Sailing and cruising from Bali to Batam in Indonesia.

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SAILING FROM BALI TO BATAM

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November 10, 1997
Listening to the boats on the radio who had left Bali before us, we heard reports that the smoke haze was easing a bit, and so we left Benoa, Bali on October 15. The last two days were a bit frantic - our transmission started leaking fluid again (we thought we had gotten it fixed in Darwin), and Peter had to remove it and find someone to fix it. A bit of a hassle, but for once his inability to speak or understand the local language paid off - the shop he brought the transmission to wanted Peter to leave it overnight, but nobody could speak English well enough to tell him to come back the next morning, so it was easier to do the work right away and get rid of Peter. Good thing, because once we had decided it was time to leave Bali, the thought of being stuck while waiting for something to be fixed was a real disappointment. It's annoying that the repair shop in Darwin screwed up (they seem to have lost/failed to put in an O-ring and replaced the oil seal with a smaller one).

More delays that worked out as we arranged to get drinking water - the 5-gallon bottles of water used for water coolers which is a bit expensive to buy for tank water, but the only water we were comfortable drinking. On Wednesday morning, October 15, we hauled anchor and left Benoa. We had less than three weeks to go the thousand miles to Singapore, and Peter wanted to day sail as much as possible.

Our cruising permit, which we got through the Darwin-Ambon race, started on August 1 and ran through November 1. We had lost a month of allowable time by the time we arrived in Indonesia. Two months is not enough time to get through the country at the best of times, and this year, with the smoke and haze, it was close to impossible. The boats that went up to Borneo reported on the 19th of October that the smoke had descended again, leaving them with about 150 feet of visibility (three boat-lengths, one fellow said). This is a dangerous country to try to sail around in with such poor visibility. As we motor-sailed through the slot between Eastern Java and Madura we were constantly changing course to avoid local fishing boats hauling their nets. We must have zig-zagged through 100 boats in a two- or three-mile stretch. It's exhausting to have to be so alert constantly - and not only for the fishing boats, but for their nets, which may have a pole with a flag on it, or it may not; which may have one or two styrofoam floats, or it may not; which may have some other bottles or other type floats, or it may not; or it's just a little platform of four or five four-foot lengths of bamboo pole lashed together - close to impossible to see until you're right on top of it. As we followed the buoys marking the Eastern channel into Surabaya through the shallows (the "least depth" for the channel is 2.1 meters, just what we draw!), we faced a fence of 10-foot high wooden sticks completely crossing the strait, with just a 50-100 meter wide gateway through it. With no more buoys or other channel markers to guide us we took our chances through the gateway. It was right. But can you imagine closing off the channel that way between mainland Massachusetts and Martha's Vineyard? The stakes were fish traps. Perhaps this is the difference between plenty and starvation.

Peter wanted to go to Surabaya - according to him, so that we could do final shopping before heading to Singapore, and to top off on fuel if he could find any. There are no yacht havens in Indonesia, with the exception of Bali, sort-of, and supposedly Batam, just outside of Singapore. But this was not-nice. Surabaya, on the east coast of Java, is a lousy anchorage - deep, dirty (it's the second largest city in Indonesia, so no wonder, I guess), and the weather wasn’t so great. We took "NED KELLY's" dinghy to town - about a mile from the anchorage, and tied it to a tug boat in the ferry harbor - not so bad going, but dreadful coming back against wind and current - we all wanted to disinfect ourselves when we got home. Indonesians have again irritated us. We wanted to go to the modern shopping mall in Surabaya, and our LONELY PLANET guide gave us good directions and costs to get there (about 5,000 to 6,000 rupiahs). The 'becak' drivers wanted 20,000 rupiahs. The taxi drivers bargained down to about 10,000 - we finally insisted on a real taxi, on the meter. 6,000 rp. Same thing coming back - we got into the taxi, told him where we were going, he said 10,000 rupiahs. We said no, the meter. It was 5,000 rupiahs. This isn't smart - this is ridiculous - they have a jackpot mentality - the big score or nothing. A lot of the taxi drivers lease the cabs, so off-meter driving is money right in their pocket with no skim, yet they would forgo that to score big. I wonder if that is what is wrong with Indonesia?

