A funny thing happened on our way back to Malaysia

We didn't go!!!

We're still in Jepara and it looks as though we'll be here a tad longer.  Well, maybe a little longer than a tad.

Our plans (you know those solid ideas in the cruising world that are cast in Jello) were to head back up to Malaysia, haul out to do the bottom paint and travel the west coast of Malaysia and perhaps go back to Phuket, until it was time to safely cross the Indian Ocean taking the southern route back through Indonesia to Cocos Keeling, Mauritius, Madagascar etc.

But something very unexpected happened.

Within a day of our arrival here, Rob & Peter talked at length about the enormous workload on their plates and how desperately they needed some help for the manufacturing of the fibreglass water slides they'd been contracted to make.  Paul had previously mentioned that he'd once run a fibreglass factory and then his own stainless steel business (another part of Peter's business) and, before we knew it, they'd put a proposal together to hire Paul for a period to help project manage these and well....... Paul accepted.

They would put us up in a rented house, give him a motor bike for transport, fly us to Singapore every two months to renew our visas, pay him a salary plus bonus and a host of other things.  All this plus a golden opportunity to do some serious work aboard the boat while we lived ashore; not something to be sneezed at.  Calypso would, however, be our main concern as she can't stay at anchor where she is right now due to oncoming weather conditions and we still have to haul her before making the crossing. Having no haul out facilities here, we've investigated numerous options and have now agreed to put her in the nearby harbour where we'll be able to work on her top deck, cockpit and internal woodwork, giving her some of the TLC she so desperately needs.  The factory will "lend" us a couple of labourers who can work on her full time and prior to leaving, we can take her down to the next town to do the bottom paint where they do have haul out facilities.

We've discussed this at length and, apart from Calypso, can't see any negatives.  Paul, at 73, is thrilled to be employable and from the time of meeting these chaps last year, had envied them running such a business.  Labour is incredibly cheap, the cost of living is cheap and we very much need some infusion of funds as our meagre resources are at rock bottom.  

It would be my job to supervise the work aboard Calypso so I certainly won't get bored.  A major overhaul is something we've worried that we'd never be able to afford but it would be so necessary if we're to obtain a decent price for her back in South Africa.  The thought of sailing back to port with a "pretty" boat rather than a well-worn model is very appealing. 

So, all in less than two weeks from the time we dropped anchor here, I have a working husband again, we have moved ashore (that'll take some getting used to), preparations for the safety of Calypso in the harbour are in progress and Indonesia will be our home for the next six to nine months.   We'll also concentrate on learning a bit more of the language as, unlike Malaysia, very little English is understood here.

Sadly, we'll say farewell to Saol Eile in a couple of days as they head northwards.  They will start to cross the Indian early next year but will take the northern route via Sri Lanka, India and Chagos.  For various reasons, we can't do the same (passport issues, finances, insurance, etc.) but we should still be in time to cross after the contract is complete.  If this plan works out, we'll probably  meet up again, most likely Mauritius or Madagascar but, if not there, certainly SA.  

Yup, we blinked and things just changed!

Meeting up with old friends

Calypso in the setting sun

06° 32.398' S

110° 39.615' E

Rob's house

We've arrived back in Jepara, a town on the north coast of Central Java where, this time last year we anchored in order to travel inland to visit the temples of Borobudur and Prambanan.  Back then, we just happened to drop anchor right outside the house of a Welsh chap, Rob, who works at the nearby power plant.  We met him and he, in turn, introduced us to other expats living and working in the area, all of whom were members of the small local yacht club.  

Most of the chaps were either involved in the power plant or in the manufacturing of export quality teak furniture and one, Peter a German, was also building fibreglass boats on a small scale.

The factory

A year later, this part of his business has escalated tenfold with Rob involved as well, and they're now producing much larger vessels for the dive and pleasure industry.  

They've also obtained a huge contract to manufacture fibreglass water slides for the massive water park that is going up nearby and have all sorts of ideas for expanding.  We just happened to arrive for the opening of their small marina where they will be building a new factory and showcasing their products.  All very exciting for them.

