Return to Earth

We're moored off Gili Trawangen Island just a couple miles west of Gili Air. It's very exposed and it's been windy the last couple days but the moorings seem to be high quality and we haven't gotten moved anywhere unplanned. We left Gili Air after another boat got blown down with their mooring onto us. We managed to disengage without damage but it was one more hint it was time to move.

Janet is out doing a morning dive, something my broken ear drum will not yet allow. I had a nurse look at it yesterday and he said it's healing but, "no diving" for some vague time to come. We'll see.

I've reconsidered my initial impression of Gili Trawangen as 'ticky-tacky". That element exists but there are also many nice places along the beach with lovely views of the surrounding islands, a very friendly and laid back atmosphere, fast wireless internet, and a wide variety of good food. The tourist bustle isn't too bad and the horse carts are still the only method of transportation other than foot or boat. All in all it's a really amazing contrast from life a very few miles away on the coast of Sumbawa or the mountains of Lomboc. We've been socializing with Roger and Karli of LaPalapa the past few days, Stu and Sandy on Heart Song III left for Bali, and now Scot Free has arrived with Ian and Sana. I can see another little event for tonight but then I believe, come tomorrow morning, we'll depart for the sixty mile sail down to Serangan anchorage on Bali. So this is a good transition back into the more developed world we'll find in Bali.

We have expectations for Bali. We're really not into the twenty something bar scene but I know there's far, far more than that to Bali. We may get a car and do some serious land travel. We may stick around until the rally catches up to us. Just depends on what we think of Bali.

It should be a little easier to keep up with this blog for awhile so the next update should be from Bali.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream

Laid Back in Lomboc

We've been in Lomboc several days now. It's easy to lose track of time out here and I'd have to look at the log book to know if it's been four days or six days, etc. The voyage across the north coast of Sumbawa was lovely and without difficulty except for a lack of wind. We did a lot of motoring. Whenever we'd get to leeward of a channel or low terrain the SE trades would break through and we'd have a lovely sail for a few hours but then these really high volcanic peaks would obstruct and we'd be back to the engine.

And we're not really anchored at Lomboc at all. We're off Gili Air, one of the Gili Islands just a few miles NW of Lomboc and actually offering better anchorages and services for boats than most of Lomboc. Gili Air is only a couple miles around but tourists from Bali take "fast boats" here to see what the real world of Indonesia is all about. Actually what they see is an Indonesian fishing village in the early stages of becoming a tourist beach town. There are a number of modest restaurants on the beach and some dive operations and a couple places offering tourist bungalows. Gili Trawanagan a couple miles west is more developed and known as a party island. I took the dinghy over there a couple days ago but, although there are a couple nice hotels, it was mostly ticky-tack. The local folks here at Gili Air are very nice and there are a couple small markets and, wonder of wonders, wireless internet from one of the dive operations. Some of our cruising friends, LaPalapa, Heart Song III, and Victory Cat, are here and we've been socializing with them.

Yesterday five of us took LaPalapa over to Lomboc, went ashore, got a car and driver and drove around Lomboc for most of the day. What we saw of the island was a study in contrasts and a bit of a microcosm of what we've seen so far in Indonesia. Bangsang, where we went ashore is a commercial beach where Islamic women were carrying bags of rice through the water on the their heads to load into a boat, bag by bag. The town itself is crowded and raucous and horse carts are the main form of public transport (as they are on the Gili Islands, no motor vehicles on the Gilis) but there are cars and many, many mopeds and small motor cycles. The highway over the mountains to Mataran, the capitol of Lomboc, is narrow and winds up a mountain range through dense vegetation with monkeys lining the guard rails and relaxing in the trees over the road. Mataran itself is partly modern city and partly what we've seen all along the coastal cities of Indonesia. But it's in transition and they have a big modern mall in the heart of town with about everything you'd expect to find in a big Asian city mall in the way of many electronic shops and a modern super market. And Kentucky Fried Chicken. And McDonnell's! We all ate at McDonnell's and although I could never say it was really good, I was a really fun thing to do. Not something I expected to see until Bali at least.

