Waterfalls and Spices
07/03/2020 Beautiful waterfall anchorage, West Papua, Indonesia
We made it. Last night turned pretty ugly after about 1am when the clouds came over, blocking out the moon. The wind picked up as well so I rolled the genoa in a little bit even though it never got over 22 kts. The rain came down in sheets and absolutely soaked the boat. The cockpit became a swimming pool and every cushion on the boat is now soaked through with everything else feeling wet.
When we arrived, the bay was looking pretty nasty with the swell rolling in from last night’s wind. We drove the boat over to a known anchorage spot where we could clearly see the waves breaking against the walls. This would not do. We then drove around a bit before spotting a boat that was, according to the charts anyway, parked on the mountain. We radioed them to see if they were in fact still in water, and how they got in there. They said you could come in if your boat’s draft is less than 1.5m. Check. We ventured over to ‘the entrance’ to the mountain lagoon and could clearly see the reef that we needed to drive over to get in there. It was hectic. The waves were breaking over most of it with a tiny bit on the Southern end that looked a bit deeper than the rest. We held our breath as we skirted over the 1.3m deep reef while ensuring the bommies went between the hulls.
It was a tense 10 minutes, but now that we’re inside we are being treated to an absolutely gorgeous protected lagoon surrounded by thick green jungle that is making all sorts of wonderful sounds.
08/03/2020 Beautiful waterfall anchorage, West Papua, Indonesia
Today was my birthday. Yay for me. I made it through another year. The weather didn’t care much about that though, giving me a complete white-out and rain as a present. It wasn’t all depressing though. We had dinner with Family Circus and a new boat Storyteller. They have an 8 yr old onboard, so the kids were also happy about that. It was a delicious meal and I had sticky date pudding for a cake. Yuuum!
09/03/2020 Beautiful waterfall anchorage, West Papua, Indonesia
We took an awesome dinghy tour today along the coast. The anchorage we are at is renowned for it’s amazing waterfall. We didn’t get to see it coming in as the clouds and rain covered it up, but today we had sunny skies and clear weather. The waterfall looked incredible and was super powerful, no doubt helped by all the rain over the last couple of days. It came shooting out of the jungle like a gigantic burst water pipe. We got up nice and close and grabbed a couple of pictures with the GoPro. Chris also got his drone out and took some footage of all of us from the air.
We headed back towards the boat and ran into Storyteller who told us that they saw a small crocodile up the other end of the lagoon. We decided to head up there to have a look, as you do. We didn’t see a crocodile, but we did almost run into a cus cus hanging in a tree just above water level. We were only a couple of metres away when my eyes focused on it, before we ran straight into it. We saw captive cus cus’ in PNG where they kept them as ‘pets’, so it was pretty cool to see one in the wild on our own just by chance. It’s a shame we startled it as it probably would’ve sat there in the lower branches for a while for us to take photos. Instead it ran up the tree where we could only see it from underneath.
On the way back we stopped at a nice little reef to go for a snorkel while Chris did some spear fishing. I would’ve gone with him, but my spear is in disrepair after it was left out in the sun. The UV destroyed the rubber in days. The snorkelling wasn’t all that good because the visibility was terrible, but it was nice to get in the water to cool off. Chris caught a fish and gave it to me to take back to the dinghy, since I was there watching him. Of course the fish played dead until about 20 seconds into the journey when it came back to life and wriggled like mad, scaring the hell out of me. Of course I wasn’t expecting it, so I dropped it and it swam away, half dead with a hole through it. Damn it. Sorry Chris! Sorry Fish!
11/03/2020 Kaimana, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
We left the waterfall anchorage yesterday for the overnight passage to Kaimana where we can do some provisioning and get some much needed internet.
We wanted to leave early, around 8am, so we could sail and not worry about going slow. But of course when we woke up and got ready, the tide was low as and there were rocks sticking out of the water everywhere they shouldn’t. I waited for 2 hours before jumping in the dinghy and driving over to the shallow parts to see how much clearance there was. It was looking pretty close to 1m at the shallowest point. Good, but not great. We decided to leave half an hour later and held our breaths as we drove over the shallow reefs. No worries. We had tens of centimetres of clearance.
