Final comments on Indonesia

Hard to believe we will have been in Nonga Point Marina for an entire week tomorrow. Several boats that had participated in the Sail Indonesia Rally arrived several days after us. We knew none of these folks so it has been a week of getting to know new people while enjoying the amenities of this nice marina. Linda and Michael on S/V B'Sheret arrived on Sunday and it was nice catching up with them and hearing about their river tour on Borneo (Kalimantan) to see the wild orangutans.

Saturday night the marina had a special barbeque set up around their beautiful swimming pool. That was an enjoyable evening hearing lots of stories from the rally folks about their adventures in various parts of Indonesia over the past 3 months. Most of these folks are now heading straight to the Sail Malaysia Rally and will skip Singapore altogether. Singapore has a reputation for being expensive for marinas and clearance fees so they are going straight to Malaysia for the rally that starts on November 1st. These rallies can be fun with parties and celebrations and do promote a sense of comradarie among the participants, as well as often providing substantial discounts at marinas along the scheduled route. So it is easy to understand the attraction of participating in a rally. Unfortunately, the Sail Indonesia dates were impossible for our schedule for the past 4 months; and the Sail Malaysia dates are also impossible for our intended schedule for the next 2 months. We have yet again changed our plans and won't be going to Langkawi before we fly home for Christmas.

We have decided to stay put in the Malaysia-Singapore area for at least 6 months and do land travel from there. There are far better and far less expensive flights out of both Singapore and from Kuala Lumpur for SE Asia travel than the flights from Langkawi. Plus, and this is a big plus, we found a marina that is offering huge discounts for long-term berthing. The new Puteri Harbour Marina is in Malaysia. More about that in a future posting after we get over there and check it out. If it meets with our approval then S/V BeBe will be staying there for at least 6 months while we fly home and then do some land travel in Asia.

Since leaving Opua, New Zealand on May 5 we have sailed a total of 6406.1 nautical miles (that is 7,046.7 statute miles for you landlubbers). I have decided we need a break from sailing or motoring and Bill is in full agreement.

Our final notes on Indonesia:
1. The Indonesian people are friendly and greet you with smiles, except for a few places where they are sullen and obviously don't want the intrusion of visitors. We avoided the dangerous zones of Sumatra and Java altogether.
2. The poverty is depressing in some places, although the people in the poorest areas were some of the nicest people encountered.
3. Bali is lovely and the Balinese people are the nicest of all the Indonesian islands.
4. According to our sailing guide, the archaepalago of Indonesia consists of 13,677 islands -- they must be counting every single rock that sticks above the sea surface because it doesn't seem like there are that many islands on our charts.
5. I think we have seen every type of boat imaginable.
6. The jellyfish in this area are downright scary. The main body usually is about 3 feet in diameter, with tentacles 12-15 feet long. The bodies look like flowers--all pink, orange and yellow. And they float a foot or so below the surface of the water. Definitely get your attention and we definitely don't want to tangle with one.
7. As with other places we have visited, the rumors are worse than the reality. These people are generally friendly and Indonesia is no more dangerous, and possibly less dangerous, than the Caribbean islands.
8. Sailing in this part of the world during this time of the year is difficult because of the strong currents and light winds. That rally should be renamed to Motor Indonesia rather than Sail Indonesia.
9. Indonesia has been over-fished. So badly over-fished that I don't know that these waters could ever repopulate even if all fishing ceased today. In some areas they are even using explosives to fish and are taking fish that aren't even 6 inches long. It is so sad. Guess it was inevitable when a traditional fishing culture grew to a population of over 270 million people.
10. Flies are terrible. Every place we stopped had lots of flies, even way out in the anchorages. The flies at Nongsa Point Marina nearly drove us crazy. The marina sprayed pesticides nightly but the flies still swarmed out around our boat which was in the last outward slip from land.

The marina office is supposed to handle our clearance out of Indonesia early tomorrow morning and we should be out of here by 10 a.m. Then we are off to motor the short distance over to Singapore.

Nongsa Point Marina -- final stop in Indonesia

On Tuesday morning we departed Kentar and motored about 30 miles northwest to the island of Mesanak. Three other cruising boats (2 American and 1 Australian) had arrived in Kentar a couple of days previously, and all 3 of them followed us up to the northwestern anchorage at Mesanak. At one point we had to turn almost completely backward to avoid a long line of floats. We could not tell if these floats marked fish traps or a fish net, so to be on the save side we detoured around them. Later we heard one of the other boats say on the radio that these markers were for fish traps and that we could have gone between the floats. Better safe than sorry. Prudent move was to avoid that long line of floats and I don't regret wasting a half-hour making that detour.