We went to a couple temple complexes, Pura Lingsar was interesting and lovely and Surangadi was rather sad and run down.  The country flat enough to farm was in terraced rice paddies or vegetable gardens. The architecture has changed from bamboo woven huts to mostly masonry walled small homes with tile roofs. The old Dutch colonial influence in much in evidence in older buildings and walled compounds. Although this is still very much a third world place it's much more prosperous than further east.

From a nautical viewpoint it's most interesting to see the change in water craft. The boats are still wooden double outriggers but they're larger and built to hold as many tourists as can be packed into them on a nice day. And, most striking, the old one lung gas engine has been replaced here by modern outboard engines. The Yamaha 40 outboard we saw everywhere in Polynesia is again the king of beasts. All boats are freshly and brightly painted. New boat construction is in progress on the beach in front of us. They're planking up a sixty foot launch as a write.

Tourism is the reason for this relative prosperity. Lomboc is close to Bali and just as beautiful. Bali is long discovered and Lomboc and the Gilis are getting the fallout from those who wish to see beyond the Bali scene. There's more money in evidence everywhere. There's more foreign language spoken. There's actually been some training of staff at restaurants and bars. And although there's still plenty of poverty, by our standards abject poverty, these people have a lot of hope and energy and they want a slice of what the outside world has to offer.  Actually the Gili's are a very nice place right now, whether they go really tacky or really nice will depend on things beyond my understanding. But it's very interesting to see this transition taking place.

So, probably tomorrow, we'll say goodbye to the Gilis and head over to Bali. It's about sixty miles to the anchorage at Serangan and the current should be with us most of the way. We have reports of many things from Bali, good and bad, and it's certainly on the major tourist destination list. The plan is to spend a few weeks in Bali depending on how much we like the place. We may even wait for the rally boats to catch up. But we'll certainly do some serious land travel around the island. My ear is healing up and I hope to be able to do some diving in a few weeks. We've got some regular boat jobs to do. We're slowing down for awhile and more friends should be arriving in the area gradually.

Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream

Sumbawa, Komodo and the Dragons

Sumbawa, Komodo and the Dragons
SUM-BA-WA! I love that name. Right out of an old Tarzan movie. SUMBAWA, CHEETAH! Anyway, we're five miles off the north coast of the island of Sumbawa west bound for Lomboc and Bali. Last night at our anchorage there were Asian buffalo feeding along the beach. Now its a lovely morning with 15-18 knots of southerly breeze pushing us along at 7-8 knots under 150 genoa alone with an easy following sea. It doesn't get much better than this. Janet's making up a pizza dough for dinner tonight and has the watch. It's time for me to update the blog.

Sumbawa is described in Lonely Planet as very poor, conservative and Muslim. It's also drop dead beautiful, mountainous, and geographically contorted with deep bays on the north coast. It's about 150 miles east to west and we've got about fifty miles to go to our planned anchorage tonight at Medena Island off the far northwest corner of Sumbawa. On our beam to the south, rising directly from the sea, is the 10000' massive broad based volcanic cone of Mount Tambora. This volcano used to be 13000' until 1815 when it blew up killing about everybody on Sumbawa and causing the"year without a summer". There was enough dust from the eruption in the atmosphere to significantly reduce the summer temperatures almost everywhere in the world. Now the mountain is lush and green with some subsidiary cones from more recent eruptions and there are some villages along the shore. We've seen no sigh of tourism or development of any kind since leaving Labuan Bajo a few days ago.

Labuan Bajo was the most developed place we'd seen since Kupang weeks before that. It's still a dusty, gritty, trashy, chaotic Indonesian port town but it's beautifully situated and the gateway to the Komodo Island group. Since Komodo is famous for the Komodo Dragons and since there is truly great diving and since the area is just so darn beautiful it is on the tourist map, for fairly adventurous tourists, at least. We spent a few days anchored off the beach at the Bajo-Komodo Eco Lodge. The lodge is a classic Indo-neo-colonial style building with a nice pool and eight lovely rooms, good food, cold beer and a very sweet staff. We spent the first night ashore since this years voyage began back in May and felt quite pampered and civilized.

