Banda to Saumlaki

Saumlaki from really far away. The wind is blocked a bit
where we are. There are some really big Catholic churches.

Before we left for Saumlaki, Matt showed me the various wind prediction models. Two of the 'base' models were fairly consistent with strong winds of 25 to 30 knots. Another model called Predict Wind, which has been pretty accurate in a lot of cases recently, showed much more moderate winds. We decided to leave regardless, because the forecasts continued in a similar vein for at least a week and we needed to start heading towards Australia. At least all of the models showed a deep downwind sail, which would make strong winds less of an issue.

Mark and Conrad with Mr. Marens

As it turned out, the base models were much more accurate but all the models got the wind direction wrong. What started as a nice leisurely downwind sail, turned into a squall with gusts of 40 knots on the beam. Even with a triple-reefed mainsail and reefed headsail, we often saw12 knots of boat speed going down the waves. That's always 'exciting.'  After a couple months of motoring around Indonesia, it was a little too much excitement for me.

 

The squall passed but the winds stayed and we had 30 knots pretty consistently, still on the beam. We were making good time (averaging in the high 8 knots) but it was uncomfortable and there was lots of spray over the side. After an unrestful night with lots of banging and slamming, the wind finally turned more downwind and moderated the next day.

 

We were able to make the 240 miles with just one overnight, which was good. When we arrived and we were ready to relax, the fridge pump decided to stop working. So Matt got to replace it. That evening, we got a nice freshwater rinse, even it did come with some pretty strong gusts- but that at least proved the holding was good.  Another boat that had been here for awhile told us not to let the boys swim because 'like 5 people [had] been eaten by crocs recently.'

Mr. Marens's mother has a store that sells fresh baked goods.

We checked out of Saumlaki, which took all day. The length of time spent with, searching for, and waiting for officialdom might have set a record for us. They do not process a lot of private yachts here. Our new friend Mr. Marens, who we randomly encountered on the street, decided he had nothing better to do than practice his English on a bunch of foreigners and spent several hours going around with us to the various offices and even took us to his Mom's store for an afternoon snack.

We have a weather window of sorts to head to Darwin and will head out today. A couple other boats left yesterday. It's a bit of a roll of the dice to predict speeds, safe winds and routes to arrive safely AND within business hours to avoid hefty 'Border Force' overtime charges upon checking in!

Banda Islands

Indonesian cane sugar. Don't chip a tooth.

The sugar here in Indonesia, at least what we could find in Sorong, has huge crystals. Each individual grain is about 4 or 5 (maybe more) times as big as the 'granulated' sugar you find in the States. If Matt's not careful to stir his coffee for an extra long time, it sits in the bottom of his cup until after he's finished drinking it. The crystals refused to dissolve both in cookie dough and whipped cream, making a delightful (or annoying, depending on your taste) crunching when eaten.

A view of Gunung Api Banda from Fort Belgica

You hardly ever think about sugar-type preferences, but they come up when you travel to the places we've been in lately. In The Solomons and Papua New Guinea, where sugar was relatively expensive, villagers were happy to trade woodcarvings and fresh produce for it but usually only wanted white sugar. They had no interest in the widely-available raw sugar (light brownish in color).  And while raw sugar was easy to find, proper brown sugar was almost non-existant in some places (say goodbye to your tollhouse cookies and prepare for boring oatmeal!).

Mark running laps around Fort Belgica for fun
(that's what being cooped up will do to you)

We have been enjoying the sights here in Banda as we wait for favorable weather and winds to hop to Saumlaki (to check out of the country) and then Darwin. The area is rich with history about nutmeg and awful colonial Dutch people. It's hard to believe that the real estate here was once the most valuable in the whole world and that nutmeg was worth more than gold, ounce for ounce. So the Dutch trade of Manhattan for an island full of nutmeg made sense at the time.

There's Gunung Api Banda again, this time from Fort Nassau.

Kids blowing bubbles on Api Banda with plant stems.
Who needs a plastic bubble kit?

One of the friendly residents of Banda
Neira, fixing his bicycle.

Conrad asked me whether this flower was a dandelion. The kid has a Rain Man-like knowledge of sea life and spiders, but the most noticeable weed in the U.S. Midwest? Nope.

Not a dandelion.

There is a low pressure system building near Darwin, so we'll wait to see what happens with it before we start heading down south. The anchorage here near Banda Neira is pleasant, though we could do without the thunderstorms and strong gusts that seem to descend each evening. The tension during these lightning-filled events is heightened by the poor holding of the coral rubble that makes up the bottom here.

