Adventures in Indonesia

In the end, I was unfortunately mostly relieved to leave Darwin but our departing was happily made much nicer by Jenny and Steve Besnard (late of Guernsey, now of Sydney) who waited patiently on the quayside to wave and take photos as we motored by. We were once again the last to leave….2 days behind the rest, this time because of the wonderful newfangled piece of electronic spy in the sky type of wizardry that all the other boats seem to have and poor “old” Moonshiner didn’t…..yet! Dick was persuaded to buy this thing (an AIS system…look it up….) when we were back inside the Barrier Reef with a largish ship bearing down on us that was refusing to answer the radio. Another Rally yacht, Angel, nearby called the ship up by name (that is just one of the things this system can do) and she was answered immediately…..so could this mean the difference between being mown down or not? Hmmm… The Singapore Strait is very very busy!!

Dick was offered a good deal for a package so decided to go ahead and that’s when the problems started because installing the blessed thing became a nightmare for all sorts of reasons personal and technical. Of course, as you are reading this, the problem has been solved and we have left Darwin though that may mean it was thrown overboard in the end and we are still sailing blindly and incognito into the great unknown!

I was sorry to say goodbye though to Jenny and Steve who had flown up to Darwin for a holiday to coincide with us being there which was more than kind of them because October is most certainly not the best time of year to be in the Northern Territory! We had some excellent days out and I saw a lot more than I would otherwise because Jenny and Steve had done their homework and found out where best to visit. Many, many thanks you two…..I have promised to come back and do the South end off this huge Island before too long…..!

We had a fairly uneventful 4 day sail/motor across the Arafura and Timor seas to the first truly “foreign” place (as I reckon it) on the Rally so far. This was Indonesia, actually Kupang, West Timor where Captain Bligh famously pitched up after his epic 3600 mile sail from Tonga in the mid Pacific. Indonesia has different language, religion, customs as well as komodo dragons and orang utans making it a truly “exotic” place to visit in my opinion. I was therefore really looking forward to our visit. Hmph!! If you are reading this, then it means that I and the rest of the Rallyists are not languishing in a third world prison! We just love these dramatic situations…….

Well, it went something like this…….Several weeks before our visit, we filled in umpteen forms which were sent off to Jakarta and, once in Darwin, we obtained visas from the Indonesian Embassy there. So far so good. Richard, our Rally coordinator had assured us that all would be well once we arrived in Kupang subject to the usual quarantine, immigration etc as he was sorting it all out for us. He somehow(Oops) didn’t do a very good job of it and we were all told that we were in the country illegally and if we didn’t leave by 7am the next morning, all the boats would be impounded and we might possibly end up being arrested. Eek!! Mass Exodus then at around 6am the next morning and with some secrecy about our destination, we headed towards the next suitable anchorage about 250 miles away. The secrecy was necessary because the powers that be had all our details in Jakarta and might be watching us. We had been told that we could anchor in suitable places overnight but could not go ashore apart from emergencies. Big potential problems then.

The sail from Kupang to Rinca Island with Moonshiner in company for the first time with all the other boats turned out to be one of the best so far. Mostly clear weather and perfect sailing conditions, many boats with extra colourful sails on show. We were also on the map for the first time with the AIS system switched on. The islands we have seen so far from the seaward side look very impressive, lots of old volcanic activity, classic stratocone volcanoes with immense towering cumulus clouds rising over them and always lightning somewhere too.

Most of the Rally boats anchored for the night in the various bays of Rinca where there are supposed to be komodo dragons. So we waited patiently to see one having been told by the locals that they liked to sun themselves on the beach in the afternoon. Of course, there was no sun, just torrential rains and thunderstorms. Don’t be silly!! We waited in vain until the final morning, early on and just as we were about to up anchor; there it was strolling along the beach almost as promised……probably over two metres long and a strange sort of tan colour. I always thought they were grey? My camera wasn’t handy so no photos unless I can borrow one from another boat. Anyway, that meant that our mission was complete and we could leave Rinca!

We sailed in company again through terrifying nighttime thunderstorms and between hugely impressive and recently active volcanic islands to our next stop which turned out to be one of those magical places and which now rates in my top ten. This was Gili Air, a tiny holiday island about 50 miles from Bali. Look it up on Google Earth. Delightful. Must visit, especially if you enjoy diving. I could have stayed there for a long time but the Rally had orders to be in Bali by the 28th Oct so that we could clear customs and become legal again so we had to leave after just one night. Big shame that.