But it was dragons and diving we were really after. The best dragon viewing is actually supposed to be on the island of Rinca just east of Komodo so that's where we went. Sure enough, many dragons seen on a little two hour nature walk guided by the park staff on Rinca. The biggest Komodo Dragons we saw were around nine feet long. Pretty darn big for a lizard! And they seemed to be most active in the morning before the full heat of the day. Janet got good photos, which we hope to be able to upload soon, and the critters themselves are as impressive in person as we had hoped. No one with us got eaten.

The diving was also very, very good, I'm told. I busted an ear drum on the first descent and had to abort the dive. My diving is over until this thing heals up, probably in a few weeks. It's the third time I've broken the left ear drum since the first time back in the service and I'm entirely too familiar with the process. It'll heal. Janet and friends had some great dives with many big fish in great visibility and wonderful coral. One pretty experienced guy said it was the best he's ever seen.

The Komodo Islands themselves are very beautiful and the beauty is of a much different character than Flores and further east. We had a couple of the most memorably beautiful anchorages we've ever enjoyed. As we've moved west wards the northern sides (the leeward sides) of these islands have become more and more treeless, more grassy and arid in appearance. The Komodos, this time of year at least, look like the channel islands off Southern California or the west coast of Mexico. They are mountainous and gorgeous but not the lush forest we expected. The whole Komodo area is like an inland sea with many small islands in protected waters and a great cruising ground. The only other yachts we saw were those of some friends more or less on the same schedule as ourselves. It's a great place but services are pretty basic and for the land based tourist, with the exception of the Eco Lodge and one other spot, it would be primitive.

So the plan is to anchor for the night at Pulau Medang, 08.08.58S, 117.22.39E, with friends on "Victory Cat" and "La Palapa" who have already arrived. We'll all get a very early start (like 0200) and head for the Gili islands off NW Lomboc. That's supposed to be real civilization! They supposedly have a "yacht club" with that wonderful convenience we haven't seen since Darwin, a "dinghy dock". We also assume they have cold Bintang and other luxuries. Depending on what we find in Lomboc, and it's supposed to be a beautiful and interesting island, we'll eventually move next island over to Bali where civilization truly lurks. Maybe even, believe it or not, free wifi!
Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream
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Chilled Out in Flores

Janet's on a day trip with friends into the interior of the island. I'm relaxing on the boat nursing a cold. It's mostly a runny nose and I think I'll be pretty much over it tomorrow when we head west again.
Flores is mountainous, volcanic and lush. We're anchored off the first tiny slice of the western world we've seen since leaving Kupang and it's a lovely spot. Outside of any river estuary or settled area the waters in this sea are the clearest, deepest blue I've ever seen. The phosphorescence at night is the most intense. This place is called Sea World Club and it's a small resort catering to foreign guests, very rustic and isolated but with good food and some idea of what foreigners expect in service. The anchorage is a lovely black sand beach with good holding and dinghy access. The staff is nice and there is some English spoken. They welcome boats and it's all comparatively civilized.

Kupang was the end of any reliable internet access for awhile and this will be sent via Sailmail and HF radio. From Kupang the fleet split again with some boats heading south to Roti and then northwest towards these islands. We decided to head northeast to Alor and the town of Kalabahi, mainly because we had heard about really good diving off Alor. Kalabahi was a much smaller and more primitive version of Kupang. What you really need can be found there, but what you want, that may be somewhere else. But as in Kupang the welcome for the Sail Indonesia boats was a little overwhelming. They really went to a great deal of work to arrange big dinners for the fleets with the regional politicos showing up. There has been lots of dancing, lots of cultural exhibits, lots of attempts being made to lure tourism to a very beautiful but very poor part of the world. As it stands only the most adventurous tourist will find their way to this part of Indonesia and they won't be greeted by much in the way of amenities.

But what we lucky boat people can see is perhaps the most interesting cruising ground in the world. From Kalabahi boats split up further. We moved to the north side of the Alor Archipelago and began day sailing westwards. We've been anchoring for nights in places where there may or may not be a village but there's always been good shelter and holding. We've had some great snorkeling and some great interaction with the local people. These islands are very steep and the villages are generally up the mountain a small distance from the sea. It's certainly a well populated area but some areas much more so than others. Often we see a village with a prominent Christian church and then another with a prominent mosque very close to each other but not quite co-located. Apparently the two groups like a little space if possible. There's very little sign of agriculture. Fishing seems to be pretty much hand to mouth. People in the interior villages live pretty much as they always have except maybe the head hunting is no longer an obvious part of the culture. Everyone, without exception, has been very sweet to us.

