Well, that little red tree changed everything! I cranked up my Peanut's Christmas Album and we immediately got into the spirit. On the Eve, we went to Fern's house for a few drinks and a lovely dinner. On the big day, we had brunch recovering by the pool at the resort next door. For Christmas Dinner, we had made a reservation for the best seat in the best restaurant on the island. Kokomo is a culinary legend in the A-list tourist trek of SE Asia. Unfortunately, in a very non-Christmassy move, they decided to begin some construction just as we sat down and continued until we begged them to stop. Oh well, that's what happens when you celebrate the Christian holidays in a Muslim country!

Finally the moment we’d been waiting for arrived! It was our chance to build a new Biorock. The Villa Almarik Hotel had asked for a new structure in the form of their logo; a starfish. Celia Gregory, an artist and the head of The Marine Foundation (a think-tank looking for new and innovative approaches to sustaining marine ecosystems), arrived to design the Biorock. We began construction on January 6th. A really nice group of volunteers was involved and the project went swimmingly.

The process goes like this: 1. Design the structure on paper, in the sand, or however you can get it out of your head. 2. Bend, cut, wire together and weld ordinary construction grade rebar into the shape desired. 3. Make sure the electronics are prepared. 4. Load it onto a boat and drop it into the sea (because it's very heavy and offers no water resistance, once the structure started sliding off the boat the whole stiuation got a bit scary). 5. Plant coral on it and power it up. It only took 3 days and was an amazing experience from beginning to end. By the way, don't be misled, I am terrible at welding, but I am very good at bending rebar around a tree.

We left Gili T for a few weeks of R+R in Bali the day after it was dropped and powered up. We'll show you the progression of the Starfish in the next update....