Author: richwest3

August 1, 2022

The following are just my opinions and I’m sure Cyndi will violently disagree with them – after all, she even liked Queensland!

I’ll say to start out that I’m having a down day but maybe this is the perfect time to point out the hardships we’re experiencing in cruising Indonesia.

Officialdom run amuck!

We have a six month visa, but no, not really. It turns out we have two month visas that need to be renewed every two months for a total of six months. Each renewal takes about a week and costs several hundred US dollars. (2,000,000 Rupiah each for the visa, 670,000 Rupiah for the sponsor letter and postage for a total of $311 USD, not to mention the extra time in ports and going back and forth to immigration at least three times.)

Also, we can’t renew (supposedly) until a week before our visa runs out and we can only renew in certain cities. Combine that with having to time the weather conditions, and it’s a challenging mess.

Difficult Cities!

So far, the “big” cities we’ve been to are Saumlaki (where we checked in), Tual (for our first visa renewal), Sorong and now Ternate. The first three had very limited selection in the way of groceries. Ternate is a little better but still limited. There’s nothing here in the way of boat supplies. Our outboard’s gas tank is leaking and there’s just no way to replace it here.

None of the cities have had what you would call a dinghy landing. We tie up to walls covered with inflatable-dinghy-ending oysters or to boats where we need to run Ninja Warrior-esque obstacles to get to shore. In Tual, it was the big ball. We had to traverse a giant, rolling fender from the Coast Guard boat to a narrow dock. Failure to do it properly would land you in the hospital, or perhaps even dead!

Below is a 12 second clip of one of the easier attempts at high tide…

Rolly, Deep Anchorages near the Cities

I’m surprised at how excited I am now to find a sixty foot deep patch to drop our anchor. I’m even surprisingly comfortable with eighty feet. Before Indo, we would only do that as a last resort. Here, it’s every day.

Right now, off of Ternate, we’re anchored in 70 feet and rolling around like usual. There aren’t protected anchorages near the cities we need to be near to provision or renew visas.

Even at the remote places we’ve visited, the water is very deep. I’m so used to this now that I’m shocked when there’s some reasonable depth below Legacy. The other day, we traveled ten miles to get a couple of quiet nights. The satellite images looked like deep water to me – very deep. The charts, both C-Maps and Navionics just showed solid reef and were useless as usual.

As we entered the area where we’d planned to anchor, I was shocked and so excited to find it only 30 feet deep. Not only that, there was so much protected 30 foot deep area where we could anchor that the wealth of riches confused me, and I had a hard time choosing a spot.

It was strange. It was shallow, it was calm and it was quiet!

Noisy Mosques

The towns and cities we’ve anchored off of have had mosques all along the shore, mostly surrounding poor Legacy at anchor. The first call to prayer seems to blare from huge, overpowered speakers atop towers at about 4:20 AM. There seems to be another round every few hours.

Here in Ternate, whoever gets up close to 4 AM, will put the hatch boards in the companionway to try to block out some of the noise. Maybe the term “noise” is disrespectful, but to my ears, I’m just calling it like I hear it! Cyndi has started wearing earplugs to sleep. It helps but I still find her awake and reading in the wee hours.

Closing up the boat makes the boat hot. The heat here is another Indo issue but one that we’re dealing with well, for the most part. Our giant fans help a lot. Today is extremely hot and so humid, with very little breeze. (Yet even without the breeze, we’re still hobby-horsing and rolling like crazy.)

Nice but Annoying People!

“Hello Mister” times 10,000 is what we hear as we walk down the streets. We are a real oddity here and the unwanted attention is so tiring. In response to those who rattle something at us in Indonesian, we’ve been trying to learn to say “Sorry, we don’t speak Indonesian” but that just seems to prompt another outpouring of words we don’t understand.

They really are nice people and I feel bad for how I’m starting to react to the constant shouting at us. I know they are just being friendly, but aaaargh! Cyndi says she feels like she’s walking down the street in a Batman costume. I think we now know what it must be like to be famous and no thank you!

Remote Times are Wonderful

We’ve spent a lot of time here away from cities – away from anyone – in the intense natural beauty and it’s been wonderful. Between those trips to out-of-the-way places, we must stock up to survive three or four weeks without shops or markets. The hardship of doing that is starting to make me think the wonders of being in the beautiful Indonesian wilderness might almost not be worth it.

I’m Exhausted

We’re in eastern Indonesia and maybe that was the hardest part of Indo to start with. I’m told as we get west, the cities and towns will get to be more like what we’re used to. In my head, I’m likening this to French Polynesia where we started out in the Marquesas, then the Tuamotus. Neither of which had much in the way of goods or services. It wasn’t until we got to Tahiti that living got easier.

