Crossing the Equator and Exploring Bali

We arrived in Bali four days ago, the end of the second leg of the trip from Langkawi to Cairns.  This leg was 1018 miles from Nongsa, and it took us 7 days and 23 hours.  Internet service here is expensive and slow and so I will not be sending any photos at this point. 

Some highlights of the trip:

It was absolutely magic arriving in Bali this morning literally at first light at 5:00 am.  I was on watch and was startled to see a swarm of small craft come flooding out from the shore.  They were slender pirogues with double bamboo outriggers, powered by brightly colored “crab claw” sails lashed onto a pair of bamboo poles. 

They whizzed across the water behind and ahead of us as they headed out to fish.  Once at their favorite spots, they were able to literally stop the boats dead with the sails flying like colored flags in the wind.  We motored down the east side of the island over the next few hours to Denpasar, encountering fleet after fleet…a couple of hours later, they all headed back in, and by 7 am there was not a single one left on the water.

Before leaving Nongsa, we had bent on the new mainsail, and installed the battens from the old mainsail.  Old of them had cracked and a neighboring cruiser had given us a spare.  This was fortunate since the Velcro tab system that the sail maker had used to enclose the battens was not very strong and the first time we needed to reef after leaving Nongsa, the Velcro yielded and two battens got flicked out, probably spearing some unfortunate fish on their way to the bottom.  After a review of the chart, we pulled over to the nearest likely anchorage, arriving at 3 a.m. and waited until morning to (a) install the spare batten, leaving one pocket empty and (b) sew all of the pockets closed. 

When we woke up we discovered that we were surrounded by dozens of bamboo structures – each one was a platform on stilts about 12 feet above the water, with a generator, several ice chests and a bamboo hut on the top.  These had been brightly lit at night by squid fishermen, who use the lights to attract squid to the nets strung beneath the platform. 

 As we worked on the sail, one of the fishermen came out in his brightly colored wooden boat to watch us.  We exchanged a few words and more in sign language before he took a couple of photos of us with his cell phone (!!) and buzzed away. 

Where are Kevin Costner and Tina Turner now?

We had not installed the new genoa in Nongsa, hoping to be able to get a few more miles from the old one, but the top seam on it also yielded in one of our brief opportunities to sail, and so we motor sailed the rest of the way with the main in various stages of reefing depending on conditions. 

We had very balmy weather for this entire leg, no adrenalin rushes like our adventure in the Malacca Strait.  We motor sailed most of the way, since the wind always seemed to be on the nose or there was too little to sail, although we did have several opportunities to take in and shake out the second and third reefs. Along the way we encountered rusty ferries, brightly colored fishing boats, and a few oil rigs, providing an interesting study in contrasts.  

We had fishing lines strung out the stern most of the time, and we caught more bonito than we could eat, as well as a Spanish mackerel and a Trevally.

We have been pleased and impressed at how well the boat, the engine and the autopilot have handled the various conditions.  We feel like we have mastered most of the electronics on the boat – we are VERY MUCH appreciating the AIS!  Bill managed to troubleshoot and rewire the Raymarine plotter so that it now works ALL the time, not just when the engine is running.

The entrance to Bali was a bit disappointing – the entry to the harbor is a bit tight, but clogged with tugs, working fish boats and tour boats blaring loud music.  On top of that, the jet skis and parasailors whip in and out, a bit disconcerting when you are trying to pick your way into an unfamiliar harbor. 

Bali harbor

Our main reason for the stop here was to refuel, bend on the genoa and fix (hopefully for once and for all) the battens in the mainsail…once again living the adage that cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations.  Being able to improvise is critical, since there is no West Marine around the corner.  Hooking up to the electrical panel in the marina was an adventure in hot wiring - this panel would give and inspector plenty to write up in the US.

Bali marina electrical panel

We got the genoa bent on the day we arrived and found a local worker who was happy to find us a piece of PVC pipe the next day.  We boiled and flattened one end to fit into the batten pocket and sewed the other end closed, and got the engine serviced – new filters, V-belt and oil.  We emptied all the jerry cans into the fuel tank in preparation for the fuel barge, which came alongside and transferred 480 liters of fuel into our jerry cans.  WHEW!

Fueling up in Bali

We tried to check out on the 15^th, but found that it was a national holiday, so we went provisioning.  Knowing little about the city we asked the cab driver for a recommendation to provision and he took us to the Bali version of a supermarket: Lottemart.  What fun browsing the aisles and deciphering the labels (few of which were in English) to find sugar and flour.  The produce section had all kinds of tropical fruit: mangosteen, mangoes, tiny pineapples, chayote, guava, soursop, starfruit and others I had never seen. 

