Before I begin this blog entry, let me just say that I will
never again gripe about having to check in to US customs in Roche Harbor. Sometimes it takes an experience like ours in
East Timor yesterday to decide that perhaps our administrivial procedures are
not that bad.
But I digress. A bit
of a back-story is needed for the reader to fully appreciate the trials of
Timor.
We had left Bali at about 9 in the morning and climbed north
to the Java Sea, as we had decided to stay north of the Indonesian Island chain
to have smoother water.
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| Bali landscape |
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| Sunset over Bali |
There was a reason that the old navigators sailed around the
world from east to west (even though they were sailing to the Far East): that’s
the way that the trade winds blow.
Unfortunately, the boat’s owner was not interested in having us sail
23000 westward to move the boat 3000 miles east, so we are motor sailing most
of the time.
The good news is that the winds are light this time of the
year in this area, so we are not pounding into wind and wave, but the bad news
is that we are burning diesel at the rate of 2.75 liters (about ¾ gallon) per
hour. Our fuel tank holds 200 liters,
so that means that we need to refill the tank every 72 hours. Fuel stops being few and far between in
Indonesia, we carry 23 20-liter jerry cans in the cockpit lockers, and we
refuel on the fly. This is a tricky
manoeuver, since each jerry can weighs about 40 pounds, and the fuel must be
filtered before it can be poured into the tank…all underway, with the boat heeled
to one side or another, riding up and down in the swell and/or chop.
Having now transferred hundreds of liters of diesel this
way, we have our routine down so well that we hardly need to discuss it.
Step 1: Bill lifts the first can to the side deck of the
boat where the fill tube is and inserts one end of a hose into the fuel tank
and the other end into the tank.
Wrapping a cloth around the mouth of the jerry can, to form a seal he
blows into the can (yum, yum!!!) and starts the siphon going into the tank
while I hold the can steady. This
creates an empty can which now becomes our transfer can.
Step 2: The transfer can now goes on the cockpit floor and
the next full can goes on the table. I
hold the filter in the transfer can, while Bill starts the siphon from the full
can, allowing us to filter that fuel into the transfer can. When the second can has been filtered into
the transfer can, we then siphon the transfer can into the tank as in step 1. Then we repeat steps 1 and 2 until we have filled
the fuel tank.
And we do this every 2-3 days, seizing opportunities when
the seas are calm.
Even with full tanks and another 460 liters of diesel, we
figured that we could not get to Thursday Island without another fuel stop, and
the only place between Bali and TI to do that was Dili, East Timor. Yes, East Timor, known in recent years as the
scene of a very bloody civil war, and piracy in the surrounding waters. The civil war was, like most wars, rooted in
religious differences, since East Timor was colonized the by Catholic
Portuguese and West Timor was Muslim, yet both East and West Timor were part of
Indonesia. Apparently the East Timorians
did not feel that they were getting their fair share of care and attention and
investment from the Indonesian government and decided to form their own state;
this was not to the liking of the West Timorians who retaliated with heavy
artillery and huge loss of life. The
Aussies, the UN and others came to the rescue and East Timor is now an
independent nation – and safe again for cruisers. We had been told by another cruiser in Bali
that check in there was easy and that fuel was available. So we headed for East Timor.
Now, I need to explain the process of ‘check-in.’ Throughout
the world, when a boat enters a foreign port, the skipper is required to check
into the local authorities, which usually involves some kind of review by any
or all of the following entities: customs, immigration, quarantine,
harbormaster and (when we checked out of Bali) the Navy! The order in which these authorities must be
visited is not standard, nor is the cost.
The skipper must bring with him the boat’s registration, passports for
all aboard, and the paper he was given by the captain of his last port when he
‘checked out.’
Sometimes, as in Australia, the authorities will come out to
you in their own boat, but more typically the skipper must go ashore. In Roche Harbor, one just pulls up to the
customs dock – which is clearly marked – and walks a few paces to the
office. But in Dili, there is no marina
and no public dock, so getting ashore involves untying and inflating the dinghy
and lowering it overboard.
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| Dili harbor - boats pull right up to the shore. |
Which we did. After
we had filtered and transferred 9 jerry cans of fuel. In 95-degree heat and 96-percent
humidity.
After inflating the dinghy, we needed the outboard. The lock on the 3HP outboard had seized, so
we unlocked and lowered the 5HP outboard to the dinghy. Bill hooks up the fuel can, opens the choke
and pulls the cord. And pulls the
cord. And pulls the …. Well, you get the
picture. I dig through the toolbox and hand tools into the dinghy as Bill
removes the carburetor. An hour later,
with the fuel jets unclogged, the carburetor devarnished, and the engine
reassembled, the Yamaha springs to life and we motor to shore, papers firmly in
hand. In 95 degrees and 96 % humidity.