But in French Polynesia, we were mostly ignored in that wonderful, French way. It’s so hard being Batman every day! I really understand why he pretended to be Bruce Wayne! Maybe I can dress up as Mulyadi Setiawan? (A Google search result for “common Indonesian name.)

In Conclusion

Would I recommend cruising Indo to someone else? I’m just not sure yet. We’ll give it some time and I’ll try to keep an open mind. I love the wonderful people (just please stop yelling “hey mister” at me) and I really love the natural beauty. I pretty much hate the towns. Time will tell which side wins out.

There’s nothing we can do but keep on going. We will gradually head west and see how that changes the balance.

-Rich

Posted July 31, 2022, about September 13, 2023

We had one final stop in the Northumberland region: an island group known as the Guardfish Cluster, specifically a place called Curlew Island. Aside from looking like a worthwhile stop, Curlew also happened to be en route to the mainland, our upcoming destination.

Below, a map of our approximate 30-mile route to Curlew and the following day’s route to Mackay.

As we motored out of our Middle Percy anchorage we spotted a large sea turtle, reminding me once again that we were in the tropics, surprisingly easy to forget amid all this Australian-bush terrain, not a tropical rainforest in sight. A recurring theme for me in Queensland was spotting a turtle or some coral and experiencing a brief feeling of confusion—what are those doing here? Oh that’s right, we’re in the tropics.

We settled into the day’s sail on a broad reach, riding the incoming current as we headed west. It was a beautiful day, warm with a breeze. It reminded me of certain days back home in Los Angeles, early in the summer when it felt particularly good to sit in the warmth of the morning sun. Today I was inspired to call this getting “sundorphins.” Rich and I aren’t generally sunbathers, but in this instance we both situated ourselves to soak it in.

Rich suddenly stood up after noticing something on our radar, something that had snuck up on us. It turned out to be a group of humpback whales! They were breaching, fin slapping, spy hopping and being very playful in general. We were enthralled and kept thinking they’d dive and disappear any minute; so we didn’t want to miss anything by going below to retrieve cameras. But the whales continued their antics the entire time we were passing by, eventually fading out of sight behind us. When the show was done, Rich’s face hurt from smiling so much. In the past 24 hours we’d enjoyed a beautiful anchorage, met nice people, and watched whales frolicking—a nice way to re-balance our E/A (agony/ecstasy) quotient after our previous difficulties.

Later that afternoon we arrived at the Guardfish cluster, passing a steep-sided island with a flat top and very little vegetation. We soon reached Curlew Island and as we motored up its east side, I counted 20 islands, all scattered about in the sparkling sea.

We turned west to go over the north side of Curlew, passing a broad headland before going down into a wide bay.

At first sight, the anchorage looked appealing with its long beach and a distinctive rock peak that towered over the scene. A sailing yacht was anchored by the headland on the far side of the bay. What was he doing way over there? We soon found out as we motored into the bay and realized wraparound swell was making its way in, the east headland not as protective as we’d hoped. Dismayed, I figured this might be one of those “lively” bays (as Alan Lucas would call it).

We decided to motor to the far end of the bay as the other boat appeared to be sitting calmly, unaffected by swell. As I’d hoped, the further along we got, the more the swell died down. Rich got Legacy in as close to the beach as he could, but these days because of the huge tidal range, we were anchoring at a minimum depth of 26 feet and couldn’t tuck in very well. In this case, the swell thankfully died off by the time we got anchored.

I lingered outside to take in the view of this unusual-looking place. My first impression was its attractiveness would definitely rest in the eye of the beholder. I could see why some would find this place worthwhile, and I wouldn’t argue that it is unique. The most striking feature was the volcanic peak, its top sheared off at an angle. Other than that, the hills on this land were low. A tan beach lined the shore, backed by a thick band of green bush. Overall the island had scrubby vegetation with areas that were quite dry, much like the the islands that surrounded it (Rich would later dub them “the death islands”).

Below, some photos of the bay as day progressed into evening, capped off by a beautiful sunset (click any photo to enlarge).

The feeling here was a lonely one, I think created by the width and openness of this bay and the dry vegetation. Rich didn’t like it at all, and maybe I was affected by his opinion because I started to get a weird and vaguely menaced feeling. Sometimes in a new place, I’ll sit out in the cockpit and try to get a feeling from the land. I did that here, and I picked up something strange, a feeling like the island demanded respect. I sent out thoughts that we would respect it, then I got this feeling I should stop trying to connect any further. I don’t think I’ve ever reacted this way to a place. It probably goes without saying that neither one of us wanted to go ashore.