The sail to Bali was quite eventful for us as “something else” went wrong with the engine and we rendevoused mid channel with another Rally boat, Moonshadow so that ace engineer, David from Nebraska could come aboard to help sort it out. It’s not nice having to sort out the engine when it’s hot, hot, hot!! I was hand steering and dishing out cold water as fast as the fridge could chill it and I think poor David and Dick sweated enough to set the bilge pumps going! Anyway, a temporary repair was done and we made it to Bali marina where we now sit awaiting an engineer tomorrow, Friday. It’s not a big problem (a misaligned fan belt) thankfully and we won’t be left behind this time. Our next stop will be Kalimantan and the orang utans. Can’t wait to "commune" with them. The one I saw at Jersey zoo many years ago had the most horrendous BO so I'm almost curious how the wild ones will smell!

From the Top End

One of the sights in Litchfield National Park about 150km SW from Darwin and getting close to the outback. The soil is the reddest I've seen anywhere ( I know why it's red but I'm not going to explain!) This is the end of the dry season so not much is going on but there's a lot more water due to arrive soon I believe. We had a downpour on the way back to Darwin along the Stuart Highway, a complete white out, visibility zero, for about 10 minutes Then it just stopped as though someone had turned the tap off.



Jenny and Steve Besnard originally from Guernsey and Sydneyites sinces the early 90s. They very kindly drove me out to this national park for the day, total distance nearly 300km but that's no more than a daily drive to work out here. They have not acquired a trace of an Aussie accent in nearly 20 years! The "thing" next to them is a magnetic termite mound. There were thousands of them in the area. It looked like an old graveyard..they are all aligned North and South for some reason. Something to do with the iron in the soil or the need for "space"...... out here?

This is Charlie, the water buffalo from the Crocodile Dundee films. Horns 7' 6" across. He stands in his corner in an "old" pub, and no doubt gets his photo taken quite regularly. This is also the first place I've been to out here where I would describe the Ladies loo as a real "dunny". No spiders though I hoped...it was too dark to see anyhow.

We went to the local crocodile farm where they put all the troublesome "salties" that are caught on the beaches etc. Some are nearly 5 metres long and obviously getting on a little in age.(Green teeth!) I think they're happy enough...they get fed well and encouraged to jump around for their food as a sort of exercise as well as entertainment for us tourist types. One of them whom I couldn't get a photo of because he was too fast was described as particularly aggressive and therefore very dangerous. When he "jumped" for his morsel of meat, the sound of his jaws snapping was really alarming. It'll never be safe enough to get back into the water for me...

Darwin has a population somewhere around 100000 so I believe and the whole state has only about a quarter of a million people so there’s a lot of space here! The Northern Territory really doesn’t have much to offer as a desirable place to live. Oops...they won't be giving me a job in tourism then!!…It’s very hot most days both in the dry and wet seasons with the dry being just ever so slightly more comfortable. We’re actually here just at the end of the dry so it rained yesterday of course.
The city is much the same as those in Queensland with a few more degrees Celsius and gzillions more horrible little buzzy flies...I know I had been warned, but, still it's not a pleasant experience.

We are due to leave for Indonesia next Wednesday where I'm reliably told it'll be even hotter and more humid. Nice! As Indonesia is also predominantly Muslim, we ladies have been told that we have to cover up so as not to offend. This means wearing more clothes of course.Think I might only venture out afer dark.

The internet is supposed to be infrequent over there so the next entry may be some time in the posting. There are 17500 islands in Indonesia too so that's a lot of navigation required. This time however, we should be with the rally boats from the start as everything that is necessary is currently working properly....maybe I shouldn't have written that?

These are the pink granite rocks of Magnetic Island which are a bit like Albecq or Ploumanach...well you know I like rocks!!






I just have to comment.......I need to look like this when it's cold and dark and it's 5am and I'm trying to stay comfortable and awake. OK? This was off Queensland where the nighttime temperatures were almost bearable still.




A booby hitched a ride and spent most of the time making a terrible mess on the solar panels.








Some of the boats have state of the art sails (this one's a para something or other) They go faster..... This boat, Island Kea disappeared over the horizon within about four hours.





The dip in the middle is the northern tip of mainland Australia, Cape York. OK, so it looks a bit boring but then so does Cape Horn!

