Bali to Dampier, Australia

It felt like a huge relief to leave Bali and all its 'busyness'. We left the mooring field at Serangan and entered into a very strong southbound current  in the Lombok Strait. It spit us out into the Indian Ocean doing seven knots. Immediately, we felt the calming sensation of the long, undulating, ocean swell and we started to look forward to a long, but, hopefully uneventful, 1400 mile passage from Bali, Indonesia to Fremantle, Western Australia.

The boat mostly behaved, what else could go wrong with it? We had two minor issues, the grey water pump stopped working and one of the batten cars on the mainsail cracked allowing the batten end to come out of the sail and rip the batten pocket.

We'd estimated a very slow passage as the prevailing winds are southerly, right where we were going. We made good time the first few days and thought maybe instead of the three week estimate we might just make it in two. Ha! The winds didn't go over thirty knots, but, the waves at one point were enormous, so, we decided to heave-to and wait for better conditions. We sat there for a day and a half and eventually it did lessen and we started out again. We then had a four day window of light airs and relatively calm seas which got us very close to the Australian coast. We had burnt a lot of fuel getting this far and although we probably had enough to get us all the way to Fremantle, we decided to take the prudent course and divert to Dampier to get fuel. More importantly, we could check into the country there which would allow us to stop at other places on the way down, if we needed to, without incurring a possible $50,000 fine. As it turned out, it was a very wise decision.

We had just passed through a very desolate stretch of water. We hadn't seen another ship, visually, or electronically, or heard a single voice on the radio for six days. We were entering into an oil and gas area with a number of fixed platforms and we began to see ships again. It was good timing.

G hadn't been feeling well for about three days and he was getting more and more uncomfortable. We were about 125 miles and twenty-four hours out of Dampier when we realized that his situation was truly serious and possibly life-threatening. He needed to get to a doctor, now. We called DAN (Diver's Alert Network) in the US and spoke with a doctor there who said the situation could deteriorate without warning. We debated continuing on by ourselves, but, decided it wasn't worth the risk. What to do now? We called Dampier VTS and Australia Immigration to report a medical emergency onboard. We were very, very lucky to find ourselves in an oil and gas area. There were many ships surrounding a number of oil platforms nearby. One of the ships, Edda Fides, just fifteen miles away, overheard us on the VHF and called to say they had a trained medic on board and would we like to speak with her. We did that, then Australia RCC (Rescue Coordination Centre) became involved. They said they'd call around to the other ships and see what they could come up with. In the meantime, Edda Fides called us back to say that they had located a doctor on an oil platform nearby and put us in touch with them. We spoke with the doctor and captain and they came up with a plan. They would send out their supply ship, with the doctor onboard, to rendezvous with us and take G off for initial assessment. Then, they'd decide what to do.

After that, it all went very quickly. We were about seventeen miles apart. We set a course directly towards the platform. It would be a tense three hours until we connected with their supply ship. Darkness fell just as we met. The ship, the 150m Sea Tortuga, stopped in the water and we drove into their lee as close to the ship as we dared. The night was black, the sea was still heaving and the wind blowing. A RIB (rigid inflatable boat) was dropped into the water with three men aboard. They came alongside Gjoa and G was transferred to the ship. Gjoa held station while the initial assessment was done. After about twenty minutes, it was decided that G needed to go immediately to hospital and they were leaving right now. A singlehanded Gjoa into Dampier. It was a very long night. Along the way, the doctor called to say that G was stabilized and now comfortable. After that, there was no more news of him until Gjoa landed at Dampier the next afternoon. When I called in to report Gjoa's arrival to Customs and Immigration, they said they already knew I was there, they have cameras. Officers arrived within minutes and gave me an update on G's condition. They had already visited him in the hospital! Security is tight along this coast, currently maritime level 1, but, I didn't think this extended to hospital visits. 

The commodore of the Hampton Harbour Boat and Sailing Club gave me a ride to the hospital in nearby Karratha. Just as I arrived, G was being released. He will require followup treatment which we're trying to arrange now. We are 'stuck' in Dampier, anchored in the bay, for the moment, as G shouldn't sail right now. Cyclone season starts in about three weeks, we'd like to be further south, in a more secure location.