Looking at the island again later that evening, I felt a darker energy, a sense of something almost demonic. Nervous, I headed below. The next morning I chided myself that I’d been silly, the feeling must have been a reflection of my mood at the time. Still, Rich and I both felt uneasy here. In spite of conditions looking better the following day, we decided it was best to leave this area and head for the city of Mackay. –Cyndi

July 21, 2023 about our visit there on July 1-5, 2023

Wayag is the crown jewel of Raja Ampat and yet not all that many people visit this amazing island. It’s a bit out of the way and apart from a small rangers station, there’s nothing on the island. (I say “Island” but it’s actually hundreds of small islands grouped in an area called Wayag.)

We spent about 5 days there and even after 11 years in the South Pacific, this wins the #1 spot on our most-beautiful-places-we’ve-seen list.

I’ll shut up now and let you see for yourselves in the video below (turn on the sound for accompanying music), except for one more introductory item: We anchored in three places there – all great. We call them A, B and C in the video. (Hint: C is our #1 anchorage ever!)

Hike to Viewpoint

The “path” to the viewpoint from the Cruising Guide to Indonesia is in the middle of the beach pictured at about 2:00 in the video – just go past the big information sign. The “path” itself roughly follows our drone starting at 2:08.

I didn’t attempt this hike. I have something called common sense (and a will to live and a drone). Cyndi did and it almost killed her. She went up with two Indonesian guides and three young women who were camping on Wayag. It almost killed the women too. It didn’t seem to bother the guides.

The “path” that I keep putting in quotes was almost impossible to find and involved a lot of rock climbing. One of the young women came down after going to the top and threw herself into the water and said she wasn’t going to get out until she stopped shaking! Cyndi said it was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

And the guide book says…

Mount Pindito: Looks more challenging than it is… but the climb is actually relatively easy and most visitors, young and old, make it to the top in less than 20 minutes. This should be an obligatory hike for all visitors to Wayag.

Maybe he’s got some kind of secret path (that defies physics?).

The guide book also mentions moorings in the area of B. Nope. There were no moorings when we were there. The area around B is a somewhat difficult place to anchor as it’s mostly very deep. We found a place about 60 feet deep. (That’s not bad for this part of Indonesia!) In area A, we anchored in about 45 feet of water and C was around 30 feet deep.

Here are the routes we used for the three spots we anchored. Standard disclaimer: For entertainment purposes only. You’d have to be a complete fool to use these. You’d die!

wayag routes

Anchorage C really was the prettiest place we’ve ever anchored. It was easy to get into with no less than 20 feet on the entrance into the small bay.

The guide book says that the inner lagoon area of Wayag is very deep and mostly suitable for superyachts. We didn’t find this to be true. With satellite maps, we spotted quite a few suitable looking anchorages and riding around in the dinghy with our hand-held depth finder, we saw a few very close to C where we would have anchored if not for the upcoming weather.

It was forecast to blow for about a week and while we didn’t worry about this in the amazing protection of the places we’d anchored, we did need to get moving and if we stayed longer, it would be either another week at Wayag or a miserable beat back to the south. In retrospect, and after looking at this video again, I’m wondering why we didn’t stay the extra week!

-Rich

July 17, 2023

We’re in Ternate (ter-nah-tey). Here:

And we have (mostly) full fuel tanks and fuel jugs, thanks to these two great guys…

They brought us 250 liters of diesel in ten big jugs.

They we had the pleasure (read: hard work and mess) of transferring it into Legacy. And, oh yeah, just when we started, the rain also started.

Despite the mostly minor mess, this was so much easier than our last fill-up in Indonesia. In Sorong, it took three days and three kind-of-expensive trips in a van to a gas station with our jugs. It seems that at least in this part of Indonesia, fuel docks aren’t a practiced concept.

I think I’ll also mention here that it seems we finally found a city we like in Indonesia. The scenery and the people in Indonesia have been amazing. The cities-not so much. We’ve only been here two days but we already like it.

There’s a shopping mall that had Cyndi near tears of joy. We found a pretty nice supermarket where we were able to get much of what we needed. And the “dinghy dock” is much nicer than anything we’ve experienced so far in Indonesia.

We’re going to hang out here until we get weather to make about a 150-mile passage west to Bitung. It looks like it’ll be about ten days until this strong southerly wind abates. We have to get to a check-in city like Bitung to renew our visas before the August 5th. I think we’ll make it. In the meantime, it’s restaurant meals for us! – Rich

Posted July 9, 2023
about September 12, 2023

After we’d gotten settled in Middle Percy Island’s West Bay, we headed ashore to visit the beach and yacht club. The water became quite clear as we neared the shore, the sand smooth and soft under our feet as we landed.