Finding the Harbormaster’s office was not easy since (a)
there were almost NO signs and (b) the signs there WERE were in Portuguese or
Indonesian. My Indonesian vocabulary
consists of 7 words – ayam (chicken), nasi goreng (fried rice), tutup (closed),
air (water) and thank you (terima kasih), and although I could make out the
Portuguese with my Spanish, there was no sign for what we sought. We headed in the direction indicated by the
man on the VHF radio when we arrived and attempted to ask directions from
locals, but English is a third or 4th language in East Timor and few
East Timorians even know what a harbor master is, much less where he might be
located.
At last we arrived to the purported office, a 3-story affair
with open holes in the roof, peeling plaster walls, faded paint and crumbling
concrete. Like something you would have
seen in a “Saving Private Ryan” war zone… which it probably had been. On the first floor, we found a sign for
customs, and peered in the windows to see a beat up desk and a pile of folders
behind a locked door. Strike one. On the second floor, we found immigration,
also locked, and the Maritime Police, locked as well. Three strikes, we were out and back on the
street, where we learn that the offices will not open until 2:00 p.m…. a few
more minutes away.
Since the purpose of our visit was to buy diesel, we decided
to tackle the next challenge: getting East Timorian money. Between us we had a fair amount of Malaysian
and Indonesian money. I had $20 US
dollars and Bill had Australian dollars and Euros. Given the history between East and West
Timor, we doubted that East Timor would use Indonesian money, but we were not
sure. In addition, Bill was having
trouble with his debit cards, one of which had not worked since we left
Malaysia while the other had been blocked for 3 wrong pin tries.
Across the street we noticed the Hotel Timor, behind a faded
sign welcoming delegates to a conference that had happened several weeks
before, and there we found some friendly English speaking receptionists, a bank
machine, and air conditioning. We
learned that in East Timor, the currency is US dollars. Now we needed to find a place to change our Indonesian
Rupiah to dollars. Over the course of
the next hour, we visited Western Union and 2 different banks, each of which had
a posted exchange rate for Rupiah to dollars, but none of which would change
our Rupiah to dollars – we have no idea why.
Deciding to solve that problem later, we headed back to the immigration
office where we tendered our passports and were informed that we needed $30
each for the visa. ARRGH. Customs was still ‘tutup,” and the exact
location of the harbormaster’s office was still a mystery, but after seeking
directions from a few more people, we found the harbormaster himself, and
managed to get our check in and check out papers completed.
Now we still needed to get money for the visas, so we went
back to the hotel and Bill tried their cash machine – it was “Fora Servicio” –
out of order. Explaining our predicament
to the receptionist, they indicated that the machine was not for international
cards, but they gave us directions to a bank that would take our cards (a
different bank from the ones that were supposed to change money). Off we went in a taxi, whose driver had
installed some very powerful bass speakers on either side of the rear seat and
played unintelligible heavy metal at very high decibels for the 2 mile ride to
the bank through an urban landscape as bleak and broken as anything I had seen
in Africa.
Leaving Bill in the cab, with bated breath, I slid my card
into the machine, noticing that the one just to the right had an ‘out of order’
sign on it. I had barely entered my PIN
when Bill appeared at my side, concerned about the small knot of people closing
around me. Sure enough, I looked over my
left shoulder to see a young man no less than 4 feet from me and two others
watching me just as intently from a few paces.
Well, we needed the money, and I was happy to follow the
instructions on the machine, take my card and the $500, and hustle back into
the cab, where my heart beat drowned out the bass vibrato in my head. I did not feel threatened, but I definitely
did not feel safe. I gave the cab driver
a $20 and got back a $10 and 5 of the dingiest dollar bills I have ever seen –
tender that would not have been accepted at any store in the US.
We made it to immigration in time to trade our passports for
$60 cash, and we even got a receipt! All
of this still in 95 degrees and 96 % humidity…and none of the offices we had to
visit had A/C.
Now we needed to get the diesel.
Back to the boat in the dinghy for the 13 empty jerry cans. After motoring back to shore, Bill climbed up
the sea wall and I handed up the cans.
He hailed a cab, and loaded the cans in the truck and the back
seat. He was only able to fill half the
cans on each trip because the cab driver (understandably) did not want jerry
cans of diesel in his back seat. I
watched for his arrival and ferried the first load of cans back to the boat
while he went for more. Needless to say,
the gas station did not take his VISA card, but my $500 came in handy. The saving grace for all of this was that the
fuel we got was as clean as anything you would get in the US, so at least we
won’t have to filter it.
Exhausted but relieved to have all of that behind us, we
changed into swimsuits and jumped in the water, which was amazingly clean given
that this was a ‘harbor.’ With a fresh
water scrub and rinse, we toasted our day’s work with a couple of ice-cold
beers. And then decided we deserved a
second round. After all, it was 95 degrees and 96 %
humidity.
I don’t think I have slept so soundly in a few years.
Since we had checked in and out in one step, we took off the
next morning, rounded the northeast corner of Timor and set sail for
Australia…600 miles away. The first 300 miles were a coast – smooth
seas, light winds. But as we dropped
from the Timor Sea to the Arafura Sea, the direction of wind and wave was no
longer favorable, and we had to work to find a comfortable angle to both of
them. We zigzagged south and east and
raised Australia north and east of Darwin just as dark was falling. We’d picked out a promising cove to stop in
and felt our way by depth sounder with no moon.