UPDATE: Nov 13

G is fine now and we are moving on from this unfortunate event to take Gjoa further south.

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Bali

We finally made a much anticipated arrival in Bali. We approached from the north and spent a long time watching the island unfold in front of us. Obviously, it’s of volcanic origin and was green and beautiful, much like Hawaii. 

We cruised along the north coast and then headed south. We were going to the official port of entry, Benoa, at the far southern tip. Along the way we could see remnants of the old Dutch colonial infrastructure with solid-looking stone retaining walls that helped to protect the shoreline which is wide open to the sea. There were also many expensive-looking resorts and homes sprinkled along the coastline.

As usual, the trip down wasn’t uneventful. We weren’t at the end of our boat problems yet. On this leg of the passage, we just happened to notice that the battery monitor was showing zero. A quick investigation revealed that our 24v volt alternator on the new engine wasn’t charging the house batteries as the belt had shredded.

This surely shouldn’t have shredded after only 250 hours of use? A new bracket for the old Bosch alternator had been manufactured in Langkawi. Whether it was a slightly imprecise build that caused chafing of the belt, just a cheap belt, or, both, it didn't matter as we didn’t have another. But, no problem, just start our Panda generator and turn on the battery charger. We did that and were feeling smug until we tried it a second time only to get an overheat exhaust fault on the generator. Its impeller (which provides cooling water) had disintegrated. We had a spare, but, it’s a difficult job to do at sea and we needed charged batteries. Our third and last option was to run the portable Honda generator. It worked and gave us enough charge to get into port. 

Although Bali was much anticipated we ended up with only four days to spend there before our visa ran out. It went like this:

Day 1 – fix boat. First, we had to source alternator belts. With the help of Mande’s Yacht Service, we were able to find one right away. The same cheap brand that disintegrated, but, also some better quality ones that could be made to fit. It was a bit of a struggle, but, we got one on. Next, was the impeller replacement on the generator.

Day 2 – fuel and provision boat. We paid extra and had Mande’s Yacht Service deliver fuel to the boat by jerry can, what a luxury after our recent refuelling difficulties. We also found a Carrefour (French supermarket) in the town of Kuta. They had lovely bread, real French pastries and many other items that you wouldn’t expect to see. What a treat.

Day 3 – a half-day taxi tour followed by the start of the checkout process with visits to the Immigration and Quarantine offices for official stamps. We had actually planned to check out of immigration the next day, but, thirty minutes before the office closed we found out the next day was a public holiday and the office would be closed tomorrow. This necessitated a full-blown sprint by taxi to the next town arriving five minutes before the office closed. If we’d missed it, we would have had to pay a large visa overstay fine. We were disappointed to be asked for a ‘tip’ at the quarantine office as Indonesia is trying really hard to stamp out corruption of this type.

Day 4 – checkout that required visits to two more offices, Customs, followed by the Harbourmaster. Extra fuel filters that we ordered arrived at the last minute and we were able to leave by 1600.

It was a whirlwind visit and somewhat disappointing. I’m sure Bali has wonderful things there somewhere, but, we didn’t have enough time to see them. All we saw was a rather disappointing ‘beach scene’ with expats drinking beer in the bars and very aggressive street salespeople, endless strips of shops and traffic, traffic and more traffic. Our half-day taxi tour at least got us out to the countryside and there were  some very beautiful highlights. 

Bali is primarily Hindu, not Muslim like the rest of Indonesia. Religious symbols were very evident from the offering plates, consisting of incense, flowers and food that were seen everywhere, to backyard shrines/temples. Each house has a rear courtyard with an altar and beautifully painted/gilded decorations.

Our tour guide took us to a holy spring and a Bali traditional village, both very interesting.

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What is a FAD?

Growing up far from the sea, we didn't eat that much fish and it was always frozen. Since we've been sailing we've been eating fish a lot more often. Here in Indonesia, we've been eating it a lot. Unlike most cruisers, we don’t fish for it ourselves, but, it's available on every menu, usually grilled with some kind of delicious flavouring. 

