Sailing has come to an end in Danga Bay, Johor, Malaysia

Time has flown....we travelled in daytime sailing stretches up the Riau Island group. Sembanka, Mesanak, Galan and we mastered the shipping lanes in the Singapore Strait and the 30nm trip down the Strait of Johor to the Danga river. The strait of Johor was patrolled by armed police boats and the whole coast was protected by a fence with signs with skull and crossbones and "Danger, live firing area" written on it.We had a rain storm on the way down with almost nil visibility so was a bit worrying trying to keep out of Singaporean waters!

One of the two causeways connecting
Singapore and Malaysia

a fish trap - we met hundreds of these around the islands - sometimes many miles out to sea.A nightmare at night as they are not always lit. The net is lowered into the water at night and the fish attracted by lights

 Eric caught this big Barracuda on a line behind the boat. It was about 120-130metres long,but we had to throw him back in due to risk of ciguetera poisoning. This is a poison that reef fish pick up from a type of algae and when Barracudas feed off a lot of reef fish they can have high levels in their flesh. Causes damage to peripheral nerves.

This little fish we traded with some local fishermen. The guy on the right was the owner of an island coconut plantation and we had fun conversing with my english-indonesian dictionary, which I gave him as a present. They motored away with him consulting  the dictionary in preparation for his next boat visit!

The Indonesian people row their boats in a standing position. The kids loved coming out to visit these strangers on yachts. They almost always wanted school books and pens from us and were very eager to try out their English.All Indonesian kids greeted us on land with "hello Mister!"

Here - the Neptunes gathered at the equator!

Sailing Indonesian Waters: What did the Equator bring.....?

Sailing Indonesian Waters: What did the Equator bring.....?: "....heat and more heat and today a tropical thunderstorm with strong winds(up to 30 knots) and lots of rain (managed to fill up the water ta..."

What did the Equator bring.....?

....heat and more heat and today a tropical thunderstorm with strong winds(up to 30 knots) and lots of rain (managed to fill up the water tanks)and exciting sailing too; a great equator party on the beach with the crews of several other yachts - we all got dressed up in our self crafted Neptune garb and cooked dinner on a beach fire, and got bitten mercilessly by little midges, despite repellent.
We are now at the island of Mesanak, one of the Riau group on that long chain of little islands before Singapore Island. We are staying on tomorrow and I hope to do some snorkeling. The local lads who came out to the boat in their canoes this afternoon indicated that there is good snorkeling on the reef.
The fish traps that the locals erect over the water are an interesting feature here. At the last stopover there were about 150 of these up to about 5 km out to sea. They are platforms made out of long poles, each platform supporting a large circular net that can be lowered into the water and lit at night to attract the fish. Each platform has a little one roomed hut on top, presumably someone sleeps there overnight. It's a nightmare for us to navigate amongst them at night- but so far we've been successful.

Sailing Indonesian Waters: Equator - here we come.

Sailing Indonesian Waters: Equator - here we come.: "It was almost with tears in our eyes that we said goodbye to the people of Kelayung Beach and their beautiful Belitung Island. We left at 5...."

Equator - here we come.

It was almost with tears in our eyes that we said goodbye to the people of Kelayung Beach and their beautiful Belitung Island. We left at 5.30 am. Saturday and had fabulous sailing weather all the way throughout the day and night and after 128 nautical miles, arrived at 8.30 this morning (Sunday) at the island of Bangka, which is just off the coast of southern Sumatra.
The trip was good and quite exhilarating having such good sailing conditions. The night passage wasn't bad as far as the shipping went - we are getting to know what to expect of the many little fishing boats now, even though the boats and the fishing methods seem to vary with each island. We had no luck with the fishing though. I thought we had got something as there was a huge tug on the line - turned out to be some sort of wooden and leather ladder! The rubbish, particularly plastic is shocking here in the sea - we were miles from land and still saw plastic bottles, bags, expanded polystyrene (Steropor)and cans floating by. This was particularly bad out of Bali but was better between Borneo and Belitung but upsetting here in the South China Sea.
What are we humans doing to our World?
Today it's very hot - 32 C and the humidity must be near 100% - good enough reason to spend most of the day swimming off the boat - that is when we aren't catching up on sleep after the night passage. The temp. seems to be between 28- 32 C most of the time I've been here, it doesn't cool down much at night either. The locals find it cool though - wearing long sleeved garments and the babies all have woollen hats on! I am finding I'm getting more used to it - just poured with sweat all day in the beginning.
Tomorrow we leave for the island of Kentar - another overnight passage during which time we will pass the equator. We plan a party on the beach to celebrate the occasion.