Before dawn on Wednesday morning we weighed anchor and headed northwest between the islands of Batam and Bintan. The other 3 boats were still asleep; guess they were planning to hang around another day or 2. We were ready to put this trip behind us as quickly as possible. Only 55 miles to go and we could sleep in air-conditioned comfort at a marina! We left at beginning of ascending tide in Singapore and had a 1 1/2 to 2 knot favorable current the whole way until we reached the top of Batam and turned left. Then it was 2 knots against us for the final 2 hours. Several miles north of Mesanak we noticed 3 masts sticking up from the sea surface. This was in 14 meters water depth. Obviously this was a shipwreck. Must have been relatively recent because it was not indicated on our charts dated 2005. Glad the sun was well up from the horizon before we encountered this little surprise. We noted the location so we could email friends who will be coming this way next week and warn them of this hazard.

As we progressed northward between the islands the number of small fishing boats decreased and the large shipping traffic increased. By the time we reached the northern 1/3 of Batam we were in a large mooring field for large ships. There were more than a dozen cargo ships either moored or anchored, several of which were being loaded from barges with cranes. Apparently there is not a deep-water port in this shallow part of Indonesia and the cargo ships must be loaded and unloaded while at anchor. This area is very close to the separated shipping traffic scheme for the Singapore Strait. We were picking up at least 40 AIS targets in this area. Busy place! And the VHF radio traffic was awful. Channel 16 never stopped. Gets on your nerves after a while but you have to listen just in case one of them hails your boat. Was very nice to hear a US Navy ship at one point. Rarely have we heard American voices on the VHF radio in months and months.

The marina had requested via email that we hail them on VHF channel 72 when we were 10 minutes from the marina entrance. Well, with all the excessive radio chatter it was impossible to break in on channel 72 to hail the marina. We started trying to hail them when we were 30 minutes away. Bill pulled out the cell phone and tried calling them, but the phone number connected with the wrong marina office. The reception office couldn't help us. When we were close to the marina entrance we finally made VHF contact and the marina manager sent a small launch out to guide us in. There are some submerged rocks near the entrance and several shoal areas to avoid, so the launch guide is a nice service. We were docked in our slip before 2 p.m. at latitude 01.11.82N, longitude 104.05.82E. Plan at this moment is to stay here for one week and then get over to Singapore if the marina there has a slip available for us as reserved.

Nongsa Point Marina is very nice. It is new; the old marina was damaged in a storm just a couple of years ago. The new floating concrete docks are very nice. The slips are very long (far longer than necessary for our 16 meter boat) and these are the widest slips we have ever seen. Very, very spacious. Everything is super clean and well-staffed. They fog for mosquitoes each evening. This is a resort hotel so there is a nice restaurant, bar and swimming pool. And there is almost no one here. It is a very quiet place. When the weather is very clear we can see the skyline of the big city of Singapore in the distance across the shipping lanes.

For our first night here we treated ourselves to a nice dinner in the resort restaurant. Bill had nasi goreng (rice dish) and I had mee goreng (noodle dish). Both were good. I tasted the accompanying little bowl of sweet brown sauce filled with sliced peppers and decided it wasn't too spicy so I dumped the entire bowl of sauce on top of the mee goreng. After all, I do normally like spicy food. It tasted delicious until I picked up a whole mouthful of the tiny sliced peppers hiding beneath the noodles and set my mouth on fire! That set off a coughing fit. Then I separated out the rest of the tiny sliced peppers and was more careful about what was on each forkful. All this time Bill was enjoying his nasi goreng. He does love rice. There were several components arranged attractively on this plate of nasi goreng -- shrimp, chicken satay, fried chicken piece and sliced fresh vegetables. Bill thought he was eating a couple of small green beans and darn near caused a heart attack. They were raw little peppers, just like the tiny sliced peppers in my sweet brown sauce. His eyes, neck and face turned beet red and he couldn't speak. Literally took his breath away. Drinking water doesn't do a thing for hot peppers. Luckily, he still had a half glass of beer because beer did cut the heat of the peppers. As soon as he could get the waitress' attention he motioned for another beer. Then I convinced him to eat a large bowl of chocolate ice cream. Milk or cream coats the stomach and digestive tract to help alleviate problems that the peppers might cause. We were afraid that peppers this hot might cause a reaction from his Crohn's disease. He normally avoids spicy food these days. Guess the beer and the ice cream worked because he was pain free all night. We both will be more careful in the future about peppers while here in SE Asia. They do like their food spicy.

The resort/marina has a car that we can hire like a taxi. For 210,000 rupiah (about $22 USD) round-trip they will drive us to the town of Nongsa and wait 2 hours for us to shop or eat lunch or dinner or whatever. Whole trip takes about 3 hours. We planned to explore the town today but it is raining so we are sitting in our nice air-conditioned boat and playing with the free WiFi instead. Life is good.

