Its a fortnight since we last published and thats because its been full-on for Musketelle and her crew.....Formal Welcoming Ceremonies (tropical formal) with Banquet Dinners and Cultural Shows, sightseeing, bemo and scooter riding, refuelling, the never ending maintenance and of course socialising !!! Its been a crash course in adjusting from the relative efficency of Australia to the topsy turvey tropical tumult of people teeming Indonesia. But so far so good and we are enjoying every minute as we adjust to the ways of this fascinating country.
Unlike most tourists who enter at an international airport at a major city we have slipped in through the back gate so to speak. We are sailing from the less populated and less developed eastern end of Indonesia and moving west toward the mega populated Java where over a thousand souls occupy every square kilometre. Being an archipelago of 14,000 islands sailing is the ultimate way to visit this country. If there are a reputed 300 million living here we are only going to meet a miniscule number. Those we have met are just so friendly and the youngsters are all being taught English and eager for dialogue. The method of approach is to thrust a notebook and pen under the nose and ask for
you to write your name and country as an ice breaker. Becomes a bit of a chore but its hard to resist the eager smiling faces.
The country is politically controlled by Jakarta but each province or regency has a Regent Governor who is "the man" locally !!! It has been the Regent Govenor or Deputy who has hosted these formal welcomes which emphasises the importance this rally of 116 yachts is, particularly in the fringe areas we are
currently visiting. To give you an example one island we visited normally gets 200 tourists per year and we all rock up!!! You can imagine the excitement among the locals.
To bring you up to date with our physical travels we have in the last fortnight sailed from Kupang on West Timor north to the island of Alor where we anchored off the town of Kalabahi pop 40k. To reach this place we battled huge wind against current seas in the Sawu Sea and inquisitive fishing boats in the dead
of night to reach the Selat Pantar passage right on daybreak. This passage has fast flowing currents, depths of not less than 1000 metres and is teeming with dolphins. Most of the time through the Selat Pantar we were headed by the current - going just 0.5 knots under motor!!. Not surprisingly the hills on either side of us took on a very familiar look - since we were effectively standing still!
Then our luck (or was that the tide?) changed and whisked us at times up to 10 knots in 5 knots of wind into Kalabahi passing numerous fishing villages on each side of the passage.
Kalabahi is a noisy little town that comes to life each morning with the call of the mosque and the local cocks. It kept up this sweltering bustle throughout the day meaning that it felt like midnight by 8pm. We hired motor- cycles and cruised to outlying villages and found a sublime lagoon for a dip. Highlight was passing a motor scooter with a man and woman on board and a huge swordfish draped across the bike with the sawn off stump of the bill scraping on the road at one side and the tail the other....fresh fish en route to market forthwith!!!
Our next port of call, travelling westward, was the volcano ribbed island of Lembata and its principal town of Lewoleba pop 10k located on a landlocked lagoon fed by another swift flowing pass that replenished the fishing grounds twice a day with fish for the countless fishers. Highlight of our stay was a day trip over the most backside testing 52km track you can imagine on the back of a ute to a traditional whaling village called Lamalera where the locals catch around 30 whales annually using big row boats and hand thrown harpoons. The boats were around 10m long and built of timber held together with wooden dowels and lashing twine. This village is a classic example of genuine no frills tourism with the visit involving total immersion in this working village along with the pigs, goats and cats not to mention the opportunity to buy local handicrafts including whale teeth. All this whilst surrounded by whale bones in various state of decay and whale meat hanging to dry in the sun.
The next day we recovered by filling our fuel tanks with diesel (locally known as 'solar') and what a fun experience this was involving a visit to the local petrol station which looks nothing like anything you can imagine. The place is identified by the 200 plus scooters always lined up waiting to fill their 5 litre tanks
with petrol, (benzine). Being big volume purchasers and wanting solar not 'benzine' we were invited to jump the queue and we watched agog as the disel was hand ladled in 2 litre amounts into our 20 litre containers, the operator dipping his ladle, bare hand and arm immersed each time, into this big drum being fed by a tap from a bigger tank ouside the filling room. It was a scene of controlled mayhem with the cashier sitting opposite also counting the ladles, as we were. The alternative was to pay a local middleman to bring fuel out to the boat in their containers but our experience in Kupang resulted in dirty fuel and most 20L containers only holding 17 or 18 L with talk of that being further diluted with kerosene and even palm oil to increase earnings for the middleman. Yes, Indonesia is a fascinating place and people are forced to go to extremes to make a buck. Needless to say we filter all fuel before it enters our tanks and then pass it through multiple filters before it gets to the engine or generator.