They were so pleased to have us visit again, so it became a whirlwind of activities from the moment we got there.  This time we won't be trekking off to see temples but simply to catch up with friends and do a lot of socialising.

Peter's house

Paul and Paraic were taken on a grand tour of the power station which impressed them no end while Myra and I enjoyed a morning of relaxation around their swimming pool followed by a fabulous dinner with Peter and his wife.

Rob and his wife, Alia, and Peter and his wife, Siti, have been phenomenal to us, entertaining us, organising provisioning trips, fuel, laundry, wow, a host of things.  How can we ever repay their hospitality?  

The blessing of the new marina

And the food served

Pulau Bawean and the case of the burning barge

05° 43.917'S

112° 40.133'E

Another great overnight passage with wonderful winds giving us a speed of 6.5 to 7 knots over the ground.  

During the dark hours, we had a couple of close encounters of the unwanted kind in the form of unlit fishing vessels coming out of the gloom.  I swear they deliberately come right at us to scare the hell out of us.  They, more often than not, have no lights other than a tiny flashing LED which is impossible to determine distance and they then only turn on their one white light when almost on top of us.  Proper navigation lights?  Not a chance.  Haha, I'm sure they think it's funny.  The same thing happened to Paraic aboard Saol Eile and he literally had to reverse out of the way, not an easy thing to do when you've got all sails up and under sail power only.

We're anchored up in the northern bay

The Island of Bawean appeared to be quite mountainous and we arrived in a large deep bay on the northern side which was nicely protected giving us flat waters to drop anchor but still enough of a breeze to keep us cool.

Inside the bay were several barges with their umbilical cords attached to tugs.  One was a barge loaded with coal which had started to smoulder and, by the following morning, was smoking quite well.  We watched this throughout the day and by evening, it was obviously quite serious.  

Once the sun went down, they moved it farther off shore but we could see a massive red glow with jumping flames.  By the next morning, there was no sign of it so they either managed to tow it away or it sank just out there, probably the latter; there was not much hope that the barge could withstand that amount of heat for long.  I hope the tug cut himself loose in time.

Our very upmarket restaurant

The nearby village was full of typical island waterside dwellings with the incumbent goats, cows, cats and kids.  We spent the better part of an hour trudging along the road to the nearby town then stopped at a 'salubrious' restaurant for a plate of mee goreng where several of the chaps agreed to take us on their motorbikes into the town to the mini market.  

As Paraic was on his usual mission to find that elusive beer in a Muslim town, they also took us to what I would describe as a shebeen for a bottle of Guinness; a grungy room hidden in the back of beyond somewhere.  I don't know if I've ever mentioned the fact that Paraic was a brewmaster of note with Guinness in Ireland as well as an advisor on all things to do with setting up new breweries in many locations around the world.  He lives, eats and sleeps all things beer.  Thirst satisfied, the chaps then transported us to the mini market but we found no fruit or vegetables; the town market is apparently only open in the mornings.

Regardless, it was an interesting journey and they returned us to our boats so we could continue watching the burning barge and get on with a few tasks and projects.

PHOTO ALBUM:

The 3 islands are at way points 2, 3 and 4

Our Mee Goreng in production

The anchorage

Rice paddies

Paraic & Paul enjoying their Guinness

The newspaper wrapped boxes to disguise the contents?

Pulau Masalembo

05° 32.287'S

114° 25.690'E

The following two hops were again to be overnighters so we rested for another day before moving on and, miracles of miracles, we had perfect winds again!  This is definitely a bit of a novelty around these parts as we'd had to motor the majority of the time last year and pretty well most of our time around Borneo.  However, these winds were so good that we had to reef right down to make sure we got there after sunrise.

The gap to the pier

While in the second island, Masalembo, we took the opportunity to visit ashore.  Hmmm, not quite that simple.  

To begin with, we discovered that it was impossible to take the dinghy in anywhere close to the beach due to all the reefs and it was low tide at the time.  There were a myriad of old rusted pylons that must have been a large pier and structure in the past, probably from WWII.  Several chaps busy cutting them for scrap indicated that we should tie up to the old barge they were on then walk onto the island along the remains of the pier.

