Force Field

Doodlebug in the foreground; Bali Marina docks

The Bali Marina occupies a small slice of the industrial waterfront of Benoa, itself situated on the southeast corner of the island of Bali.  The marina is framed by randomly sloping concrete walkways, floating uncertainly along a narrow ship channel used by tugs, small outrigger canoes, outsized yellow catamaran power boats hauling tourists out for dinner cruises, and the occasional sailboat.  The dock lights flicker at night, and boats are cautioned about frequent voltage and amperage drops – so the ramshackle plumbing and wiring systems strung alongside the docks come as no surprise.  Outside the gated walls, the dirt roads are dusty, with the few streets fronted by various one-story government buildings and garage-front stores selling pipe, oil, wiring, and other industrial supplies. There is room for maybe twenty boats or so, and the marina represents the best of shoreside facilities in this part of Bali. 

We made a reservation here several months ago, knowing we’d need reliable access to shore for the inevitable maintenance and repair work after our 2-month trip from Cairns to here, via the Coral, Arafura, Banda, and Flores Seas.  In addition, as unlikely as it seems, boats are safe and secure in this tiny marina, which will allow us to travel inland for a few days to enjoy the well-regarded traditional Balinese artisan communities around Ubud.  We arrived a few days ago, and spent the first day navigating officialdom – surprisingly, clearing into the port was a one-hop stop, and mercifully free of the oft-reported demands for “gratuities” by the officials.  To date, we’ve been fortunate in that regard; most of the cruisers’ reports we’d read about Indonesia complained endlessly about being hit up for extras.  In Ambon, where we checked out during a holiday, we were asked the pay the equivalent of $1.40 in port fees and $15.00 in quarantine inspection fees; in Labuan Bajo, it was $15.00 for port clearance (apparently more than the normal $5), and here it was free.  We paid the government of Australia $330 for the quarantine certificate, so I’m not sure what those cruisers were complaining about. 

Jennifer, Stannie, and Jessica, pre-evening dive

Yesterday was a serious boat work day.  With the lack of winds along the northern coast of Flores and Sumbawa, we found ourselves motoring a lot, and in any event, we want to enter the Indian Ocean with our engines in top shape … so I changed the oil in both engines, changed the transmission oil in each, and changed the impellers used to suck cooling water from the sea into the two engines.  The jobs are messier than they are difficult, but there’s a lot of crawling around, so after six hours of pumping out and re-filling, I was pretty tired.  Jennifer and I are both fighting head colds – karmic revenge for our week of R&R on Gili Air perhaps.

Mandarin fish, +/- 2 inches long

The week on Gili Air ended with a few trips to the adjoining island of Lombok, to a tiny village on the northwest coast, Mengiti, home to Abdul, the erstwhile business partner to Cedric, a 40-year old Frenchman who’s decided to have a go at building a multi-part business venture on the Gili islands.  After co-investing in dive shop on Gili Trawagan, he just opened one up on Gili Air, a few kilometers to the east, run by his Dutch girlfriend, Stanneka, or Stannie for short.  We fell in with Cedric and Stannie, and came to enjoy their company and friendship; together with one of their friends, Jessica, the five of us took ile de Grace over to Mengiti for an evening dive to see the Mandarin Fish … Jennifer and the three of them dove, while I tended the dinghy. 

Jon in Doodlebug, ready to take on the divers

Abdul, Cedric’s Lombok business partner, lives in a small compound just off the beach, with the rest of the village.  Years ago, under the previous government, the Army apparently arrived one day and informed the beach-dwelling village that they all had to move inland a kilometer or so, since the land was now being offered for sale to a friend of the President … the land, with title “properly conveyed,” is still owned by an outsider.  Such is the way of dictatorships; their legacy often “legally” outlasts their tenure.

Today, Cedric and Abdul co-own a small “warung,” or restaurant, with the cook earning a small wage and 60% of the profits.  In addition, Abdul proudly showed me his brick-making business, where his three staff can make about 900 bricks a day.  Each brick sells for 2,500 rupiah (about 27 cents) to the developers on the Gili islands; Abdul’s bricks are valued for their quality; he makes 90 bricks per bag of cement, while his competitors make 125 bricks per bag.  Abdul also serves as a middleman between the various skilled and unskilled laborers of his village and the developers, and, in the area where his services and our needs intersected, manages to procure diesel for boats.  He invited me to his compound, where I met his father and daughter, and where he explained that one of his brothers was working in Saudi Arabia, and the other in Malaysia.  We wish Cedric and Abdul all the luck in the world, and will miss their generous optimism.

Blue ribbon eel, about 1 cm in diameter

After sailing the 45 miles or so west to Bali, it’s clear that the business and culture of Bali is a universe away from Mengiti, with planes flying overhead every hour or so, cars and motorcycles everywhere, and the marina charging 7-10 times the labor rate we had been experiencing in the outer islands.  It’s a big island.  Traffic is everywhere, and the drivers here are a bit unsteady – bobbing and weaving with little regard for traffic lanes, lights, or pedestrians.  We’re learning to watch our step, and yesterday, as Jennifer accompanied Bobby, a fellow cruiser on some errands in his car, she watched with adrenaline-inducing horror as a motorcyclist careened in front of the car without so much as  a glance, with a collision barely avoided.  Bobby, our new friend, exclaimed in tired amazement, “they think they have some kind of f#!%ing Hindu magic force field around them!”

