North Java Sailing : when it becomes worse it becomes better…

We set sails from Bali on a beautiful day : winds and currents with us, we were speeding along…the vistas of Gunung Agung, a perfectly conic shaped volcano where enhancing the beauty of each instant…

My night watch was a bless : everything seemed to sparkle : the keel of the boat was lighting the plankton, which made like a milky way in the sea behind us. The real milky way was shining down its familiar lights from the sky, in a light dialogue between sea and sky…and the land didn’t want to be left alone and shone as well, from hundreds of fishing villages lit along the coast…

The orange-pink sunrise revealed the fascinating conical shape of the Gunung Agung along with 2 other volcanoes, gleaming from the island of Java, some 20NM east.

We arrived in Madura Island amongst hundreds of beautifully colored fishing boats, from which fishermen would frantically wave at us in their happiness of seeing a different boat.

In Madura, we caught up with the way we loved with Indonesians : curiosity, generosity, will to share their culture and daily life…

It was all just perfect and I was starting to think that I was wrong to fear the trip on the north Java coast, against the wind, with only 3 stops over 500NM of coast…

But I wasn’t…as soon as we turned the corner of Madura island, we went nose facing the currents and the wind (when there was any)…the boat, which usually goes at about 4mn (already quite slow) was now hardly making a 2nm (4km/h)…

The nights became terrible : the north coast of Java is over populated…and so is the sea…

It was the end of the easy night watches, where we could watch the stars, read, listen to some music…now we had to be very careful at every instant…container ships and ferries are easy : red light on port, green on starboard, we know where they are going, we are used to them, from seeing so many along the OZ coast…the petroleum platform, we are used to them as well (those who read our article about Darwin-Kupang will know why…;-))…they are brightly lit…no danger either…

But there is the others…the tug boat trailing an unlit barge (nearly killed us), the numerous fishing boats lit only by an oil lamp or even a wood fire, which makes it impossible to work out the distance of the boat…most of the time we only know how close we are when we smell their Kretek (clove cigarets)…sometimes, if the watch man is not sleeping or if he hears us (when we are not under sails), they flash a light towards us, until we confirm by a flash too, that we saw them…

Worse are the fishing masts, erected in water 10 to 20m deep, unlit, that suddenly appears from the darkness a few meters from the boat, like a phantom threat which leaves me shriving until the end of the watch….

The days motoring against currents and winds are not helping either…we are all knackered…me, more than the others as I spent 3 days in bed, trying to cure a bout of xenophobia of my stomach against some food that I ate in Madura…

As we where still 2 days from our next stop, we where “saved” from keeping fighting by a mechanical “happening” : the propeller fell down…

Yes you read well…we heard a weird noise and when we checked : no propeller!…

Once more we got a lift to the shore, this time by 2 fisher boats…

We arrived in a very nice little fishing village, where the people where the friendlier we’d ever met…and they had propellers in every shop of the village…

In 3 days, in the middle of nowhere, we found the right size propeller, got it slightly modified by an engineer, and could set off again…for a total cost of 50euros!!!

It is unbelievable what you can achieve in Indonesia!!!!

In the mean time, we enjoyed the friendship of these people. The pastor of the village showed us around the country side by car, the fishermen would help us find what we needed, give us advices, and we became very friend with a family who sent us off with a whole grilled chicken from their yard, especially killed for us…

These people who have so little and have been so generous with us…it is heart-warming and makes us want to be so much more generous and disinterested in our lifes…not sure if I am really making sense right now, but sure you will understand what I mean…

Some of the friendly and smiling fishermen

Catching a taxi for downtown... (one horsepower only, that's green energy!)

Anyway, we set sails again…but during our stop, wind and waves had built up…we where now beating in 2m waves, with the boat at 45degrees jumping up and down…impossible to do anything…we didn’t eat anything warm for 2 days (even the cattle wouldn’t stay on the gaz), could hardly sleep and went through numerous thunderstorms (quite scarry with a steel boat…)…not to mention that we where soaked by rain or waves or both 24h a day…

After the 2^nd night, especially straining for all 3 of us, as we had to stir all night, thru storms and rain as the wind vane didn’t work with the hectic wind we had, the morning rised over some mini tornados forming and disappearing all around the boat…

That was it…the captain decided it wasn’t worth it and we headed for Semarang, the closest port.

There we rested for 2 days, slept, ate…and the very tight program, which was already shacked by the “propeller stop” definitely went out the window.

Our captain finally realised his program was far too optimistic and renounced the crazy race against the monsoon that he had started…

We are now in Cirebon, which is only about 120mile from Jakarta, and we should make it there by the 5/2…

There, our captain will head directly to India with a different crew (by the way he is looking for 1 or 2 persons for the crossing Jakarta-Sri lanka…)

Our plan is to catch a ferry from Jakarta to Malaysia, then head up north to Thailand.

It is a relief for us that this crazy race against the weather is finally called off…Since we left New-Cal, we had to keep going, never stop…it had become quite tiring and frustrating…up to the point where it became dangerous…

Now we are in a more relaxed mode, which is the way I think sailing should be, unless you are taking part in the Volvo or something like that…

Never the less, sailing took us to remote places, and, even if we couldn’t stay very long each time, we met great people and saw beautiful places…this will definitely be the experience of a life time…

But our travel goes on…we become land animals and start a new life with our home in our backpack…

Keep watching this space for our next adventures…

12:12 - 29/01/2007 - Ajouter un commentaire