North to Nongsa

Much as I have always hated retracting a route it seems we're getting a lot of it in South East Asia. At least this run from Belitung back up to Nongsa is a nice sail. We departed yesterday about 0830 and should have a 170nm day behind us even with a few hours of 3-5 knt light air sailing. Most of it has been wing on wing moving very nicely, 8.75 knt the highest I have seen on the trusty speedo.

Scott comes on deck

So we're sailing dead down with the Hydrovane steering fairly well and a 2-4' "swell" behind us in about 15 knts of wind. The boat has always moved very well in these conditions, right now we're doing 7.5 knots, but that means the Kiss wind generator doesn't have enough relative wind to be effective so I'll have to generate some amps this morning.

A little basic navigation

We may just head right on through to Nongsa, we may stop somewhere for a night. Right now we're approaching the equator one more time and conditions are very comfortable, why stop?

Whadda we do with this stuff?

Oh yeah, the lower end drive unit of our dinghy outboard seems to have shelled out. Hopefully we can get that fixed around Nongsa but at least we won't have to deal with it in Cocos-Keeling.

Love to all,
Bill, Janet and Scott

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Belitung and a Change in Plans

The bash to Belitung finally ended, as all bashes do, and we anchored at the initial Indonesia Cruising Rally anchorage we used two years ago. The hook was down at about 0100 on the 14th. We were very, very tired puppies. Since then, after getting some decent sleep, we've had a great time. Part of  that was due to socializing with Tom and Suzie from S/V Priscilla and a lot of it was due to Harun Cahyadi, an Indonesian businessman here in Belitung who is a great guy.

Harun Cahyadi flanked by Tom and Suzie of Priscilla

We had been put in touch with Mr. Cahyadi by other cruising friends who had met him and made use of his services as a customs agent in Belitung.  The morning after arrival we moved over to anchor near Priscilla off Harun's beach about a mile east of the rally anchorage and got caught up with Tom and Suzie.

Morning market scenes from Belitung

We all then went ashore to meet Harun and get started with the port documents. To consider Harun as just a customs/port agent would be a big mistake. He and his family are Chinese business people who have been here  three generations and own a sand and gravel mining business, hardware stores, machine shops, barges, tug boats, an oxygen supply business and a lot of land with some of the most beautiful  beaches you will find anywhere. They're interested in developing the tourist industry in Belitung and yacht services are included in that interest. This man speaks excellent English (as well as Bahasa Indonesian, German and three Chinese dialects), was educated in Germany and beyond all that is just a very nice and friendly guy who wants to be of help and wants to learn what yachties desire in the way of services. He also proved to be a very efficient agent.

Beaches at Belitung

So Tom, Suzie and us spent most of our time ashore with Harun and his family. We went to markets and restaurants and bakeries (oh yes, they own the main bakery in town) and we hung around their beautiful pool with the family. Today we went out to the big lighthouse offshore of the NW corner of the island by boat with his friends and family and climbed the 230 foot steel light house built in 1882 and still in use. We've had a great time with them and it has been one of the cultural highlights of this entire voyage. Any yacht traveling to Belitung, one of our favorite places, should  deal with Harun Cahyadi for any services they might require.

So we've been in Belitung four nights and tomorrow morning we head back north to Nongsa Point Marina. The SE trades have been blowing unabated and we anticipate a nice sail up as opposed to the nasty motor trip down. The big change is that we are not going to do the Indian Ocean passage, not this year at least. Janet is very unhappy about the idea and I don't want to her to do a trip she's so dreading. We've adopted plan "B", again.

Lighthouse view

Since we didn't do the Myanmar trip we'd planned earlier in the voyage due to visa hang ups we're going to do it later this month after we get settled back in at Nongsa Point. We now have our visas and we'll see that Scott gets one and, probably about the 30th, we'll fly from Singapore up to Rangoon (now Yangoon) in Burma (now Myanmar) and spend about a week traveling around. Yachtie friends who's judgment we trust have raved about their trips to Burma so we can't resist one more chance to go.

A little of Harun's hospitality

After that the questions are open. Yes, we go home, but where do we decide to leave the boat? When do we intend to come back? Where will we go next, etc, etc??? I have no answers to those questions yet but I will say we've always enjoyed Rebak in Langkawi, Malaysia and it would not be hard to go back.

We all loved the lime marinated calimari

Thanks for following the blog. We'll upload photos from all these events from Nongsa Point when we get there.

Love to all,
Bill, Janet  and Scott
S/V Airstream

The Bash Continues

The day started out with light conditions but winds and seas still on the nose. The day went fairly well until about 1500 when things really started to get choppy. We ducked behind the last few islands before our planned destination and came in the back door to our anchorage at Kentar Island.

Eyeball navigation in these waters.

This is well protected and we're looking forward to a quiet night before continuing on directly to Belitung starting tomorrow morning. It will be 230 nm miles almost certainly motoring directly to weather. We just hope for the best conditions and we'll get there eventually. It's my hope this may be the last windward bash until coming back up the west coast of North America. We'll see!

Many fish traps off Kentar

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Bashing South to Belitung

We left Nongsa Point at 0700 and had a motor directly down the channel between Batam and Bintin about fifty miles to a very nice anchorage in the channel between the islands of Kepik and Mantang. Nice Muslim village on Mantang and we went ashore and explored. Everyone was very friendly and Janet, as usual, was a star with the kids and the girls.

5'10" blond ladies are pretty exotic here.

At anchor in the Kepik Channel

 

 

The village Mosque

 

 

 

Main Street

Wooden boat building is NOT a lost art in Indonesia

Ceramic tile siding, steel roof

It's a nice cool evening (by our standards) now and there's enough breeze to be very comfortable.

Departing for a nights fishing

Tomorrow we plan on another motor job to Kentar Island which is supposed to be a lovely anchorage and then it'll be a two day trip on to Belitung. Hopefully we'll be able to sail most of that in relatively open waters.

Please stay tuned.

Bill, Janet and Scott

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