As a nation of islands sprinkled along the equator, fishing is obviously a large part of Indonesian life. Activity we have seen here ranges from a single man with a net, to a larger fishing boat with a crew of perhaps twenty very young men (more like boys) aboard. 

We haven’t seen any huge factory fishing boats. Just as well, as there are so many fishermen (it’s a male preserve only), boats and FADs about, that the fish don’t seem to have much of a chance as it is. So, what is a FAD? It’s a Fish Aggregating Device and they are a bane for sailors. Most of them are unlit at night and are impossible to see. They weren’t limited to any particular distance offshore either. We started seeing a lot of these floating raft type structures twenty miles off the north coast of Bali. Not a thing you want to run into in the dark.

Inshore, FADs range in size from a few sticks in the water, like an old-fashioned weir, to elaborate structures with built-in nets that can be raised and lowered. Here are a few examples of ones we saw. Each island seemed to have its own style of building.

At least the larger structures have lights on their perimeter poles.

This A-frame style was only seen at one island, very impressive.

In some places there were on-water villages of them.

Boats also came in every shape, size and colour. Some were beautifully decorated, others very basic like this boat, of which we saw many. You might think that rod coming out the side of the boat is some kind of net, or, fishing gear. Actually, it’s the shaft of what looked like an old car engine, mounted transversely athwartships!. The noise of these was incredible, but, what a way to recycle.

These lookouts wouldn’t pass western-style health and safety requirements! Wonder how many people are lost overboard each year? Manual net handling on a rickety, rocking boat, in a black night, at sea, must be an incredibly dangerous profession.

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Sailing the Java Sea

Every inland sea we’ve sailed on has had its own set of challenges. The Java Sea was no exception. We knew we were in the ‘wrong’ season (SE monsoon) to be travelling southeast, but, it was later in the season and the winds should be lighter. We’d been watching the weather in the area for weeks and every day had the same forecast, 10-15 knot winds and less than 1m swell. We thought we'd be able to motor into it if we had to. The run down from Singapore was straightforward and quite enjoyable. We anchored at a few pretty anchorages along the way. All was good until we had to make the left turn to enter the Java Sea. We then got smacked in the face with 20+ knot headwinds and 2m seas. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was enough to stop us from getting where we wanted to go in a timely fashion. One night we were in near gale conditions with gusts into the 30s.

An inland sea isn’t like the open ocean with its large, but fairly gentle swell. Inland seas set up short, sharp waves, especially when they are shallow, that knock you back. You can only approach the waves at an angle. Combined with additional Java Sea constraints of many islands and lots of shipping and fishing activity, it can make for very difficult routing decisions. 

Two big disappointments soon became apparent, we weren’t going to be able to make it to Kumai, Kalimantan (Borneo) to visit Camp Leakey, the orangutan sanctuary established by Dr. Birute Galdikas in 1971. Ever since I’d watched a piece on 60 Minutes, years ago, about the work of Dr. Galdikas, I’d wanted to visit. We had planned to arrange a tour with Orangutan Green Tours. They have many different tours available. The one we'd hoped for was a river trip by traditional boat with a jungle hike into the camp. Now, however, it was going to be impossible to sail there. It was a very big disappointment that we just couldn’t make it. 

The second disappointment was having to miss seeing the Komodo dragons, on the island of Komodo, just east of Bali. We realized that with our slow progress this side trip would add more than a week to our voyage and so we’d also have to give it a miss. 

It’s never wise to have deadlines when sailing, but, sometimes there are external pressures that can’t be changed. In our case, the best month to travel south along the coast of western Australia is September. We were hoping to take advantage of some of that timeframe. The official cyclone season in that area starts November 1, so, we had to be well south in Australia before that started. In addition, we had visa ‘issues’. In Indonesia, they’ve recently improved their yacht clearance requirements and it’s much, much better than it used to be. However, visas can still be a problem. We paid for a thirty day ‘visa on arrival’ which could be renewed for another thirty days, if necessary. Sounds good, but, you had to be at a port of entry seven days before expiry to give enough time for the renewal processing, so, effectively you only have twenty-one days. More pressure to be somewhere specific that you don’t need when sailing in tricky conditions.