The shopping mall was as glitzy as any in the States - and a great deal of the stores were no different than in the U.S. - Levi's, Osh Kosh B'gosh, Wendy's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, MacDonald's, Texas Fried Chicken, California Fried Chicken, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, etc., etc. Once in a while there's a uniquely Indonesian store, but one is so anesthetized by the similarities to a Stateside mall that it is frequently bypassed at first. I never enjoyed shopping when we were in the States, so it's hard to find much pleasure in it now. But we got some good food and stuff, and saw a bit of Surabaya, though not enough. Surabaya was probably worth more than a day's stopover, but with no facilities for yachts and their dinghies, and not enough time left, we had to get going the next morning. It was a three day passage to the next anchorage, so early the next morning Peter took our jerry jugs and went into town to get more diesel and we hauled anchor about 9 am and headed out. Naturally the weather turned against us, blowing like stink right on the nose as we went out the channel, getting out of large ships' ways, motoring hard. By the time we finally got to the fairway buoy five or six hours later, I was exhausted and not looking forward to spending the night navigating away from there and watching out for all the ships coming in and out of the harbor. NED KELLY came through for us, finding an anchorage behind the little tiny pilot station island, where we all sat in the 'Melon's cockpit watching freighter after freighter going in and coming out of the harbor - a narrow channel, we would have had to be on our toes as a ship came by. When we left the next morning we were refreshed and ready for our passage to Karimun Jawa islands.

Three days later we arrived at the group of islands called Karimun Jawa, having motored almost the entire distance. We anchored sort-of near the only town in the islands, but quite a ways off because the shores are really coral-bound. We had to anchor in 60 feet of water - it's either that or five feet of water over masses of coral. Good thing we have an electric windlass. We ladies did laundry, Peter and Phil went into the town and got some more diesel, and the next day we set sail again. A shame that we were now in a hurry to get to Batam before our visas and cruising permit ran out, because this group of islands looked very interesting - under different circumstances we could probably have spent a week or more here. We pressed on, sailing for three days to Belitung Island. We anchored on the northeastern side of Belitung, tiptoeing in with my calling out depths to Peter as he took minute-by-minute fixes on the GPS to give me course corrections. Visibility was so bad from the brush fire smoke that we had absolutely no visual cues to get us to an anchorage until we were close onto it. But once settled, it was a lovely anchorage - in the Caribbean its exposed position would have meant an uncomfortable night, but here in Indonesia the anchorage was perfectly calm. We took a layday the next day and snorkeled around the little island we were anchored off - not great coral, but very interesting. More interesting was the debris on the island - the locals are apparently eating a lot of mollusks we never thought were edible, like spider conchs - there were hundreds of cracked shells littering the tiny island.

Now down to the last few days on our visas, the next day we set off for the last leg of our cruise of Indonesia. In order to cross the shipping channel Peter chose a course that would bring us across it at its narrowest part. With no wind we were motoring, and with all the shipping in the area (Singapore is supposedly the world's second or third busiest seaport) we couldn't let our guard down for a minute. It was nice having NED KELLY along with us, because it meant another two sets of eyes on lookout. This was the most eventful day of the trip. First, Peter spotted a 50-gallon drum floating, so went over to check it out. Three-quarters awash but turned over so that the opening was on the bottom and thus no more water could get in, it was a hazard to small boats. We spent a half hour and broke our boat hook in sinking it (one time when it would have been helpful to have a gun on board to punch a hole into the drum to sink it). A few hours later, the engine blew out a puff of black smoke and then just stopped. Not good, in the middle of the shipping channel, visibility less than half a mile, roiling around in the blessedly tiny chop. We called to NED KELLY to tell them we had a problem, so they idled around us. Looking over the side, Peter could see a line trailing from under the boat, so he put on his mask and fins and went over the side, expecting to cut off a piece of line. What we had picked up was a big chunk of fishing net in a big ball around the prop - we were lucky that none of it had caught in the prop shaft to distort it. A few minutes wielding a sharp knife and a huge pile of net was off the prop and on the stern of the boat. Lots of gooseneck barnacles growing on the net, who knows how long it had been floating waiting to catch an unwary propeller. Peter chopped it up into small bits and threw it back overboard. We were lucky that it was broad daylight and very calm because this would have been much more frightening had it happened in the dark. And all the time we can see big ships going by in the fog.