When we got out from behind the all the cliffs the wind was blowing at 15-20 kts in the perfect direction. We were hooning along at close to 7 kts with the current. Yep, we had current in our favour as well! Unbelievable I know. After a couple of hours the wind was trending upwards and getting into the low 20’s which was nice, but it was also shifting so that meant our main and genoa were fighting for the wind. I decided to put the main away and just use the genoa since it is just easier. The main sucks. I undid the preventer, but it was getting stuck so I had to jig it a little in an awkward position. It finally released just before a 25kt gust and the line ripped my hand through the cleat catching my skin between my thumb and forefinger taking a bunch of it off. About time too, as all my previous wounds are almost fully healed.
I noticed too that one of the battons in the main was sticking out past the mast. Well, not the batton, but the holder that screws into the car that slides up and down the mast track. That can’t be good. When I got the main down I had a good look and could see that the car had actually broken in half. We had one break on us when we first bought the boat and when I ordered a replacement I remember briefly thinking that I should order a couple more as spares. Well I didn’t, and now I don’t know where the hell I’m going to get another one. You can’t get anything here in Indonesia. I’ll have to order it in from overseas. I’ll just have to add it to the list of other things I’ve been procrastinating on buying.
As night approached we were coming up to a notoriously tricky channel of which the cruising guide says to not traverse at night because the charts are so inaccurate and the current can be a pain. Dave from Storyteller also said that he wouldn’t try it at night, but the weather had been great, the moon was almost full, we had satellite images for the area and we timed it perfectly with the tide Dave told us to be there for.
It turns out Dave may have been wrong about the tides, or probably more likely I misheard him. Because when we hit the channel the tide was running 3.5 kts against us and the swell that was coming with us. When you have tide and swell meeting each other like that you get these weird standing waves that appear to stand still then break violently on themselves. The swell wasn’t all that big, probably less than a metre so they didn’t really pose a risk to us, but it sure was a bumpy ride through the channel. And because we were only moving at 1-2 kts it took forever.
This morning Vanja woke me at around 5am with the wind up at 30 kts pushing the boat off course. She needed both engines to keep us on track and because the starboard engine randomly won’t start, she needed my help to take the hammer to it while she turned the key. Once we got it going she put us back on track and I went back to bed.
We arrived at 7:30 and had a few goes at anchoring with the anchor not wanting to grab in the little harbour. I finally got it to grab on the 3rd try and we settled in for a bit of rest. At about 10:30 we woke to the anchor alarm going off when a 25 kt squall was pushing us across the harbour almost like our anchor wasn’t even in the water. What the hell?! I pulled the anchor up and immediately knew what the problem was. It had about a gazillion plastic bags wrapped around it along with a huge wheat sack full of mud sitting on the anchor. These anchors are designed to sit tight in a lot of different types of seabeds, but I don’t think a seabed of rubbish was ever tested until now. Family Circus had arrived while we were resting and they were anchored quite a bit further out, so I cleaned off our anchor and headed out to where they were. It is much cleaner out here.
Vanja and I went to town a little later and parked the dinghy in an absolutely stinking garbage dump of a beach. There were a couple of nice kids around who said hello and giggled at us with big smiles. I asked them if we could tie the dinghy up here and they eagerly said yes. We hopped on a couple of mopeds and headed to the market.
We are clearly back off the main tourist drag as we gathered a lot of attention from the locals, starring in many a selfie along the way along with lots of hand shakes and smiles. The market was very nice and clean and we managed to get almost everything we came for, except for apples. After we finished the shopping we treated ourselves to some lunch at one of the local holes in the wall. At first the waiter was a bit shy and nervous, but our bumbling attempts at ordering in Indonesian broke the ice and by the end she was wanting a selfie as much as everyone else. The food was delicious too!
Back at the boat we went through the painful task of cleaning all the fruit and veg and packing them away for maximum shelf life. Chris popped around after that and we went on the hunt for fuel. We tried the dock where a liveaboard cruiser was filling up, and got a price of 14,000 IDR per litre. Woah, that’s 50% more than everywhere else we’ve been. We then tried a couple of local servos, but none of them seemed to sell diesel. Oh well, we’ll try again in the morning.
12/03/2020 Kaimana, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
Chris was up and out early this morning looking for fuel. He went to the other servo in town and chatted with the manager there who spoke a little English. He said that we could get diesel from him in our 600L worth of jerry cans for 6000 IDR per litre. That about $AU0.65 per litre. Not bad at all. It just means that we’ll be doing a lot of heavy lifting.
We loaded up the dinghies with our jerry cans and headed to the servo. When we arrived we took 4 cans each and dumped them at the fuel pump and Chris went looking for the manager. He found him and he said it was all good. Chris asked him if he knew any people we could hire to do the heavy lifting and the the guy sort of nodded, but then didn’t do anything about it. So we walked back to the dinghy and asked a couple of strapping young loitering men if they wanted to be paid to do some work. They eagerly agreed to the 100,000 IDR each for 4 hours.