It did not take long for the Australian Coast Guard/Customs
plane to find us. They patrol this coast
quite assiduously to intercept smuggling of refugees from Indonesia. We had already been overflown when we were
still in the northern Timor Sea, so we were not surprised when we saw a plane
come in low over our anchorage and then peel away.
It felt good to be in Australian waters, although we still
had 1500 miles to go. We set off the
next morning, cruising along the northern coast with about 650 miles to go
until the Torres Strait where we planned to check into Australian customs. The first 200 miles were uneventful, but I
was watching warily as a thin veil of cirrus clouds crept across the sky. The wind and waves were building at the
exactly wrong angle and we continued to be forced to motor off our intended
track to keep a comfortable ride. It was
clear that we needed to hole up for a day or two and wait for conditions to
improve.
Scanning the charts, we picked out a promising anchorage in
the middle of the Wessel Islands, a chain of low islands that juts into the
Arafura Sea from the Northern Territories.
Arriving at 8:30, we transferred some more diesel, cleaned the boat and
looked longingly at the water – from my trip here last year, I knew that a swim
was not an option – the North Australian coast is inhabited by crocodiles, and
cruisers are told never to swim or even sit on the edge of the dinghy. So we hauled up buckets of seawater for a
cooling shower and fell into our bunks for a much-needed rest.
The next day, we caught up on boat chores. Bill did some troubleshooting on a couple of
lights that were not functioning and managed to get the Windex working
again. I baked bread and made up several
dishes that we could eat underway once we got going. Going ashore was not an option because we had
not yet checked into customs, nor did we want to untie and inflate the
dinghy. But we were surprised to come up
on deck after a much-needed nap to find another boat in the anchorage! Hailing them on the radio, we were even more
surprised to hear an American accent and to find that they were from Whidbey
Island and Ketchikan!
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| Deva leaving our shared anchorage in Guruliya Bay |
They were sailing the other direction, heading for Langkawi,
Malaysia – our point of departure – and so we spent an hour in conversation on
the VHF sharing tips and information.
They had recently downloaded weather, something we were not able to do
since this boat does not have a HF radio, and we were pleased to hear that
light winds were forecast for the next few days. Our next leg would involve 350 miles across
the Gulf of Carpentaria, and we did not want to tackle it in the steep seas we
had been battling the day before. That
body of water has a ‘reputation’ among Australian cruisers and we knew we
wanted to wait for a good weather window.
Like the Arafura Sea, it is relatively shallow (40-60 meters), so the
seas can get steep and short.
Armed with their good news, we took off the next day, having
decided to head for Weipa instead of Thursday Island. Heading for Weipa would give us a better
angle to the wind and allow us to refuel at a dock, instead of having to tote
jerry cans by dinghy back to the boat.
And we were back into the routine. With only two of us, we split the night
watches, taking 3-hour shifts in turn. During
the day, we are much more informal, and one might go down below to catch up on
sleep while the other one reads or does some boat chore in the cockpit. The fishing lines go out at first light and
come in at dark, and we have kept the fridge pretty full of fishy fare. Bonito have been easy to catch, as well as
tuna (Bill caught 4 at once a few days ago).
We also managed to bring in a small Dorado, a trevally a Spanish
mackerel and a 40 pound wahoo.
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| 4 tuna on one line |
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| The wahoo that did not get away |
Our trip across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Weipa was almost
anticlimactic. “The Gulf” as the Aussies
call it, is infamous for its ability to turn quite nasty. Last year when I was here (going the opposite
way) we met a man who told us that he had been around the Horn three times and
never had it as bad as his trip through the Gulf.
Last year’s transit with Alice was uneventful, but this
year, going to weather, we were a bit apprehensive. Yet, the water was flat and the winds were
very light and we crossed in 2.5 days with no discomfort for us or the boat.
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| Motoring into the Gulf of Carpentaria through the Wessel Islands |
Weipa is a mining town. The mines have put in a very sturdy infrastructure to support the industry, and the basics of creature comforts - supermarket, fishing shops and hardware stores. But that's about it. The colors remind me of Baja - red red soil, bright blue sky and emerald green brush, but the topography is low and scrubby - very arid.
Swimming is out of the question because of the crocodiles, but the breeze is balmy and the people have been incredibly friendly and helpful - giving us a ride to the supermarket, selling us diesel out of their own tank, and generally doing what boaters seem to so world wide - help each other.
From here, we will head around Cape York and take the
shortcut through the Torres Strait, turning south along the Coral Coast. We’ll be racing against the start of cyclone
season, staying between the Australian Coast and the Great Barrier Reef, most
likely doing a bit of coastal cruising, anchoring up at night as needed to
avoid the afternoon headwinds. We expect
to have email access next in Cooktown or Cairns. The boat's owner and a friend of his will come aboard in Townsville and sail with us to GoldCoast, just south of Brisbane...so we have another 1500 nm to go. It will be a great way to see the Australian east coast, much more scenic than the passage from Dili!