Across the Bali Sea, the Java Sea and part of the South China Sea

We departed Serangan on southeast tip of Bali at 0800 on Thursday 8 October at beginning of slack low tide in order to catch the counter-current that sometimes runs northward along the shore. The counter-current only runs at precisely Upper Transit or Lower Transit of the moon, or at precisely Upper Transit or Lower Transit plus 10 hours. Since we do not have a nautical almanac we had no way of knowing when UT or LT of moon cycle would occur, but we WAGged it and just happened to guess right. (WAG = wild ass guess) Our friends were using a different tide program and according to them we were leaving at 2 1/2 hours before high tide. But according to the tidal information in Maxsea we left at precisely the beginning of slack low tide. Whichever timing of the tidal cycle it was, it worked beautifully.

It was calm motoring out to the edge of the reef where we turned northward through some very strong eddies that twisted us about a bit. After getting through the eddies we picked up the counter-current near the shore and were able to ride it all the way up the island. In the counter-current there was only 1 1/2 to 2 knots head current against us, as opposed to the 5 to 7 knots of head current (south-setting current) that is normally in the Lombok Strait during the SE monsoon season. October is a transition month from SE monsoon to NW monsoon. Once the NW monsoon season is fully established then the current in Lombok Strait will reverse and become northerly-setting. The current always runs opposite direction of the prevailing winds for some strange reason. The day we left there was a good SE wind and we hoped that it remained from that direction until we reached Singapore.

No one told us about the current in the Bali Sea and there was no indication on our charts! There were lots of warnings about the strong currents in the various straits, but no one had mentioned that we would face a 1 1/2 to 2 knot head current all the way SE to NW across the Bali Sea. The wind died down and we were forced to motor all day and night. As we neared the island of Pulau Raas the seas became like a washing machine during agitation cycle. But once we entered the pass between the islands that separate the Bali Sea from the Java Sea, the water instantly calmed. Once through that pass we immediately picked up a westerly-setting current. Yeah!! A current in our favor for a change! We decided not to stop at Pulau Raas and pushed on toward the island of Bawean.

That night off the northern coast of the island of Java we passed through at least 50 small fishing boats -- all lit up in the craziest manner. None of these craft were lit with the conventional lighting scheme of red on port side, green on starboard and white on stern. These little boats had flashing green lights or flashing red lights or flashing white lights or sometimes all 3 colors. Very few had static lights, almost all were flashing brightly. Christmas lights off Java in October. It was impossible to tell which direction any boat was heading. And every once and awhile one of those very large Indonesian ships would pass us by. Also the normal cargo ships, but at least those had AIS and correct lighting. Made for a very stressful evening.

About 9 p.m. I realized that I had fever because it suddenly seemed very cold. And there was no way that it was really cold in this hot area. Sure enough, the thermometer read 103. I really wanted to stick it out and let Bill sleep until at least midnight, but he woke up at 10:30 and saw that I was sick and he took over. Good thing he did. I was down for the count. A fever that high wears a person out. Bill had been telling me for 2 days that my face was very bright red, but it is normal for my face to be red when I get hot; so I just figured it was the heat. Should have listened to Bill and dug out the thermometer sooner. Bill stayed on watch for the rest of the night and until we reached the anchorage at Bawean shortly after noon. I started taking Cipro. Had no idea what was wrong, but this area of the world has a number of common diseases: dengue fever, malaria, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid and yellow fever -- just to name a few. We had vaccine updates for typhoid and yellow fever last February in New Zealand, but dengue or malaria or encephalitis were possibilities. We had tried to wash our hands every time we touched the dinghy painter because the water in the harbor in Bali was so dirty. Who knows what we had been exposed to in those crowds at the temples we visited. Figured that taking the antibiotics might not help but it surely wouldn't hurt, regardless of what ailed me. Fever remained high grade for 2 days, then diminished to low-grade fever for another several days. By Monday I was feeling good enough to press on toward Singapore. After all, all we do on passages is sit in the cockpit and I could do that with a slight temp.

BTW, Bawean was a great anchorage. Nicely protected from sea motions and had good cool breeze coming down off the high hills. Just had to ignore the caterwauling call to prayers from the loud speakers at 2 villages several times daily. This probably would not be a pleasant anchorage during NW monsoon but was great during the SE winds.

Monday morning we set sail across the Java Sea. We had decided to skip Borneo, or Kalimantan as it is currently called. Most everyone else planned to visit Kumai on Borneo and make a trip up the river to see the orangutans. This rates right up there with those Komodo dragons on another Indonesian island. Houston has a wonderful zoo. We have seen orangutans and were not interested in making a trip up a river where I would likely be eaten alive by insects (which never seem to bite any other people around me). Since I was just getting over being sick (possibly from an insect bite), we saw no reason to push our luck. So we set sail from Bawean headed NW across the Java Sea to Pulau Karangraya near the Karimati Strait. This is west of Borneo and is where the Java Sea joins the South China Sea.