Misool: Macro Heaven

<Deep Voice>: I'm Bat-worm.

Our friend Lisa, whom we first dove with in Hawaii years ago and is now running an dive operation in The Solomons, calls divers who only want to look for nudibranchs, 'Nudi-Nuts'. I don't know if we qualify as Nudi-Nuts, but the little critters are fascinating. Matt got some good shots in Misool, the southern part of Raja Ampat.

 

We don't have the Pacific creature identification books or the attention span to identify all these guys (and by 'we', I mean me). But our friends on Field Trip have said many of these are in the Field Book, but listed as 'undetermined' or 'unidentified' anyway. Taxonomic considerations notwithstanding, I could look at these guys all day. They seemingly have a lot of personality for creatures without a face. Misool is definitely rife with the small stuff and the coral is pretty nice too.

 

We saw some other stuff too. Hope I'm not making your head spin with all these technical terms.

Bazillions (yes, a real number) of shrimp in this coral.

Blue dragon in there

You got shrimp on your face, you're a big disgrace

We have left Field Trip for now as we head towards Darwin. We're currently in the Banda Islands. We actually got to sail for a bit, which is a rare treat in Indonesia this time of year.

What Sorong with you?

Rawr

Insert collective groan here. Nope, not hitting the bottle early, though as they say 'It's 5 o'clock somewhere.' Just a little slap-happy waiting around in Sorong for our visas to be ready. Immigration opens again on the Thursday after New Year's, so today should be the Big Day. Unless it isn't (because it's Indonesia and you never know).

4 boatloads of kids at Sapta Ratna Pagoda

As we hear about the subzero temperatures in Chicago and elsewhere around the U.S., we're trying hard to appreciate the blistering, foot scalding Indonesian sun. But you know it's hot when the locals complain that it's hot. This is in a place with a perpetual summer that hardly ever gets below 80 °F (26 °C), yet the Department Stores are filled with jeans, sweaters and hoodies.

Sapta Ratna Pagoda

This time of year especially, I feel the distance of family and friends that we have left on the other side of the world. As we start our sixth year of cruising, we're miles away from land life in the States, both literally and figuratively.

Goat on Doom Island

I've written before how routine errands are a much bigger deal than on land. Even in a place like Sorong, which is one of the biggest cities we have been in over the past year and has relatively convenient stores, there have been challenges. Diesel is inexpensive because it is subsidized by the government but generally foreigners are not allowed to buy it directly. So you have take your chances with a local middleman, which can be a Russian roulette of dirty fuel and usually involves hauling jerry jugs across the anchorage in multiple trips. This last time, we took a special trip to Waisai to get fuel at the marina. We enjoyed the trip, but in a boat it involved a couple extra days of motoring.

One of the reasons we have decided to go to Darwin to fix the bent propeller strut (and possibly shaft) is the difficulty of bringing in parts. The bureaucracy involved with importing parts means you're risking your package in Customs purgatory indefinitely, paying 30% tax, or paying out the ears to a local agent. Although Australia is far from a bureaucracy-free Shangri-La, Indonesia makes it seem so.

Indonesia, more than any other country we have visited so far, seems foreign. Most of the other dozens of countries we have visited have had a familiarity for us--a language that we had experience with, a majority Christian culture. From the local perspective, we stick out like a sore thumb. A Caucasian guy with an Asian wife and half-Asian kids--they don't know what to make of us. When I'm on my own, people assume I speak Indonesian and yet they think I look out of place too, so I'm not exempted from the selfie requests from locals.

We have been reveling in the new sights, sounds and tastes. People are extremely friendly. But we certainly don't feel like we belong here. These new experiences are what we sought when we went cruising, but they are also what make us seem far away from our former lives.

Not wanting to burn too much of the hard-gotten diesel we had just purchased, we stuck around the Sorong area around New Year's to wait for our visa renewal, making one side trip to nearby Crocodile Island to desalinate water in a slightly cleaner place (we got to see dugongs there). We have also made some side treks to the limited local sights, including Sapta Ratna Pagoda and Doom Island.

Church at the top of the hill. Stainless steel
seems to be the accent material of choice,
including the cross.

No cars on Doom but lots of motorbikes
and passenger bicycles for hire

Local cemetery

The mosque.

A spontaneous drum parade

Of course we joined the parade

 

Although appropriate for the time of year, this
Santa art seems permanent