29th September - overnight passage to Karimunjawa

Sunday 29^th September

5 degrees south

110 degrees east

We arrived in Karimunjawa mid afternoon yesterday after an action-packed passage from Rass Island.

Leaving the area was a teensy bit fraught because it was pitch-black, at 3m, and we had to make sure to avoid a large and unlit oat and two big menacing bommies which we knew lurked just beneath the waves.  Captain Pete managed this well, although he found it very stressful.  I was extremely helpful, leaning over the front railings trying to see watery menaces and unable to see Anything At All…

There were hundreds – yes I know I exaggerate, but trust me, hundreds! – of small boats with blue sails coming back in to shore at sunrise.  So pretty, and, fortunately, quite visible.

We sailed all day without incident and then…it was dark, an the radar lit up as if it had been scattered with confetti.  Oil rigs a-plenty, belching fire.  We were OK with oil rigs; we could at least see them.  What made it all very difficult was the hundreds upon hundreds of small fishing boats whizzing about, way out at sea.  Most of them had lights, some extremely bright, dazzling, in fact, ruining our night vision.  Most of them behaved as if they could see us, but more than a few of them came right at 2XS like kamikaze pilots, swerving right at the last minute, or nonchalantly idled their way across right in front of our bow.  It is making my head ache just thinking about it…

I was on watch from 12-3am, and I decided to sit up on the deck for a while, to get a better look beyond the sail.  Pete, who was supposed to be sleeping deeply in the cabin, suddenly appeared at my side, saying, in bemused tones, “Couldn’t you hear that alarm??”  What alarm?  Oh, that loud beeping…and the sign blinking on the screen sign DANGEROUS TARGET???  Well no, I missed all of that…

I galvanised guiltily into action and we both stepped up to the railings to look for the Dangerous Target.  (And yes of course we both had harnesses on; we do NOT want to be Lost At Sea!)  The alarm is always a bit premature; what it was telling us about was a large container ship, not very close at all.  There were lots of large ships, coming and going, toad to the merriment of our night passage.  But while we were peering into the dark there suddenly was a dangerous target, very close, and impossible to see until we were right in the middle of it, surrounded by tall bamboo poles…we had gone right through one of those wretched fishing raft thingies…Not a happy moment.  Fortunately no damage to 2XS, but the bamboo raft…well it will have to be lashed together again to alarm and terrify cruising boats into the future.

We were very happy to see the dawn…and even happier to get into a safe little harbor off Karimunjawa, where they are full of joy at the arrival of RallyBoats.  So much so that they have put in a series of sturdy new moorings.  We are leaving 2XS on one of these, and this afternoon we are catching a ferry to mainland Java and then an 8-seater bus to Borobudor, with the lovely US family from Watermusick.  We will be gone two days but I will take my computer and camera, and if I am not asleep with my had in my dinner plate (which is possible…) will write a bit more while we are away.  And there might be LOTS of photos of...temples...

As soon as we tied up to the mooring, I leapt into the water, fully clothed – I was VERY VERY hot and needed cooling down and improving.  After that I was up for a stroll through the little town of Karimunjawa. 

I thought this was a wreck, so picturesque, but in fact it is a working boat, full of happy fishermen.

Most of the local boats, of course, are beautiful

We enjoyed our stroll though town.  One of the first things we saw was…

We know what this means...

Chairs with clothes!  And yes, they were preparing for a Gala Dinner for the Rally… There are only five boats here at the moment; the others will follow from Bali, but these five boats are way ahead of the fleet.  So we had to look like a crowd…Jan and Marian (SV Avanta), the family of five from Watermusick.  The people from the other boats were all too exhausted after playing dodgem cars through the oil rigs, container ships, fishing boats overnight.

We loved the little town.  Colourful houses

and a wonderful contraption, obviously home-made by this father to ferry his little children around.

We went back to the boat to get changed, then had a quick drink on Avanta before making our way to the pavilion area to look like A Crowd.  There was an expo as well as the dinner, with little tents full of charming young people wanting to sell us things, or to tell us about their beautiful little archipelago.  I do hope a LOT more boats come in, to make it all worth their while…

I was very taken by these children, sitting totally enraptured by a small TV screen, showing a not-very-thrilling video.  It reminded me of the early days of television in Tasmania, in the 1950s, when people would line up in Murray Street to gaze at flickering screens in the Myers windows.

The dinner was delicious and VERY spicy.  But before the dinner…speeches!!  We really have nothing but good things to say about the Indonesian people we have met thus far.  Cheerful, friendly, hospitable, loving a party… but oh deary me they do NOT know how to be brief or succinct, or even mildly entertaining, when it comes to speech-making… I don’t think it made much difference that we could barely understand a word… The majority of the people in our orange satin pavilion were local and they weren’t listening at all.  They were chatting, smoking, laughing…as the poor speakers went on and ON… There was a bit of dancing

which also just possibly might have gone on too long – or maybe we were just extra tired…

We had some nice young Indonesian students sitting with us.  They had been sent to entertain us, or to practice their English, not sure… But they took it upon themselves to translate the speeches.  “The Minister For Tourism says, Welcome to Kalimunjawa!  We hope you have a wonderful time on our beautiful islands!”  Well yes we got the gist of that but…WHY did it take 20 minutes??  And why did yet another government official have to come and say the same thing?? 

Pete was asked to give a speech on behalf of the sailors...and he did so well, in spite of his yucky cold - brief and to the point, with the odd phrase in Bahasa, which went down a treat

At about ten the speeches were over, the dancers stopped dancing and…food!  Delicious spicy food!

No foodphoto but...I do love this Bali flower...