It was great sailing with 20 knots winds from SE. Large lumpy quartering seas made for a lot of movement, but nothing uncomfortable. It would have been great if this weather had continued but that was not to be. The winds died and we were soon back to motoring. Highlight of crossing the Java Sea was sighting 2 extremely colorful boats with curving high prows. How exotic! Will try to post photos when we get internet access.

One night we motored an enormous field of anchored fishing boats. These are the strangest things. They had long poles sticking out in every direction all around the boat, with nets on the poles. They would anchor the boat and lower all the poles and turn on these extremely bright lights. From a distance beyond the horizon these bright lights looked like a city. As we approached each boat it looked like a small oil platform. But these were fishing boats. I counted 39 in one patch one night.

Each island has its unique way of building boats and of fishing. Off the northern coast of Bali we had seen hundreds and hundreds of those water spider type boats that could be affixed with lateen sails. The first photo with this blog posting is of that mountainous part of Bali. On the beach in that photo are hundreds of those spider-looking boats dragged up onto the beach. That area was also plagued by wood and bamboo rafts, each with A-frames built on top and with a single palm frond standing upright like a mast. We have no idea what the significance of these rafts might be. But, later, at Bawean we saw a different type raft. These were much more crudely built, but still had a single upright palm frond. Maybe these things are to attract marine life to encourage fish to congregate beneath the rafts. Who knows! Maybe there is some religious significance. All we know is that they are a hazard to boats like ours. Those rafts could sure mess up the gel coat on our boat. And it was positively impossible to see these rafts at night. We were very glad to get far enough out to sea that there were not any more rafts still floating.

We decided to skip stopping at Karangraya. Instead we went around that small group of islands and took the Karimata Strait into the South China Sea, then northwest up toward Singapore. We stopped yesterday afternoon at Lingga island. There was no breeze there so we motored today up to the island of Kentar and anchored at latitude 00.03.64N longitude 104.45.77E We plan to stay here a few days. Do laundry and rest up. We have covered 940.2 miles since leaving Bali and have about 90 miles left to Singapore.

Did you catch that latitude in the previous paragraph?

Yep, we crossed the equator again this morning shortly before noon. We are again in the northern hemisphere. And, let me tell you, it is very hot and very humid on this spot of the equator!

Quick update

Just realized it has been a week since we left Bali so thought we should post a quick note to let everyone know that all is fine aboard S/V BeBe. Still underway towards Singapore. Hoping to reach an anchorage before dark tomorrow. Will update again in a couple of days.

Leaving Bali

After the road tour and seeing so many temples, we are done with Bali. We are skipping some of the "must see" tourist things -- like the monkey temple because I don't like monkeys; and all the shopping because we don't need anything or want souvenirs; and sunset at Kuta beach because we don't see how that sunset could possibly be better than other sunsets we have seen either on islands, mountains or at sea.

The photo at left is one of the thousands of statues in the middle of road intersections. This photo was taken with a cell phone so it isn't as good as if taken with a real camera, and it does not show the large base of the statue. This statue is very, very tall and elaborate.

So today we caught a "taksi" to Carrefour and bought fresh veggies and fruit for our next passages. Plan (at least today's plan) is to depart Bali tomorrow morning. We will be doing passages ranging from 28 miles to 300 miles per segment on our way to Nongsa on the island of Batam, where we will clear out of Indonesia. Nongsa is only 19 miles from the marina in Singapore where we supposedly have a reservation. I made the reservation last January but other cruisers tell us that all the marinas in Singapore are now full, so who knows if our reservation will be honored or not. We are ready to get started on this next 1000 miles and looking forward to leaving tomorrow morning.

Carrefour supermarket is huge and is located on the 4th or top floor of a shopping complex. On the ground level are an A&W Root Beer shop and a KFC. A piece of home. Several of us cruisers couldn't wait for a cold root beer in this heat, and it sure tasted like home. We bought some KFC to eat on this next passage. It is too darned hot to cook and fried chicken can be eaten cold. Carrefour also had wonderful freshly baked breads and we really loaded up on those. Bill found great looking pan au chocolate (croissants) for only 70 cents each, so he is fixed for a couple of breakfasts on this passage. The bakery section of Carrefour sucked us in and it was difficult to pull ourselves out of there!

BTW, I added a number of postings to this blog today. If you click on Indonesia on the left side of the main page under "Places we have visited" you will find all the new postings. They don't all show up on the main page today since I added so many.

After mentioning our crew list used to clear in here at Bali in a previous posting, we received a request to publish a copy of this crew list. We have another official boat stamp that has all the pertinent information on our boat. The "official seal" is not our boat stamp. We bring the self-inking boat stamp when we clear in. Officials really like that also and we recommend that every cruiser have a "official boat stamp."