The indigenous vessels are classic wooden boats ranging from 200 foot long coastal freighters to dug out canoes. You may read that wooden boat building is a "lost art". Not here. Everything is wood here and some of it is beautifully done. Although you do see dugouts, usually with a couple small children paddling around, the more typical small boat is a planked hull outrigger canoe. These have a high "clipper" bow and a sweeping shear line to a very low free board. They can be lovely or crummy depending on the owner but we run into them well offshore going from some unseen place to another. They scale up from that model and it's very common to see a 40-80 foot long ferry boat with similar lines (no outriggers of course) but with a slab sided deck house built aft and a single mast forward with a very long boom. If the wind is right they may fly a sail. That would be to help out the seemingly universal engine which is a one cylinder gas powered contraption which sounds like an old John Deer tractor. Engine size is variable with the boat, maybe. Into these boats 50-100 local people pack in and head over the horizon. They have no safety gear, no radios and no navigation equipment. They have local knowledge and a lot of faith. It is common to see a couple of ferries traveling together which might be for safeties sake. I can't believe these guys don't break down once in awhile and a tow might be very handy. The most amusing boat we see is the local "hot rod". This is always a young guy with a very long, low, narrow, clipper bowed but very flat shear boat with the same one lung engine. However, it has no muffler and it is always operated at full throttle and it actually moves the boat along to maybe 20 knots. Because of the shape the bow throws impressive bow spray, especially when the operator keeps his weight shifted to one side or another to maximize the effect. The boat seems to be good for nothing except ramming around the local bay in fine style whilst making the greatest possible noise and disturbance. Not an unknown vehicular activity in our own culture.

The land equivalent of the ferry boats is the "beamo". This is a small van built by Suzuki or Mitsubishi and heavily customized for local use. They are about half the size of a US built passenger van and are covered everywhere with chrome do-dads and where there's no chrome there are decals and over the windows there are one way decals. They travel the roads as public transport. The crew consists of a doorman who is usually hanging out the side door waving down possible customers and taking money, a co-pilot who seems to do nothing but provide moral support and occupy a front seat and the beamo captain himself who drives like a maniac while honking the most imaginative horns I've every heard at every possible inspiration. The interior of the beamo consists of a wooden bench down each side of the back of the van upon which as many passengers as dare to enter are seated. But it's what's under the seats that is the heart and soul of the beamo. These are huge stereo speakers that run the full length of the seats and are operated at only one volume. You guessed it, full blast! In honor of western guests who might sign on for a passage the music is usually switched to rap played at a volume which has the passengers floating on air above the speakers for the length of the journey. There's no air conditioning. There's little ventilation. The beamo is packed full with mostly young Indonesians. It costs about 30 cents to go anywhere. It's a kick and I actually like beamos. They are so utterly without redeeming values that you just have to except them for what they are and go along with the fun. It's faster than walking, usually, and always entertaining.

Probably tomorrow the 11th we'll depart and move along the north coast of Flores towards Labuan Bajo. This small city is the capitol of western Flores and a gate way to Rinca and Komodo and the famous Komodo dragons. We'll probably anchor near Bajo-Komodo Eco Lodge for a few days. (#26 )We certainly intend to go see the dragons, which are the largest lizards in the world, but we're told dragon viewing is actually better on Rinca than in the Komodo National Park. We'll see. The diving around the islands is also supposed to be spectacular and that's a major draw. The Alor folks never got it together for the dives although we had some world class snorkeling. I'm pretty sure things will be a lot more professional around Komodo. We're traveling in loose company with several other boats which is always fun. The weather has been very consistently warm to hot in the days with a good southerly breeze and cool enough at night to sleep comfortably. We could use more wind for sailing, especially at night.

All in all this is as interesting a beautiful an area as we've ever seen, right up there with Vanuatu and with greater variety of experience possible and we've really just started the Indonesian phase of this voyage.
With a little luck we can find somewhere, sooner or later, with fast enough internet to allow us to upload photos. This is a beautiful place.
Love to all,
Bill & Janet
SV Airstream
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