We made it to our selected anchorage just at dark - we could see lots of lights in front of us, but there was no way of knowing what we were looking at. NED KELLY came into the anchorage about ½ hour after us on GPS coordinates alone until they could pick up our strobe - again, the smoke was so thick that they had to get rather close (less than half a mile) before seeing the strobe, which should have been visible for three to five miles. Oh, this smoke thing was really getting to us.

The next morning we could see that the lights were again fish traps - but the smoke was so thick that there were sometimes four, sometimes five, and once there were six visible. We were now anxious to get to Batam so we pressed on, leaving early the next morning to get to Nongsa Point shortly after noon on November 3. This close to Singapore and the duty-free island of Batam, the ship traffic was terribly busy, and once a tug towing a barge cut across our bow, looking, it turned out, for a channel marker it had apparently lost sight of in the smoke haze. By the time we got into the marina we were so glad to be out of the traffic that we just fell apart. When we checked in, we were told that because we had just two days left on our visa we would have to go to Singapore the next day to clear out of Indonesia and check back in, thereby getting another 60 days on a new visa. This meant taking a bus at 7:20 in the morning to the ferry terminal, a 45-minute ferry ride, and then almost an hour by bus and rapid transit train into Singapore. Singapore is a lovely city - clean, modern, amenable. I was surprised at how small a city/state Singapore is - less than 3 million population, and less densely populated than New York City or San Francisco - about the same population density as Boston and Chicago - and it's an independent republic! Cheeky, these Singaporeans. And one brochure we have states that Singapore is the busiest port in the world. Wow!

In general, this second leg just added to our disappointment with Indonesia. The children in town are just as persistent beggars as we've found most other places. For what is supposed to be an upscale resort island, the grocery stores have a terrible selection and nothing very good. We are in a lovely marina, and it's cheap (less than US $8 a day with metered water and electricity), but as with most places in Indonesia, there's a kicker. Everything is extra - if we want to go into town to do some shopping we have to use the marina van at S$6.00 per person for three hours rather than our being able to hire a local taxi at $5 for the day, (11 of us went, which is too many people and packages - made for an exhausting and terribly uncomfortable trip). The local seafood restaurant will send a van to pick us up for free, but the marina won't allow them to come onto their premises - the marina will take us to the restaurant for S$4.00 per person (which, for two people is about the price of a plate of grilled shrimp) - and it goes on. So we, and most other people around, are getting irritated. The marina is lovely, though it will be most uncomfortable during the NE Monsoon since it is open to the North and the swell. It's inconvenient to anything on the island, and Singapore is an hour and a half by ferry and train, and S$25.00 to get there. As one fellow said, this is the time to be visiting Southeast Asia - they are having such financial problems that our dollar is very strong against their currencies. We assume that is why the marina on Batam, part of Indonesia, charges us in $S (Singapore dollars), which has remained stable. I don't blame them for charging in Singapore dollars, but I resent being nickeled and dimed to death for everything else. So we'll go into Singapore for three days, stay in a hotel to get everything done, and then be out of here and on our way north to Malaysia and Thailand.

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