Baking in Darwin close to the Outback

Once again we were behind the main bunch of Rallyists who had mostly left Mackay before the end of August leisurely to cruise (I try not to split infinitives….) the beautiful Whitsundays and on northwestwards towards Cairns and Cape York before the hop across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Darwin. Who cares about punctuation as long as it makes sense?
There was still work to do with the installation of a new refrigeration set up as the old one (13+years) had finally died and we were using an old domestic fridge/freezer kindly lent to us by one of the yard workers. This was positioned under the boat in the yard and meant clambering up and down that horrible ladder several times a day just to get the milk for tea etc. The fridge man who came and sorted us out was great fun and we chatted away for hours about all sorts while he worked at fitting the new unit which works really well. Thanks Warren, the Rhodesian refugee….he certainly had some tales to tell………….
We left after that and headed across the water about 25 miles to Brampton Island anchoring for the night in a sheltered bay. Next morning the air was alive with birdsong and butterflies. This is how it was meant to be I began to think!
We motorsailed for most of that day to some anchorage or other and on again the next day and the next until we found Magnetic Island…it somehow drew us in……….I now know that it was the pink rocks and it felt like coming home, well, sort of anyway. The rocks are granite like Albecq (or Ploumanach if you know Brittany). Quite beautiful!!
So we stayed for a day or two comfortably alongside in the ultra clean marina, long enough anyway for a stowaway or three to scamper aboard up the bow rope. Yes! I felt “something alive” on my feet that night, jumped up and knocked it off then looked up and saw a small furry creature scuttling around. We had mice, aboard!!!! Actually, I now believe they were an Australian rodent called a melymus. Anyway, we just couldn’t have them aboard soooooooooooo poison was laid down. I think one of them ate some that night, poor thing. The other one however carried on scuttling around at night until Dick spotted it and I managed to catch it in a plastic box……So sweet! I treated it very well and put it in a plastic basket/cage sort of thing…gave it lots of lovely fruity things to eat and some soft kitchen roll to curl up in. How did the little devil thank me? By eating through the bars and escaping! Of course, it couldn’t get far as we hadn’t touched land for over a week but it is still around somewhere unless it has eaten some of the poison in which case, it’ll have a very short future……….
Whilst in Magnetic Island, we took the ferry across to Townsville for the day. Nice old town. Dick went to the dentist. I went to the aquarium and did some shopping. I found a CD of Gurrumul, the blind Aborigine, which I had been searching for, for some time and can’t stop playing it now on my mp3 player.
Next stop on our hop up the Queensland coast was Cairns where we reprovisioned the boat (bought more kangaroo steaks…cheap and quite tasty….a bit like venison?) as this is the last decent stocking up place until Darwin which is over 1000 miles away. Australia is such a big place!! Cairns is quite nice as cities go. The Aussies certainly try very hard to look after their country in all sorts of ways.
The general idea was to day hop up the Queensland coast but it is just too far so we did a few overnighters anchoring in suitable bays with just one quick run ashore in Cooktown which is a rather historic place full of monuments to explorers and goldminers but now just a one horse town with a small shrimp and prawn fishing fleet and a centre of social activity at the local bowls club!
We eventually caught up with 7 or 8 Rally boats in a windswept anchorage somewhere within the Barrier Reef all making their way up the coast like us but they all left far too early in the morning….I mean, before breakfast? Well, really!!
So, after breakfast and with a quick DIY job on the anchor windlass, we set off again for yet another overnighter through the reef strewn waters off Queensland….this means “watch on, stop on” as we were sailing up through a busy two lane shipping channel ( the only way through the Barrier Reef). Many large vessels heading for Aussie ports come through and no one knows which side of the channel to use although the convention is “portside to portside”. Some ships choose the other side and this means possibly encountering a large vessel head on at night with unlit and uncharted reefs all round and a closing speed of over 20knots. As I am writing this, you will know that we survived but I had only 2 hours of sleep in 36….just up to the point where we safely anchored in Adolphus Island. Nice here!! More later……….

And so now it's obviously later because I am able to post this blog! We left Adolphus island and struck out across the Gulf of Carpentaria for Darwin...the jumping off point for Indonesia. The trip was around 750 miles, not far by Pacific crossing standards but trickier because there was a lot more shipping to watch out for so no nodding off for a few minutes while on watch. A brief highlight of the crossing was seeing a dugong (manatee) lolling around alongside the boat. Ugly creatures but compelling too! The temperature steadily increased as we travelled west and now in Darwin and in a marina, it has become almost unbearable, especially at night (30degrees plus at the coldest!). It reaches 36deg by noon every day. Oh boy! In one way, I can't wait to leave except that it's supposed to be even worse in Indonesia and then Singapore with the added excitement of ultra high humidity.....They say that one acclimatises ( I didn't even after 6 months in Trinidad last year).......