They came with us back to the dinghies and we loaded them up with the remaining empty jerry cans and walked back to the servo. As we were crossing the road a police officer was driving past on his moped, saw us with our workers full of jerry cans, slammed on the breaks and spun around and sped off to the servo. As we walked in the manager ushered us over to his office where there was another police officer there in more casual attire. The moped driving policeman was also in there, standing almost at attention looking down his nose at us. Chris and I didn’t know what the hell was going on, so we were a little nervous. The casually dressed cop new a tiny bit of English and we managed to get out of him that he was from the port authority and wanted to see a crew list and our passports. We don’t have our passports at the moment as they are in Sorong at immigration (long boring story), so we showed him photos of them and a digital copy of our crew list. That was it. He then got a selfie with us and we left the office and went out to check on the jerry cans. Weird.
As the jerry cans were filling the workers not only carried them back to the dinghies, they seemed to multiply. By the end we had about 5 or 6 people helping carry the full cans back to the boats. It was fantastic. We just hoped the word hadn’t got out and that they were all expecting 100,000 each. Once our dinghies were full we asked the original 2 of them to come with us back to the boats to help fill the tanks from the jerry cans. 3 of them jumped in the dinghies and came with us. The 2 original with Chris and Mani with me. He was great, did all the heavy lifting and cleaned up the spilt diesel better than anyone else had ever done.
When we took them back we asked them to meet us at 3pm when the servo was reopened after lunch. They said ok and at 3pm they were ready to go to do another load of cans. This time though the manager would only sell us 80L as his tanks are empty he said. I guess we’ll be back tomorrow. When we paid the helpers they of course wanted more money even though they worked for half of the time. We agreed to pay 120,000 which the manager scoffed at thinking we paid way too much. Another fuel day done, but unfortunately it’s not over. We have to go back tomorrow and do it all again, this time with Georg’s jerry cans as well. Fuel days really wipe me out. I think it’s more the emotional toll, rather than the physical. It’s just so hard organising, negotiating, worrying about police for some reason, dealing with locals, trying to translate all day and rarely eating anything during the whole process. Having said that though it’s always an adventure.
13/03/2020 Namatote Island, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
Stops in towns are always so stressful as everyone wants to get in and out as quickly as possible. This is of course because the towns are usually loud, dirty and with nowhere to swim. Kaimana was no different, but I actually don’t mind and I think things would be a lot less stressful if we didn’t put so much pressure on ourselves to be out of there as soon as possible.
Anyway, another busy day today doing fuel, banking, supermarket and internet, but we have made it out of Kaimana alive and are poised and ready for some excitement tomorrow - whale sharks!
14/03/2020 8am Namatote Island, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
OMG, we just got back from swimming with a whale shark and a pod of dolphins. It had to be the most incredible experience I’ve ever had with wild animals! We were all a little anxious when we were getting ready at the very refreshing time of 5:30am. I was mainly anxious about getting up this early and getting everyone ready and then going to find nothing. Turns out I shoudn’t have been. Lara was nervous about swimming with the shark and being swallowed whole, accidentally. We read that somewhere and it clearly stuck in Lara’s mind. Turns out she shouldn’t have been.
We left in the dinghy around 5:50am to go talk to the nearby fishing boats (bagans), to see if they had seen any whale sharks or ikan besar (big fish). The first bagan we went to gave us the thumbs down and told us that they are at the other end of the channel. We radioed ZigZag who were talking to another bagan and they said that a shark just ran into their dinghy. Success! I jammed the throttle to full and headed over to where they were.
When we got there we jumped in and saw nothing at first as the water was a bit murky, but as we paddled closer to the fishing boat a huge mouth was coming straight towards us. We all let out a little squeal as the gentle giant swam past us. It was easily 10m long and over 1m wide and had about 30 sucker fish swimming along underneath it. The guys on the bagan were throwing in buckets of little fish, sardines maybe, and the shark was coming right up and holding it’s mouth open like a pet dog. Everyone swam around it gasping in awe every time it swam past. It would come so close you would have to swim away or be whacked by it’s enormous tail. I chose being whacked most of the time, just because it was so cool to be that close to such a majestic animal in the wild.