The rickety raft

This sounded fine until we saw that the barge was a good distance from the pier which, in turn, was a wreck of broken concrete and sharp rusty reinforcement.  

No problem; they had a bamboo raft to pull across then clamber up the lethal rusty remains on the other side.  

Yeah right!  Well, it worked but we were a tad nervous and more than a little soaked in the process.  So much for putting on clean clothes.

Collecting our drinks

One of the chaps, John, who spoke a little English appointed himself our guide and proceeded to show us around on the way to his house "just another five minutes" down the road.  

A good hour later we arrived and he promptly climbed a coconut palm for our drinks.  He had carried five fish back with him to offer us lunch but we declined after all the coconut water and coconut meat (quite filling).  He also plied us with bunches of bananas.

A fishing boat in production

The island was planted with teak trees which are used for boat building.  We visited one yard where a couple of boats were being built and repaired and were most impressed with their skills in this regard.   

Then there were all the children who were fascinated by us.  John mentioned that they'd never seen foreigners before.   The kids on these islands are always such a delight.

When it came time to return to our boats, he ferried us back on his scooter and we reversed the process of getting back to our dinghy.  

A wonderful stop, great island and, as we've come to expect,  delightful people.

PHOTO ALBUM:

Looking out at the anchorage

Making a small dugout canoe

The village children

Paul going back again

 

By the Light of the Silvery Moon......

04° 45.70' S

115° 48.95' E

We spent a couple of days at a peaceful anchorage outside the village of Kaluku where we had a wander around (3 mosques in the space of half a kilometre) and some local fare to eat.  But it was time to head back westwards across the Java Sea.  We left the coast of Sulawesi behind for a three day journey to the first of a series of three tiny islands all about a hundred nautical miles apart.  Southeast winds were predicted which would be fabulous - with those we could actually sail as we needed to head southwest.  Yup, you guessed it, they turned southwest instead and then died altogether so, for the first day and a half, we tried every sail configuration then just gave up and motored.  

However, sometimes things DO come right and halfway through the second day, the winds backed to southeast and we were on a roll.  Fifteen to eighteen knots, perfect!  The only stickler was that we would be arriving at the first island after dark on the third night so we reduced all sails, dropping the staysail entirely with zero affect; we were still hurdling along at seven knots albeit more comfortably.  Our great advantage was having a full moon that night with relatively clear skies so we decided to take a chance and attempt to anchor in the moonlight at Pualu Matasiri.  

In this part of the world, all our charts are hopelessly inaccurate and our navigation aids showed us coming in on the west side of the island, climb across a mountain ridge and anchor on the east side when, in reality, we nudged our way in by eye and safely anchored in eight metres on the west side as planned. We'd arrived by 8:30 p.m. so managed a great night's sleep before Saol Eile who only arrived 13 hours later.   

When we awoke in the morning, we found that we couldn't have gone in even one more boat length before hitting a reef and there was a huge wreck of a barge right beside us which wouldn't normally inspire a lot of confidence but where we were proved to be a perfect spot.  Whew!

There but for the grace of God go I.......

Our arrival was obviously a bit of a curiosity for the locals as several canoes full of young chaps paddled their way out to have a closer look along with every returning fishing boat.  I doubt they'd seen much in the way of visiting yachts in the past.

.

Trying to find some wind

Looking across the bay to the mountains of Sulawesi

Once Paul was feeling more like himself, we decided to brave the entrance to Maratua, one of the islands we'd visited on our day tour.  He needed to do some scraping on the bottom now that his energy levels were back in tact.  However, this little venture was not something we'd want to do too often as both the trip into the anchorage and back out again was through a narrow, reef-lined channel with horrendous currents and despite the fact that we chose slack tide, the currents ran against us both ways at such a rate that, at full revs for over an hour, we couldn't even achieve one knot.  We were thankful that Saol Eile hadn't joined us (they were still too sick) as it wouldn't have thrilled them at all.  Instead we met them crossing the Macassar Straits on our way to Sulawesi, the distorted amoeba-shaped Island to Borneo's east.