We were mostly motoring and needed to get more fuel. It was problematic where to go. The winds dictated that we go south, to the island of Java. We hadn’t planned to go there, but, actually ended up with a good night sail directly into the port of Semirang. It’s a large, regional town, but, it has no facilities for yachts. We ended up anchoring in a very shallow, open roadstead in about 20 knot winds trying to take the dinghy in to get diesel. It was impossible and we had to leave and try somewhere else. The brief taxi ride we took through town to get groceries was our first exposure to a ‘full-on’ Asian city and it was an experience to see. People, animals, motorscooters, traffic and more traffic. The town looked fairly prosperous. It’s definitely not on the tourist circuit. Actually, we became the tourist attraction. Some ladies on a tour bus approached us and we thought they wanted us to take their picture, but, no, they wanted to take our picture, with them! It seemed very weird.

Back at sea we were able to sail north for a while before we head to go east once again and were once again blocked, with very little fuel. What to do now? There was an island archipelago about thirty miles back, which meant we could sail there and we decided to head there and cross our fingers that they had fuel.

We landed at Karimunjawa and are we glad we did. It turned out to be the highlight of our few brief stops in Indonesia. It’s an archipelago of twenty-seven scenic islands. Only about 10,000 people live there and tourism is only in its nascent stages. How refreshing to see no banana boats, or, endless parasailing boats buzzing around. It’s very much a traditional village, with animals everywhere. The call to prayer at dusk was haunting as it echoed out across the water to where we were anchored.

We anchored and went ashore, landing at what looked like a small resort.

Maybe because we felt so beaten up after our ordeals of the last few days, but, it just seemed like a little bit of paradise. Omah Alchy Cottages is a very, very modest family-run ‘resort’ with only four cottages, some of which have decks that overhang the water. They have an open air restaurant and the food was delicious. It was the kind of place where maybe it would be nice to just get away from it all for a few weeks at a very good price. There are excellent diving opportunities around the islands and there is a very pretty, colourful, coral reef right in front of the resort where you could snorkel right from your verandah if you wished. The resort also has a catamaran available for charter. It would be an ideal location for a week’s charter, with beautiful beaches and no competition for anchorage space.

It seems every blog post I write has to have a list of boat maintenance issues. This post is no exception. We hope we get to the end of problems soon. With a brand-new engine, the last thing we thought we’d have on the trip is engine problems, but, we did. There was lots of coughing and sputtering going on, not the engine as such, but the fuel. We changed out all the fuel filters (discovering a cracked filter cover in the process), but, the problem soon came back. We couldn’t get above 2,000 rpm. 

Once we got to Kurimunjawa, the resort manager at Omah Alchy Cottages, KoKo, was able to contact the owner of the only gas station on the island and arrange for us to get our tank cleaned and refilled. Promptly, the next morning a fishing boat arrived to lead us into the dock (local knowledge required!) and we had two men manually removing, with a hand pump and jerry cans, 400 litres of diesel, cleaning the tank and refuelling with 1,000 litres of new fuel. What a job. There was a lot of water in the bottom of the tank, so, the problem was obvious and the engine is running smoothly now.

The fuel was delivered by this flash-looking motorcycle 'truck'.

It was reassuring to see that, other than the water, the bottom of the tank was very clean.

In addition, we had the following issues:

    
1. There is only one spot on the entire deck where there are screws that have been through-bolted. Of course, they leaked, badly. We were taking a lot of water over the bow crashing into waves and had to keep pumping the bilge manually.

2.      The bilge looked like it had been absolutely dry for years, but, with a regular influx of water,, problems started  appearing. We heard a crackling noise and were horrified to find an exposed wire for the watermaker where the electrical tape had started to disintegrate causing a bare wire to come in contact with the water, yikes!

3.      The 24v refrigerator doesn’t like to be heeled over and stops working when it is.

4.      The chartplotter at the helm froze up a couple of times and eventually the touchscreen capability started working only intermittently. Dry/wet screen, clean/dirty screen, wet/dry fingers etc. just didn’t help. Sometimes it works for twenty touches, sometimes you can’t get past the first one. Just proves what I thought of touchscreen technology on a boat. The remote keypad I installed only works with the plotter at the nav station as it needs a power supply. At least that is still working, for now.

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