After a few swim-bys we noticed that there was a fishing line trailing behind the poor thing. We asked the bagan to throw down a knife so we could cut it off. Chris grabbed it and dove down and cut it away. On closer inspection the line had cut a huge gash into it’s left fin, and Chris couldn’t get it all off having to leave a tiny bit of line still wrapped around a rotting piece of flesh. We also noted the huge slice on the back of it’s tail fin. This shark had some damage. It looked pretty happy underneath the raining pile of tiny fish, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was also the cause of all of it’s injuries.
After marvelling at the whale shark for a time we turned our attention to the dolphins who were also enjoying a free feed. They were going berserk under the water and squeaking all around us shooting up and around catching the dead fish that were floating through the water. Again, we swam around in amazement at how close we were to a wild pod of dolphins, not to mention swimming with them!
When all the kids started getting tired and bored we jumped back in the dinghy. We paid the bagan 300,000 and one of the guys on it wasn’t happy. There was another guy there, from the village, who told us that that was fine and that we should go. The consensus is that we should pay 50,000 per half hour, or bucket of fish. We asked him how many buckets he used and he said 5. We were there for about an hour and a half. So in theory, we gave him more than enough. We have found in most places though that whatever you give it’s never enough, even if you agree beforehand. Oh well. When we got back to the boat and washed the stinking fishy smell off everyone we all sat around marvelling at the photos we managed to take.
14/03/2020 Muawara Island, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
After the excitement of the whale shark subsided this morning we were visited by several long boats asking for money for anchoring where we were. If we paid every boat that came by asking for money, we would’ve gone broke 3 months ago. It’s getting really old and annoying. In PNG we sort of understood and sometimes paid, but here in Indonesia where the government actually provides some services and the people are relatively rich in comparison we can’t help but scoff. That sounds too harsh. We don’t actually scoff, but we do get annoyed. Especially since we just overpaid the bagan for the whale shark experience. Of course, we don’t have the language skills to discuss it with them so we just smile and say no and hope they don’t come back in the middle of the night and rip the boat apart.
After that we were not too keen on staying here another night even though FC and ZZ wanted to so that they could do the whale shark thing again. We decided to move on down the channel to the next anchorage at Muawara Island which is where we are now. We motored for the first couple of hours and the last 2 we got to sail nicely with a 18kt breeze directly behind us. It was a really beautiful passage through the channel with so many amazing little beaches to eye off. We also had an eagle do a few fly bys trying to grab our fishing lure we had out. I’m not sure what eagle tastes like and I don’t really want to know, so we did our best to make sure it couldn’t catch it.
When we arrived at the beautiful anchorage surrounded by 500m high cliffs we settled in for a lovely night under the stars. Unfortunately, a gazillion little tiny bugs had the same idea as us and promptly shut down our little party. We couldn’t have any lights on because if we did there would be 100 of the little shits flying all around it within a couple of minutes. Even as I sit here typing this in the dark with dark mode turned on, I am having to flick them off the screen constantly. I have dead ones all over my keyboard from accidental bugslaughter. It’s gross. Especially since I know the worst of it will be in the morning when I have to go outside and clean up all of their dead carcasses in the cockpit and around the instruments.
#### 16/03/2020 Kaimana, Triton Bay, West Papua, Indonesia
Yep, you read that right. We are back in Kaimana. This was not the plan at all, but due to some important stuff going on back home we needed to get some internet ASAP.
Our stop at Muawara Island was very nice, though it rained for most of the day yesterday. FC and ZZ showed up in the late morning just as the rains started. We were planning on going on a dinghy tour, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Instead I stayed inside in the brutal humidity and fixed our broken salt water pump. Over the last few weeks it has been playing up again, constantly tripping the breaker and then occasionally not pumping at all. I thought it was the wiring as the last time I checked it the positive wire was really corroded. I changed it out, but it didn’t change a thing. The pump just sat there silent. Yelling at it didn’t seem to do anything either.
I took it out and tried taking it apart, but I got 20% into that and decided I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and thought better of it. I’ll just use the spare fresh water pump that I have and hope it works with salt water. Not sure why it wouldn’t, but the fact that it says fresh water on the label could mean something. Anyway, after a couple of hours of cobbling together my last remaining spare plumbing parts to make the pump sit correctly I had it working. The pressure was not as good as the old pump, but I always thought it was too strong for the kitchen anyway. Now I just have to find somewhere to take the old pump to see if it can be salvaged.
