Two At Sea

May 14, 2024

This is how we feel walking down the streets of Indonesia…

Every time we take to the streets we’re met with love and almost adulation from the locals. They often stop us to take selfies with us. We try to communicate the best we can but there’s a big language barrier. Duolingo for the past few months and Google Translate have helped somewhat with that.

“Halo Mister!” and even “I love you!” are shouted by the locals. Cyndi always wonders what we’ve done to deserve this. The locals are truly wonderful, making us feel incredibly welcome here. We’ve also been made to feel the way Taylor Swift must feel walking down a New York City street. If you want to know what fame feels like, visit Indonesia.

-Rich

Update: May 17, 2024

Imagine our surprise when we found the real deal on the street in Luwuk, Sulawesi!

May 12, 2024

… even when anchored too close to the reef!

This was a place called Luk Panenteng. This was our second time trying to anchor here. It’s either too deep (300+ feet) or too shallow (less than 3 feet). I guess we were a little desperate this time. We found a spot about 45 feet deep but too close to the reef to put out enough scope¹.

All would have been fine if not for the ripping current that runs through here. We drug anchor but fortunately, it was along the reef and not into it. We had a very tight anchor alarm zone set that woke us up at 3AM. We saw that the anchor grabbed and after a bit of watching and worrying, went back to sleep.

The picture above was taken at the change of current as the boat was turning. I was shocked to see how close to the reef we got, but I guess no harm, no foul.

-Rich
1. We usually try to anchor with about 5 or 6 to 1 anchor chain to depth ratio. That would have meant 225 feet of chain. When in deeper water, we feel like 3:1 is okay. That would mean 135 feet of chain. If we got a squall blowing us towards the reef, that would let us hit. Instead, we only put out 120 feet of chain.

If you add our 3 feet of freeboard to the 45 feet of water, that makes a ratio of 2.5:1. This is really not enough scope and that’s why our anchor drug at current change.

Posted on May  6, 2024 about
September 21 and 22, 2022

One thing we noticed while cruising through the Cumberland Islands was the stunning beauty of the sunsets. I did some research as to what makes sunsets in certain places extra special and found the key factor is good air quality. Essentially, all sunsets are amazing, but particles in the air can dull their vibrancy.

After pondering this, I realized there’s another contributing factor for the lovely sunsets here: the relatively flat landscape along the mainland coast. Aside from a few scattered low mountains further inland, the landscape is pretty flat, a vast desert that stretches from one end of the continent to the other. Combined with the longer evenings that accompany the approach of summer and Australia’s clean air, these conditions make a great recipe for painted-sky sunsets. Especially from the vantage point of an island just offshore!

The next morning, Rich was up at sunrise and decided to fly the drone. This flight beautifully captured the misty morning light so unique to these islands. I managed to whittle the resulting photos down to two, but can’t choose between them. So, here they both are:

Today we’d be saying good-bye to this part of the Cumberland Islands and heading for the actual Whitsundays (as opposed to all these islands to the south which are often mistakenly grouped under the broader label of ‘the Whitsundays’). –Cyndi

May 5, 2024

We’re heading south along the east coast of Sulawesi from almost the very top of the island to the very bottom. It’s about 450 miles as the crow flies (almost) and we are trying to do it without overnight passages. We’re making 30 to 40 mile hops every day and spending every night in a different bay.

Every day, it’s the same thing: get the anchor up around 8 AM, head out onto a mostly flat, windless sea, watch the squalls develop around mid-day, get hit by a squall or two in the afternoon, make our way into a bay to anchor at about 3 or 4 PM. It’s been an amazingly consistent routine, and not an unpleasant one, despite the squalls.

The squalls haven’t been too bad with the worst of them blowing to about 20 knots (though often on the nose). We often just miss all or most of the rain. Other than the squall wind, there hasn’t been enough wind to warrant sails, with the exception of motor-sailing with the headsail up today for about 2 hours.

Most of the places we’ve anchored in so far have been bays we spent time in on our last trip down this coast. Some have been new like this bay last night.

The last time by, we didn’t think we could get into the bay through that shallow entrance. I guess we had more confidence this time and it was no problem, with 16 feet the shallowest we saw on the way in.

There isn’t much info we’ve found about anchorages along this coast. Every time we’ve found a suitable anchorage, we’ve shared it on Zulu Waterways – a crowd-sourced anchorage guide.

Needless to say, there are no cruising boats around. Other than small, local fishing boats, there aren’t really any other boats at all. It feels like we have Indonesia’s coast to ourselves.

Tomorrow, we think we’ll have to break the routine and spend an extra day where we are now. This will give us better weather for a big 70-mile jump on Tuesday. It sounds so nice to me right now to have a day off. What will we do?!

-Rich

April 21, 2024