Below, a few photos of the beach from various times of the day (click any photo to enlarge).

Already we could see that the yacht club, a little A-frame structure, was heavily decorated with tokens people had left to mark their visits there. We made our way up to an entry path bordered with coconut shells and surrounded by palm trees, with a sign identifying the Percy Island Yacht Club. How fitting that two yachties happened to be sitting in front of the club, Rich taking a moment to chat with them while I took photos.

We went inside, surprised to find this place quite a bit larger than it looked from afar. It was absolutely chock full of mementos left by cruisers, made from whatever materials they could find: boat bits, wood, buoys, rocks, etc. All the items stated the boat’s name, the date they visited, and usually where boat was from. Some pieces were slapdash, but other people had put in real effort and made works of art. We wanted to look around and see if we recognized any boat names, but the sheer number of items was overwhelming—there must have been thousands of bits in there. It would take us all day to look through everything!

Aside from all the flotsam and jetsam, we found fire pits and cooking utensils out behind the hut, visitors welcome to use them. A little room inside was stocked with jars of local honey, homemade chutneys and jams, and fresh eggs for sale, the resident family who oversees this place trusting people to pay on the honor system. We also discovered a loft with still more stuff upstairs. Below, a gallery of photos from the yacht club . . .

We hadn’t initially planned on leaving anything, but after seeing all these mementos I couldn’t imagine not doing so. They had a ghostly feel, snapshots from moments in so many lives, frozen in time and going back years. I, too, wanted to freeze this moment in our life and let it join the “ghosts” of the yacht club. Rich agreed, suggesting we use a beautiful flat pearlescent shell we’d recently found. That would be perfect—we could bring it back in before leaving the next morning!

Satisfied we’d properly visited the yacht club, we took a walk to see some of the inland area. A trail angled up into a eucalyptus forest behind the beach. The vegetation was on the dry side, the trees not very tall but really lovely.

One particularly charming area was rather open, the trees widely scattered. Here, bushy ground cover with purple flowers was alight with small yellow butterflies. Crickets provided the soundtrack, chirping even though it was daylight. A flock of rainbow lorikeets alerted us with their squeaky cries as they flew above, and I could hear the sad cawing of the local ravens nearby. It may have felt ghostly in the yacht club, but outside this island was vivid with life.

We continued walking to the “tree house,” a cabin where guests can stay, then caught a view of an inland lagoon before turning back. The walk towards the shore gave us a view of the boats in the bay, a beautiful image through a frame of palm trees. Light cloud cover gave the scene a cozy, dreamy feeling, while the water sparkled in the sunlight that filtered through. By this point I was pretty enchanted with Middle Percy Island and could see why it’s revered in the boating community. Below, photos from our walk . . .

On a final cruiserly note in this cruising mecca: a young man, one of two guys on a small power boat, approached us with a bag in his hand. He said he and his friend had caught too many fish to fit in their freezer; would we like some? Oh my gosh, yes! He gave us the bag with two huge fillets, enough for two meals. What a wonderful treat!

Dinner in hand, it was time to head back to our boat, but part of me wished I could stay and hang out onshore, just soaking in the atmosphere. It had been awhile since I’d felt this way about a place, and I wanted to linger with the feeling.

Once back on the boat, though, it was awfully nice to wash the insect repellent off our legs and sit in the cockpit with a glass of wine. Following that we had a delicious dinner featuring the fresh fish grilled in foil packets with butter, grilled onion and bell pepper, and wasabi mayo served over a bed of rice (this is one of our favorite things to do with freshly-caught fish).

After dinner we went out to the cockpit again to enjoy a beautiful sunset . . .

Later that night, I stepped out to admire the bay in the moonlight. We now were surrounded by nine boats, and it felt good to be back among cruisers even if we didn’t know any of them. Tomorrow we’d be heading on; so I appreciated this moment while I was in it.

Enjoying coffee the next morning, after watching the sun come up from behind the hills, we wrote Legacy’s name on our chosen shell with a felt pen, drilled a hole at the top of it, and used fishing line as a tie (the best we could do as we lacked art supplies).

We headed ashore, first stopping at the guys’ power boat to give them a weather forecast (as there was no phone service/internet here) and a six-pack of Corona beer. Both the forecast and the beer were much appreciated, but then so was the fish we had for dinner and would have again this night. We then headed ashore to the Yacht Club and found a nice spot for our token, leaving it to represent us among the other happy ghosts who reside there.

By the time we got back to our boat, the breeze was starting to pick up. It was time to head to our next destination. While it was sad to hurry off, we had a plan to get to a marina in the city of Mackay before the next period of enhanced trade winds set in. En route we had time for one more stop: a place called Curlew Island. –Cyndi