Sunday 29th 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... |