We leave in about a week for Kupang and Bali etc. I'm looking forward to a complete change in culture and to things being incredibly cheap for a change. The Oz dollar is very strong at the moment.... Buying local wine is more expensive therefore than back in Guernsey. Mad!!

Photos from home.

Jenny. The original had the most amazing red eye.







Family group at warren and Julies place at the Duveaux farm. Don't ask what Julie is doing! Golly gosh, aren't my legs brown!






Mark and Katharine...see you in Dubrovnik next May!







Family group in Holbeach with Shaun holding the Cook Islands flag. We didn't get there but I'd made the flag just in case and then discovered that Shaun and Jackie were married there so it's gone to a good home in the end.






No laughing please! This is the special dress from the Vanuatu islands which is worn by most of the women there, not just the XXL sized ones!! Designed originally from Victorian missionary nightdresses and meant to make the Polynesian women a little more discreet. They succeeded, but take a look on Google at the men's traditional dress....... Hmm.

The tiniest part of tropical North Queensland

A pair of posers at Cape Hillsborough National Park resort. There were a fair few around happily eating the grass which was therefore quite short. I didn't step in anything though so maybe they "go" elsewhere? I think these may be wallaroos in fact...they were smaller than me anyway.


These signs are eveywhere along the coast. They build special netted swimming areas on some beaches to keep these little buggers out but we heard that there are some other jellyfish even smaller that can swim through the nets. Just one more reason not to get into the water.



And here's another one! I was told that they come along and remove troublesome "salties" from the area but that they have a sort of homing instinct and just swim back to where they came from. I'm just not prepared to risk it!




This is the tiniest part of North Queensland looking west from Eungella National Park.







Another tiny part of North Queensland. I hope you will recognise it. They are quite small and you need a little patience but worth the wait anyway.

There and back again.

The boat was lifted out of the water on Monday 16th August and deposited in the boatyard for her annual mini refit, antifouling etc. Life on board in a boatyard isn’t fun……you can’t use the loo for one thing and instead have to cross the boatyard to the Ladies after first descending the long wobbly ladder precariously attached to the boat’s side….. There is also no shower in this boatyard although the men have one (it’s still man’s world here?) and this means a very long trek to the shower block attached to the marina. No fun at all!

It was time for a break anyway and I’d already arranged to fly home for a couple of weeks to see as many people as I could (I would say “loved ones” but I hate that term!!) so I left the next day with 29 hours of travelling ahead of me and 3 flights, Mackay to Brisbane, then Hong Kong and London. The flights were OK, the food was reasonable for once and I managed to sleep a little as well as watching 5 or 6 new films. My main dread as is usual nowadays was catching a cold and, guess what, I did!! Oh well……..a couple of boxes of tissues later and having spent a happy week with my Dad seeing aunts, cousins, sister, son and in-laws too, I flew to Guernsey for the second week.
It was lovely to see so many people, family and friends (all very much loved of course) in such a short space of time. I had breakfast, lunch and dinner with company each time and most meals washed down with good helpings of the red stuff….no hangovers either! My hair was cut again as a treat…….perhaps just a little too short this time…..but it’ll grow back I’m reliably informed!

So it was time to leave again, this time facing over 40 hours of travel with 4 flights and many hours of stopovers at Heathrow, Singapore and Brisbane… I was a little upset that Qantas hadn’t changed the inflight films in 2 weeks meaning I was virtually forced to watch mostly rubbishy ones this time so I compensated myself by demanding more wine and told myself that it was 5o’clock somewhere even though it was probably 5am on the aircraft!

Back in Mackay where Dick had hired a car because the boat was supposedly crawling with workmen and therefore impossible to be onboard during the daytime, we did a little bit of the tourist thing by venturing a little way inland. My goodness, Australia is a big country!! The part of this continent we did is just a speck on the map of North Queensland but we still managed to see rather a lot, wildlife, scenery etc driving through vast sugarcane fields and up into the mountains of Eungella National Park. So yes, now I’ve seen kangaroos and duck billed platypus as well as too many birds to mention. I bought a local wildlife book in the end to help with identification. There are notices everywhere about the dangers from saltwater crocodiles and box jellyfish in particular but we haven’t seen any yet. I think I saw a snake (it was too big to be a lizard) which popped its head out from a hole in a rock……most of them aren’t dangerous according to the book. The insects I’m not so sure about however…….most things seem to bite, even the fruit flies!! Beautiful butterflies everywhere though.

Back in the boatyard and the work is progressing meaning that we should be back in the water in a couple of days ready to sail north for the Whitsunday Islands. I’m hoping the weather improves beforehand as it’s currently cold wet and windy……just like home really!