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.