We had decided to go across to the Sulawesi side in the hopes of getting a better angle to the wind in order to start the longer journey back westwards.  The two and a half day trip across gave us one day of good sailing tacking back and forth but the rest was motoring.  We crossed the equator again and arrived in the town of Donggala dropping anchor in a fairly stony bottom but were confident it would hold in all but a very strong squall.

Now, taking a yacht into Indonesia isn't the easiest thing to do as there are so many hoops to jump through. The only reason we came back was that most of those hoops had been taken care of by joining a rally which was free and, to top it all off, offered a free CAIT, the certificate required to take a vessel through Indonesian waters and which cost us an arm and a leg last year.  We'd been told that things were getting easier but I think they forgot to tell every leg of the military as, that night at midnight, we were woken and boarded by the Indonesian Navy demanding our papers and threatening us with arrest as our CAIT did not reflect Donggala as one of our stops.  For quite a while they were somewhat aggressive but it finally all ended OK and they left us in peace once they'd made a phone call which probably told them to step down.  Bit scary though.

The rest of our time was spent visiting the market to buy fresh produce and topping up with diesel.  Diesel is another problem in Indonesia as, ever since the Bali bombings in 2002, it has been against the law to sell or carry diesel in jerry cans making it somewhat impossible to conform.  However, there's always someone somewhere who will sell under the radar, it's just a matter of finding them.  We did so here in the form of a great guy by the name of Wowee who took us everywhere in his car and organised fuel from the army, better quality stuff than we'd have found on the streets (fuel here is notoriously of poor quality).

Topped up with fresh produce and fuel, we set sail for our next stop, Kaluku, 50nm south still trying to find that elusive wind or at least a wind that's not permanently from exactly the direction in which we are heading.


PHOTO GALLERY:

At the market

Trying to take a photo of Calypso at anchor was impossible without a hoard of kids wanting their photo taken too.

Blurry photo of us crossing the equator - our 4th time

 

Each town has an inordinate number of mosques, none of them complete

The Islands of Derawan

The journey down from Tarakan to the Derawan Islands off Tanjung Batu took us two days with an overnight stop half way at Pulau Bunyu. 

Working our way through the reefs to anchor outside the town was somewhat of a nightmarish obstacle course as we had to keep changing direction to find a safe passage.  The only reason this became necessary was because we'd been heading for one waypoint for an anchorage then, while on the way there, heard that instead we were to anchor off the town to be greeted by the town's dignitaries.  That took another three hours in fading light which made it even more difficult causing us to hit a couple of reefs, fortunately nothing too serious, just very nerve wracking  In fact, upon leaving a couple of days later, one boat did end up on the reef and had to wait for the incoming tide to float off.

 

At the anchorage, one chap decided it would be nice to dress his rigging and before you knew it, we all had our signal flags flying making a gorgeous spectacle which apparently thrilled the Regent (head honcho) who was even more delighted when he was told that we didn't dress our boats very often at all and certainly not just because we had entered a new town.  

Snorkelling in Jellyfish lake

This particular village rolled out the red carpet for us, fed us, entertained us and plied us with gifts.  They also laid on a power boat to take us on a day tour of all the nearby islands where we snorkelled in the jellyfish lake (non stinging variety) and then along the outlying reefs supplying us with breakfast and lunch boxes for the journey followed by a big dinner once we returned to Tanjung Batu.  

It was a delightful day sadly spoiled by the fact that, one by one, we all became ill.  Over a period of four days almost everyone was affected, some more seriously than others.  We came to the conclusion that we suffered from salmonella food poisoning probably from something in the dinner.  The effort the townspeople had gone to in order to welcome us was incredible so it was despair that we had contracted something from their efforts.

 

 

We moved on over to the Island of Derawan but due to illness and also to the incredibly strong currents, we didn't manage much in the way of snorkelling, just enough to check that we'd suffered no damage to the keel when we hit the reef and to swim around the few coral heads near the boat.  We wandered around the sandy streets of the village which appeared to cater primarily to backpacker tourists but otherwise just stayed on board trying to recover.

 

PHOTO GALLERY: 

 

 

I found these two little giggling chaps under a porch on Derawan Island

Maratua Island

And on the reef

Beautiful white beaches

Lion/scorpion fish