With the boat stocked, the next day we rented a motorcycle for $10 and took off into the interior of Bali.  What an adventure!  Indonesia is by no means a third world country – the cities are teeming with small, clean, new cars, motorbikes and buses that thread their way seamlessly and without much use of horns, through the narrow streets.  We were hardly out of town when we were diverted to the side of the road for a routine traffic stop, along with every other motorbike rider.  Like many of the others, Bill had no international license and we were given the choice of going to court and paying a Rp 1,000,000 fine, or paying right there for a mere Rp 250,000.  I should mention that $1=Rp 11000, so after forking over a wad of cash the equivalent of $23 we were on our way.

The rest of our drive was a visual delight.  In Bali, streets are lined with intricately carved stone walls, stupas and shrines in the flowing and flowery Hindu tradition, Bhuddas, bodhisattvas and images of Hindu gods and goddesses.  Outside the town, we drove past terraces of rice fields where people were planting, threshing and plowing.  Even the banks and gas stations were built in traditional style with tile rooks and carved stone walls.  We marveled at the constant unfolding of visual treats.

Each time we stopped, a motorbike would pull up alongside us to ask where we were from and where we were going – this was very welcome as the lack of signs meant that we were often happy to have confirmation of our direction.  An hour into our ride, one such meeting turned into an invitation to visit a ecological preserve where they cultivated Bail coffee and offered tourists a real taste treat.  In addition to regular coffee, you could sample coffee that had been ‘processed’ in the digestive tract of civets, mongoose-like cats that looked singularly unfriendly in their cages.  I guess I would not be too friendly if I was expected to live on coffee beans either.

Cat-poo-cino - turd at the top, turd-freed beans on the bottom

Cat-poo-cino processor

They showed us the turds, lumpy with undigested beans, which are then put through the ‘standard sanitation and hygiene process’ before roasting and grinding and selling them.  We sampled this ‘cat-poo-cino’ (as they called it) and found that, as advertised, it was much smoother and richer than the Bali coffee.

From there we motored into Ubud and explored the local market, and tried, unsuccessfully, to get money from two ATMs before hitting the jackpot at the third one.  Flush with Rp. 500,000 ($45) we could afford lunch at a stall in the town square: rice and veggies on a paper-lined bamboo tray, topped with juicy pork sliced right off the carcass of a whole suckling pig.  We ran up a big tab with two vanilla ice teas each to wash it down, and the total bill came to Rp 40,000 – less than $3.50.

Then we had to find our way back, but being sailors it was easy to just keep the sun to our right and trust that we would end up headed to Denpasar.  We had to be back in time to check out, an administrative feat that involves stopping at 5 different offices, all in different buildings, none of which are labeled in English, to clear out of the port.  The harbormaster, customs, quarantine, immigration, even the Indonesian Navy all needed to see the boat papers, have us fill out forms with carbon paper and get copies of our cruising permit before signing and stamping all of our copies very officially.   It took us two hours and we barely made it before the offices were all ‘tutup’ (closed).

We leave today for Thursday Island, Australia, which we expect to take 12-14 days.  We are hoping to be able to sail, but since we are still in the tail end of the SE trades, we expect to do a fair bit of motoring, and so, if we run low on diesel, we will check into Dili in East Timor for fuel.

Transitting the Malacca Strait to arrive in Indonesia

Outside Langkawi Marina in Malaysia

We are now in Nongsa, Indonesia, just across the Malacca Strait from Singapore.   We left Langkawi under cloudy skies at 8 in the morning and have sailed or motor-sailed most of the way.  As this is a delivery, we are not stopping in every interesting nook, but moving the boat to Cairns as expeditiously as possible; this means that when the winds are light or adverse, we motor. 

We are checking into Indonesia here as a formality, which will allow us to stop in other places in Indonesia if necessary for supplies or repairs.   We will check out in Bali and then go on to Thursday Island to check into Australia.

Our passage to Indonesia was relatively uneventful (at least until the last day…more on that later).  The boat, being a former charter boat, is quite spacious, but lacks the tools and spares and manuals that our own cruising boats would have.  Bill did a very good job of anticipating tools and parts that would be necessary, so we at least have the basics.  So, when issues crop up, we need to be resourceful, which is part of what makes cruising so interesting.  

