Our first year cruising outside of Australian waters has included Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Some countries we sailed to and others we flew to; we even rode into one and caught a bus into another. This blog is a recap of our journey in 2015….. Thank you to all our followers. I hope you will continue to cruise with us in 2016, and that I will be able to carry on entertaining and informing you about the wonderful, exciting and sometimes bewildering places we visit.
Clearing in and out of customs, pirates, transport, phone and internet, cheap food, shopping, fruit and veg, fuel, hardware, bartering, trading and gifts, as well as some basic Indonesian words to know are covered in this post. It also includes a link to a google map of the anchorages we used which includes information about the holding and the depth of water.
We finally arrived in Batam and grabbed a berth at the Nongsa Point Marina next to fellow Aussie sailors Gary and Libby of SV Aquarius. It was nice to talk to fluent ‘Aussie’ speakers. Finally I didn’t need to think about what I wanted to say and how to say it! We also met another Aussie couple, Mick and Janice off SV Zoa. WHY DID IT TAKE US A WEEK TO CLEAR OUT OF INDONESIA?
We happily left Pontianak behind – without a backwards glance – as we begun our journey across the South China Sea. We soon arrived at Pulau Pengiki-besar… This trip was delightfully packed full of visits to villages, schools, local restaurants as well as many local visitors to our boat. We barbecued on shore and enjoyed a bit of snorkelling.
Pontianak… I promised you pirates! In this case we thankfully didn’t meet our pirates but the act of piracy that befell us went like this….
After a 24 hour, overnight sail, we arrived at Pontianak in a torrential downpour. Pontianak is about 10 mile up river and, once there, we anchored, had some dinner and fell promptly to sleep. We woke the next morning to find our newly acquired (and near new) motor had been stolen. The pirates had pinched our little putt putt and we were not happy! The day didn’t get any better…
We discovered a paradise of sapphire blue seas, palm fringed islands and white sands as well as coral gardens over run by Nemo and his mates. It was amazing and it quickly went to number one on our list of favourite places in Indonesia. This tiny archipelago of little islands is a conservation area and although its hard to say exactly what that means in Indonesia the area has certainly benefited from it. The snorkelling was amazing; by far the best we have done in Indonesia so far. Hardly any dead coral, no rubbish to swim through and clownfish by the hundreds.
A little jewel in the Java Sea! We spent six days exploring this beautiful area. White sandy beaches, uninhabited islands, coral reefs, monkeys and friendly local people. After the big city chaos of Surabaya, Bawean was just what we needed! We left Surabaya and motor-sailed, the Java sea, into head winds as we crossed to Pulau Bawean. The crossing took 13 hours…
… we started the arduous saga of extending our visas. We looked up the address for Kantor Immigrasi (the office of Immigration), caught a ferry to Surabaya and then a taxi a long way out of town (out near the airport) to the Immigration Office. Once there, we waited for about an hour until we were called to the desk, where we were told that we needed to go to another office. A couple of minutes later we were walking in the rain trying to catch another taxi. Wet, and a bit disappointed, we caught a cab to another immigration office…
We left for Indonesia, from Darwin, on Thursday 13th of November. The trip was uneventful and very pleasant. We thought we would have to motor-sail the entire way but fortunately we got a couple of really good sails in. We didn’t see another ship, or boat, once we left Darwin until we were about 25 miles from our destination, Pulau Leti. We arrived at Leti at 2330 and anchored in the dark. It was a little disconcerting heading to shore to find water shallow enough to anchor and the depth going from 1300 feet to 20 feet in a matter of seconds…