Tanjung Kelayung Beach

Still enjoying Belitung at Tanjung Kelayung Beach at the north end of the island. We leave tomorrow for the neighbouring Island of Bangka. We will leave Indonesia on 24th for Malaysia. We have taken part in many festivities, offered to the sailing rally, on this island. The picture above was a very fearsome dragon dance put on for us by a small Balinese community here in Belitung, who have come here to help promote tourism.These people performed for us, gave us baskets of food and made us so welcome.We had a fantastic final festival for the end of the rally yesterday - we were entertained by numerous dance and music groups, we feasted on a huge buffet meal of local foods and danced . Ever since we have been here there is music and performances day and night - they have set up a stage on the beach.
Yesterday Catherine and I went out to the neighbouring island and large rocky granite outcrop with the kayaks and had great fun kayaking between the rocks and shooting through on the swell of the incoming tide.We snorkelled from the kayaks in the hope of seeing some of the turtles that we see coming up on the surface to take air - but haven't been able to see any under water yet. Some very nice coral though and tropical fish - Nemo included!

Belitung - "Island of my dreams........."

What a beautiful place this is - must be a slice of paradise! This small island of Malay peoples has made us so welcome. The mooring site is in a small bay at the north of the island - white powdery coral sand and huge granite rock formations. We are anchored directly next to a coral reef - so it's just a dive from the boat and a snorkel in the morning.
The yacht rally seems to be very important to this island as a way to promote tourism. Yesterday they took us on a long drive around the east of  the island and at every stop we were greeted by song and dance , local music and sporting events. They grow palms for palm oil here and there has been a lot of strip mining for tin. Some mining is still done but  most of it was during the Dutch colonial times. The island relies on the fishing industry as their main source of income. We had dinner yesterday at the Regent's house (all 50 or so of us!) He lives in a large old colonial house - kept in original form. He has only been a few months in office and is of Chinese origin and a Buddhist so their democracy seems to work well, as the population is about 80% Malay and of Moslem religion.
We will be staying here for another couple of days before progressing on towards Malaysia via various smaller islands.Sorry no photos today - connection is too slow to download.




 

Wildlife on passage from Borneo to Belitung

What mixed weather we are having on this passage. We have been sailing and/or motoring 3 days and two nights now. As I write this we are motoring on a relatively calm sea along the northern coast of Belitung which looks to be quite mountainous. This afternoon we had a sudden local front come through with squalls of up to 27 knots catching us unprepared under full sail. That was some fun sailing! Half an hour before we had lunch on a mirror-like sea with not a breath of wind. We've had one early morning of rain preceded by good sailing wind through the afternoon and night.
I have seen a variety of wildlife: quite a large pod of dolphins a little way off the boat - they don't come close here to accompany the boats as they do in the Pacific - are they a different breed or have they learnt to be wary of nets? Large schools of fish jumping out of the water - Tuna we thought, accompanying them were white Terns. We passed though an enormous area of blue saucer-sized jelly-fish and watched flying fish skimming across the water - mostly at night. Land birds get attracted to the masts and rigging. One evening as we sat having dinner just before nightfall a little swallow turned up and flew inside the cockpit, landing on Catherine's head - he then re circled and took up a perch on the railing, where he stayed for most of the night. We were about 15 nm from land at that stage. Then at about 5 am in heavy rain a whole group of swallows kept circling the boat shrieking loudly. They followed us for about an hour. Today, within sight of land, we had a small group of sparrow like birds circling and perching on the mast.

Festival and gala-dinner at the district town , Pangkalan Bun

Yesterday we were invited by the indonesian government for a day of festivities. We being the participants of the Sail Indonesian Rally. There are over 40 yachts anchored up the river here from the rally. 3 buses took us with a police escort to the town of Pangkalan Bun about 25km from here.( there is a international airport there if anyone would like to visit this interesting part of the world). The buses were quite a sensation as there are no cars on the roads here, only motorbikes galore and mini buses. All the people in this small town waved at us and the school children stood outside their schools to wave and shout.

We attended a local festival with traditional dancing and music (hat mich an eine Karbener DAF Veranstaltung erinnert ). The local women had stands to display their local cooking and the kids played local games. The most exciting being football with a burning coconut. They soak the shaved coconut in kerosene and light it. The boys then kick it with their bare feet. Certainly doesn't encourage any one to hold onto the ball too long. The men in our group had a try as well - there were a few singed hairs on their legs after that. Eric managed to shoot a goal.

we tried the dayaks blowpipes with shooting arrows(without poison) when they competed they hung the birds high in the trees.
We also took part in a reforestation program where we were all invited to plant some trees. We thought we'd be going into the forest to do this but we ended up planting roadside trees around a big traffic roundabout! The PR effect was good I guess.

After all this hard work we were taken to a wonderful dinner at a traditional wooden house where the regent of the area gave a speech and even sung to us later.
We plan to leave Kumai tomorrow morning and will sail through to the island of Belitan. we plan to arrive  there on Saturday or Sunday and hope for better winds this time.