In the anchorage outside Langkawi

We moved out of the marina and into the anchorage on Saturday, giving us a chance to test the anchor, stow dockside equipment like fenders and lines and get our heads into living aboard.   Sunday morning we were out fairly early and, on raising sails, were confronted with the first of many issues:  the mainsail, which we knew to be well used, had already developed a tear near the clew patch.  Fortunately, the boat’s owner had already purchased new sails, which were aboard, so we decided to baby the old one to Nongsa, reefing once if needed.  

Then the technology issues started to crop up: the chart plotter, newly installed by Bill himself, quit working and refused to do more than flicker ‘Raymarine” before fading into black.   Not to be outdone, Bill’s navigation computer and handheld GPS that both kept shutting down for no apparent reason and his iPod that refused to shuffle.  At the same time, we were both learning the logic and operation of the AIS system and chart plotter’ touch screen system.  We needed a boat geek and we needed one badly!

It was almost a relief when we heard the thwap-thwap-thwap of a line caught in the prop, a problem that we knew how to solve!  Bill was overboard with mask and fins and we were back underway in just a few minutes.

First days are like this, though, so we started night watches with a long list of things to address at first light. 

Monday morning found Bill at work with the electrical tape, hotwiring the computer and the GPS to 12V circuits to bypass the need for a 12V plug and socket.  Problem solved.  This also freed up the two 12V sockets for iPod charging, important companions for night watches.  The chart plotter started to behave, so we crossed that off the list, and with some persistence I got Bill’s iPod to shuffle.   The sail continued to split, so we took in a reef, which pulled the tear into the bunt, and motored on down the Strait.

Two of the thousands of boats we passed in the Malacca Strait

The Malacca strait is a critical link in world shipping.   Like the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal and the Torres Strait, it is a narrow and shallow body of water on the shortest shipping route round the world.  Ships of all shapes and sizes, laden with oil, cars, coal and containers funnel into it and thread their way north and south…an incessant parade of behemoths.  

We motor along, just outside the shipping lanes, and watch them all warily on our AIS receiver, correlating the "targets" we see there with the vessels we see on the water.  ‘

Because the boat has an AIS transponder, other ships can also see us on AIS. This is very reassuring at night when all you can see is a profusion of red, green and white lights.  At one point, the AIS showed 160 ‘targets’ within a 6 mile radius!  And, outside the shipping lanes, we need to watch for the brightly painted Malaysian, and then Indonesian, fishing boats

Malaysian fishing boat

On Tuesday we finally figured out that the chart plotter would only work if the engine was on, so we will need to do some testing to determine if the issue is in the chart plotter itself or in the wiring to it.  But at least we had a reliable chart plotter.   So there we were, motor-sailing down the Malacca Strait with the wind just off our nose and feeling like we had pretty much solved all of the technology issues, when Bill’s computer went dark.  This time it refused to restart, letting us know that we needed to insert the setup disk…which of course he did not have with him.  Now we seriously needed that boat geek.

And then the uneventful portion of the passage ended.  I turned the watch over to Bill at 2:30am on Wed a.m. and woke up a couple of hours later to a strange motion that reminded me of slalom skiing.  Disoriented, I poked my head out to find a totally different scene than I had left.  When I went below, we were motor-sailing with two reefs in the main, barely making 5 knots, nearly head to wind, in relatively calm seas.  Now we were surfing down huge waves at 10 knots in pitch dark and winds that approached 40 knots…all while the stream of behemoths continued just a mile away.  We were in a ‘sumatra,’ a form of squall unique to the Malacca strait.  I put on my foul weather gear (it was raining buckets) and together we managed to strike the main, put out a bit of headsail and get the boat speed down to a mere 8 knots.   Taking down the main, we could see that it was completely shredded, the luff having separated from the body of the sail in the top third,

An hour later, the drama was over.  And by sunrise, we were motoring past Singapore under cloudy skies and lightening rain.  We pulled into Nongsa marina at 2pm, and hoisted the sail for pictures of the damage.  Bill ran into some sailing friends on the dock – the sailing community is a small one and it is typical to run into someone you have met in another port.  So the first task is to find out how to get groceries, if the water is potable, where to get parts that you have discovered that you need, etc.  All of that usually happens over a beer along with a few sailing stories.

Yesterday’s job was bending on the new sail.  We had lost a batten when the old one blew out, but another sailing acquaintance just one slip over happened to have a supply and gave us one.   Once again, there we were: working on our boat in an exotic location – the definition of ‘cruising.’