Today we ditched everyone again in search of internet. It’s Monday and we have business to conduct. Well not really, but there is something we need to sort out back at home. The guide book and the cruisers grapevine states that Triton Bay Divers has internet and is cruiser friendly. We didn’t really know what to expect when we rounded the corner and into the bay, but I don’t think either of us imagined a perfect palm tree studded beach with thatched roof huts lined up along the beautiful turquoise water’s edge. The place was stunning. We also saw that Phillip was anchored here, so we all got a bit excited to see an old friend.
As soon as we finished anchoring we jumped in the dinghy to shore to see about internet, food and diving. Phillip was not answering so he was probably out on a dive himself. The manager, Lisa, was very nice and allowed us to use the internet straight away without any fees. Unfortunately it was so bad that it was almost unusable. I managed to download a couple of emails, but since we probably needed to download some files and then upload we realised pretty quickly that it was a no go from here. She said it was because the satellite service they setup 5 years ago is just not coping with the level of staff they now have. Bummer.
Anyway, after also finding out that it would cost us 40 Euros per dive, even with our own gear, and that the restaurant needed half a days notice for a meal, which meant dinner was out, we decided to just pack up and leave. We waited for Philip to come back from his dive so we could say hello and find out was his plans were before heading for Kaimana again. We had a bastard of current against us for most of the way, but we also got some wind halfway along so we could motorsail. We got in at around 8:30pm. I dropped the anchor and settled in for the night. It’s almost like we never left.
17/03/2020 En route to Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
After satisfying our internet needs and getting totally freaked out by corona virus fear mongering we decided it was time to go to Banda. The plan was to leave roughly around this time for Banda, and there is a nice weather window starting tonight which would allow us to motor, possibly motorsail the whole way without beating into the Northwesterly monsoon.
Before we left Vanja and I went to town once more to stock up on a few staples in case the whole world goes to shit while we are at sea. We bought tons more flour, rice, UHT milk and toilet paper. Thankfully Indonesia is not as worried about their toilet paper as they are back home. The supermarket was stocked to the brim with the stuff. Maybe I should fill the boat with it and head back to Australia and sell it on the black market. I’d make a killing!
We left Kaimana at around 6pm, but not before Lara and I went to shore one last time to get some takeaway from the local hole in the wall restaurant. And of course we took in our last bit of internet before going dark again. This is probably the hardest thing about this lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, once you’ve had a few days without internet it is really great to be free from the world. But if you have or need to do something that requires internet, it is a real pain in the arse.
We have been motoring into the calm wind and 1kt current for the last few ours. The water is glassy and there is no swell. It is lovely. Let’s hope these conditions continue for the next few hours for when we traverse that notorious channel Selat Adi again. If I got my tides correct we should have current with us going through the channel this time. Can’t wait for that 3 kt boost!
18/03/2020 En route to Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
I’m sure you assumed correctly. My tide calculations were incorrect and we went through the channel with a 2kt current against us. How about that? I have a feeling that tides and current are not an exact science.
We have had an absolutely gorgeous motorsail today. We have had about 5-7 kts of wind 80° off our port side for most of the day. We’ve had the headsail out for most of it and we’ve been moving along in perfect calm conditions. The water hasn’t had a ripple on it all day and there is absolutely no swell. It’s like driving along a freeway, albeit at the pace of a snail.
I don’t know whether it’s due to all the articles we read about the COVID-19 virus, but both Vanja and Jake are coming down with something, and we think it’s probably that. Jake has these huge dark circles under his eyes and Vanja might have the start of a fever. We can’t tell for sure as our thermometer isn’t working, but she is feeling pretty warm. I guess it’s only a matter of time before we get it, like everyone else. I’m still not all that concerned as from what I’ve read we are in the least risk category. But there is that nagging worry at the back of my mind telling me that we should be near good health care just in case. We’re about 4 days sail to Ambon, a relatively big city which does have a hospital, so that’s not too bad if need be. We can always call on the insurance company for evacuation if it comes to that as well.
Anyway, not much else has been going on. We did have a huge dragonfly confuse us for the moon tonight. It flew into the cockpit when we had the light and scared the shit out of everyone. It was absolutely gigantic! Probably as long as my foot. When Lara saw it she screamed so loud I jumped. A real blood curdling scream too, like she just saw her worst nightmare, which it probably was. I don’t know why she’s so scared of insects, but she is. I spent 10 minutes trying to get the thing out of the cockpit without hurting it or myself. The problem was that it just wanted to move towards the light and the only light in the area was coming from inside of our boat. I devised a cunning plan to turn all the lights off in the boat then go outside with the torch, shine it straight at the thing, then switch it off when it flew towards me. Then it could get it’s bearings with the night sky and go somewhere else. It worked like a charm.