Our anchorage for the last 2 days has been a coral fringed lagoon at the eastern end of Adunara. The snorkelling here is excellent and to round off the days we have gone ashore each evening to a sandspit island for sundowners and last night a bbq with timber a few of us collected from some nearby islands. With drop dead sunsets and a full moon the general consensus from the 6 boats at this anchorage, paradise found, 10 out of 10 !!!
Our next major island is Flores. We will update soon.
Unlike most tourists who enter at an international airport at a major city we have slipped in through the back gate so to speak. We are sailing from the less populated and less developed eastern end of Indonesia and moving west toward the mega populated Java where over a thousand souls occupy every square kilometre. Being an archipelago of 14,000 islands sailing is the ultimate way to visit this country. If there are a reputed 300 million living here we are only going to meet a miniscule number. Those we have met are just so friendly and the youngsters are all being taught English and eager for dialogue. The method of approach is to thrust a notebook and pen under the nose and ask for
you to write your name and country as an ice breaker. Becomes a bit of a chore but its hard to resist the eager smiling faces.
The country is politically controlled by Jakarta but each province or regency has a Regent Governor who is "the man" locally !!! It has been the Regent Govenor or Deputy who has hosted these formal welcomes which emphasises the importance this rally of 116 yachts is, particularly in the fringe areas we are
currently visiting. To give you an example one island we visited normally gets 200 tourists per year and we all rock up!!! You can imagine the excitement among the locals.
To bring you up to date with our physical travels we have in the last fortnight sailed from Kupang on West Timor north to the island of Alor where we anchored off the town of Kalabahi pop 40k. To reach this place we battled huge wind against current seas in the Sawu Sea and inquisitive fishing boats in the dead
of night to reach the Selat Pantar passage right on daybreak. This passage has fast flowing currents, depths of not less than 1000 metres and is teeming with dolphins. Most of the time through the Selat Pantar we were headed by the current - going just 0.5 knots under motor!!. Not surprisingly the hills on either side of us took on a very familiar look - since we were effectively standing still!
Then our luck (or was that the tide?) changed and whisked us at times up to 10 knots in 5 knots of wind into Kalabahi passing numerous fishing villages on each side of the passage.
Kalabahi is a noisy little town that comes to life each morning with the call of the mosque and the local cocks. It kept up this sweltering bustle throughout the day meaning that it felt like midnight by 8pm. We hired motor- cycles and cruised to outlying villages and found a sublime lagoon for a dip. Highlight was passing a motor scooter with a man and woman on board and a huge swordfish draped across the bike with the sawn off stump of the bill scraping on the road at one side and the tail the other....fresh fish en route to market forthwith!!!
Our next port of call, travelling westward, was the volcano ribbed island of Lembata and its principal town of Lewoleba pop 10k located on a landlocked lagoon fed by another swift flowing pass that replenished the fishing grounds twice a day with fish for the countless fishers. Highlight of our stay was a day trip over the most backside testing 52km track you can imagine on the back of a ute to a traditional whaling village called Lamalera where the locals catch around 30 whales annually using big row boats and hand thrown harpoons. The boats were around 10m long and built of timber held together with wooden dowels and lashing twine. This village is a classic example of genuine no frills tourism with the visit involving total immersion in this working village along with the pigs, goats and cats not to mention the opportunity to buy local handicrafts including whale teeth. All this whilst surrounded by whale bones in various state of decay and whale meat hanging to dry in the sun.
The next day we recovered by filling our fuel tanks with diesel (locally known as 'solar') and what a fun experience this was involving a visit to the local petrol station which looks nothing like anything you can imagine. The place is identified by the 200 plus scooters always lined up waiting to fill their 5 litre tanks
with petrol, (benzine). Being big volume purchasers and wanting solar not 'benzine' we were invited to jump the queue and we watched agog as the disel was hand ladled in 2 litre amounts into our 20 litre containers, the operator dipping his ladle, bare hand and arm immersed each time, into this big drum being fed by a tap from a bigger tank ouside the filling room. It was a scene of controlled mayhem with the cashier sitting opposite also counting the ladles, as we were. The alternative was to pay a local middleman to bring fuel out to the boat in their containers but our experience in Kupang resulted in dirty fuel and most 20L containers only holding 17 or 18 L with talk of that being further diluted with kerosene and even palm oil to increase earnings for the middleman. Yes, Indonesia is a fascinating place and people are forced to go to extremes to make a buck. Needless to say we filter all fuel before it enters our tanks and then pass it through multiple filters before it gets to the engine or generator.
Our anchorage for the last 2 days has been a coral fringed lagoon at the eastern end of Adunara. The snorkelling here is excellent and to round off the days we have gone ashore each evening to a sandspit island for sundowners and last night a bbq with timber a few of us collected from some nearby islands. With drop dead sunsets and a full moon the general consensus from the 6 boats at this anchorage, paradise found, 10 out of 10 !!!
Our next major island is Flores. We will update soon.