Pictures of trip to Tanjung Puting National Park

Our Klotok with Chinese cook and boatsman

Gliding up the clean side stream before the Research Camp Leakey, here the water was a black colour from the tanins in the water in contrast to the muddy water in the main river caused by the goldmining . The next picture shows men going up to the goldmines in their canoes with very loud outboard motors. It was quite funny as we photographed them and they us!

Our Dayak Guide ,Andie- was easy to imagine him being invisable in the jungle

These insect eating plants are called condoms by the locals!

These photos were taken at the feeding site of the research enter - we visited two different ones. We also saw wild Orangutans alongside the river. Note on this photo the very small baby orangutan, hanging on the mother's side and grabbing at the bananas too.

what an expression!

They loved watching us too. when we went back in the canoe balancing carefully so we didn't upset the boat, two half grown Orangutan youngsters swung to a tree beside us and threw a rotten branch in the water  to splash us. You could almost hear them laughing.

The river was very flooded and we had to use a canoe to get into the rainforest. There was a walkway well beneath the water. The houses of the caretakers were completely flooded but our guide said it was OK, they had made their bed a bit higher!

Borneo - home to the Orangutans

We arrived back from the Orangutan trip after dark last night. What a fantastic experience it was. We teamed up with the couple from the boat that sailed from Bali with us and hired a klotok, a flat bottomed double decked boat along with the crew - the captain, a cook, and a guide. The guide, Andie, spoke pretty good English and is a Dayak. Dayaks are the indigenous people of Borneo and are farmers who move their villags about every few years to find new fertile farming areas. These people have offered strong resistance to the logging that has been changing the face of the country. Andie took us through the jungle, in bare feet. When asked how far his village is from here, he said "quite a long  way - 4 hours by speed boat,then 3 hours by motorbike and 10 hrs. by foot”. His family live in a community of about 15 families, about 60 people living from what they cultivate - use no money.

He imitated the sounds of the Orangutans to attract them down from the trees and the sound of a mother crocodile to get the baby croc. lying in the reeds to swim towards us! We traveled like the colonialists of old, sitting atop the deck on chairs at a table for meals cooked directly by the cook below, sleeping at night on mattresses on the deck beneath flowery mosquito nets and having every need seen to. The conditions were simple but everything was kept very clean. We never had a meal without about 6 different dishes - really delicious. Fish  with mild green curries, large crabs and shrimps with different sauces, Stir-fried vegetables with almonds, tofu dishes, chicken curries, soybean or fish deep fried patties, banana fritters, and a huge variety of tropical fruits just to mention some of the dishes. We saw wild Orangutans along the river bank who were, very interested at taking a look at us, as well as proboscis monkeys who jumped into the river and swam across behind the boat - apparently because the boat frightens away the crocodiles. Later at feeding places in the two research centers we visited we saw many Orangutans, mothers with babies on their backs - young ones of all ages and the huge alpha male of the area. It was amazing how human-like they behaved. We had some nice walks through the rain forest - most of it secondary growth - Andie said you have to go much further into the forest to get to primary forest.

The river we went down into the jungle was very brown and muddy – the result of the alluvial gold mining further up stream, but once into the smaller tributaries the water was clear but black from the natural tanins in the water from the rainforest.

I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Kumai. It's little more than a tin shake but the equiptment works - sorry I can't download my photos though - next time I'll download to memory stick first.

Happy birthday to all the October(first half ) birthday people, Colleen, Ralf (alles Gute), Josephine (unsere Einheits Maedchen), Peter H and Peter C. Have I forgotten anyone? hope not

 

Arrived in Borneo

After a 4 day, 4 night passage from Bali we are pleased to have arrived in Borneo and are now anchored up the river Kumai from where we set out tomorrow for our 2 day trip up the smaller rivers to Camp Leakey to visit the orangutans.
It was a new experience for me to be out of sight of land and often out of sight of all other boats. It was like being on a huge circular disc with the horizon to be seen all around. At night we took turns at watch - Catherine and I did 4 hr. stints together and found ourselves one night crossing a shipping line with huge ships bearing down on us in the dark and tug boats towing enormous barges which looked like islands against the night sky. Some experience! Other times there were only the lights of little fishing boats to be seen. During the day we saw fish jumping , both big and little, but in spite of having fishing lines out we caught nothing.
Once we came into sight of Borneo's, coastline we felt very excited - most of the coast line has huge trees growing right down to the sea. The delta of the river Kumai is huge and the river transports silted water very far out to sea. The town of Kumai, where we are moored with about 18 other Sail Indonesia yachts, is a typical small port town with bigger and smaller ships to transport the Palm Oil. The growing of Palm oil being the big environmental problem here as the indigenous forest is cut down to make room for this mono culture. We haven't been into the town yet, but hear there is a large fruit and vegetable market,we look forward to finding somewhere to eat tonight.