Another wondrous animal of the deep

… which reminds me of another element of this archipelago countries diversity:  religion.  Bali is the country's only Hindu island, and we now see Hindu shrines everywhere, even as we hear pre-dawn calls to Muslim prayer, and see the occasional cross-topped church as we make our rounds.  As I consider our impending 6000+  mile trip southwestward across the Indian Ocean, I find myself leaning to multi-theism as my religion:  perhaps I will fashion a little marigold-laden Hindu offering, bow east towards Mecca, and pray for the Virgin Mary’s intercession … at a minimum, I will want some of that “f#!%ing magic Hindu force field” around our tiny vessel as we cross that great ocean. 

Updated Piracy Guidelines

For those interested, see this link for the most recent guidelines re: piracy in the Gulf of Aden.  Jennifer and I had already decided not to sail these waters, and the guidelines certainly vindicate that choice.

At present, we are in Bali, taking care of boat maintenance, housekeeping, etc., before a few days inland.  From here, we leave in a week or two to Cocos Keeling, an Australian territory, on the way to Mauritius and South Africa.

More postings and pics to follow.

Green

Looking east to Lombok from Gili Air

We’re spending a guilty week on a mooring at Gili Air, the quietest of three small, low coral atolls off the northwest coast of Lombok, the huge island just east of the island of Bali.  In the early morning, the sun profiles the mountains of the West Lombok forest reserve and its several 9-10,000 foot mountains.  In the evening, the setting sun profiles the singular conical volcanic peak of Gunung Agung, rising 10,000 feet over the Bali landscape.  We’re surrounded by a low coral reef, with surf gently breaking, and the soft smoke of wood cooking fires – ubiquitous in these islands – hangs low over the shore line.

Jennifer, preparing for a Gili Air day

I say guilty, because Gili Air, and its two neighboring atolls, are resort islands; we’re on the quiet family-oriented island; the others cater to the younger, partying crowd.  In addition to being a bit more in our age and energy range, there are moorings here, and we’re happy to be on a secure mooring instead of the uncertain anchorages in the other islands' deep, steeply-sloped waters.  Our routine has quickly settled into a dinghy ride ashore in the morning to secure a beach cabana at the locally-run Scallywags bar, breakfast, some internet/email work, and then snorkeling and reading until lunch, followed by more relaxing until we dinghy back to the boat in the afternoon, to rest before going ashore for dinner, eating under our own personal thatch-roofed raised platform with cushions and a low table.

It’s a tough life, but we’re happy to accept the challenge and responsibility of reporting to you, our dear friends, family, and readers, of our closing days in Indonesia.  We leave in a few days for a marina in Bali, where our days will be consumed with a wide array of maintenance activities to prepare our boat for the next legs of our circumnavigation:  the 1,100 mile sail from Bali to the Australian protectorate of Cocos Keeling, the 2,300 mile sail from Cocos to Mauritius, and then the final 1,500 mile leg to Richards Bay, South Africa.  All in all, we’ll be sailing some 4,700 miles in some of the more challenging blue waters on this fair planet.  Our boat needs to be ready, and more importantly, we need to be rested.

Trash-strewn landing beach in Banda

With the free time we’ve given ourselves, I’ve just finished reading the third of three novels – all well recommended and published in 2010.  Each has as its substantive theme the issue of the environment, coupled with a dramatic theme that examines the issue of what a single human being can do to affect the course of environmental history.  As sailors, we are careful to act locally, but in thinking globally, the issues seem daunting.  One of the things that has distressed us about Indonesia is the ostensibly simple issue of garbage disposal:  we see plastic litter everywhere – floating in the ocean, strewn along the high-tide lines, in the streets, etc.  And not just the odd scrap here and there – piles of it.  We bought a few bags of lollypops to give to kids when we went ashore; I watched in  dismay as the kids take the wrappers off and discard them along the unpaved streets and on the beaches.  We see plastic bottles floating miles offshore.  We see trash lying on the bottom of otherwise pristine coral reefs. It’s not just Indonesia; on the windward coast of Margaret Bay, Australia, we saw thousands of bottles strewn along the upper edge of the tidal range.

I understand that certain aspects of environmental awareness are a luxury of developed economies; recycling demands an infrastructure that developing economies are forced to defer in favor of investments in sanitation facilities and clean drinking water.  And I would note that most of America's interstate highways, with their plastic-bottle-laden rest stops, lack recycling facilities.  But the simple act of consolidating garbage -- especially plastics -- seems within reach of every community.  It’s catching in some places in Indonesia – in Bandaneira, we gave some money to a local program designed to teach the kids not to litter – the coloring book highlighted a cultural basis for the throw-away behaviors by reminding people that food was no longer wrapped in banana leaves, and thus the new wrappings – plastic usually – should no longer be discarded on the ground.  But we see a lot of carelessly-strewn trash on the islands of Indonesia.

Wood cooking fires in Wailamung, Flores

The three books – Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, American Subversive, by David Goodwillie, and Solar, by Ian McEwan – each focus on the struggles of individuals to make sense of their adopted desires to do more than act responsibly in their personal lives, and to somehow make a bigger difference.  While motivations vary across the three sets of protagonists, and the novels are as much about the interpersonal relationships of the protagonists, I think it’s interesting that three of the more well-regarded novels of 2010 deal with the issue of the environment and the dilemma of personally driven change.  It might say something about reviewers’ sensibilities, but I also think it says something about our time:  we’re swamped with stories about global warming and environmental gloom and doom, so we buy hybrid cars and recycle and reduce our carbon footprint, but there’s a sense of futility about these efforts.  Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.  Australia – whose news we can follow on our ham radio – continues to argue over a carbon tax, while its economy depends almost entirely on exporting coal to China to fuel its economic development. Much of Indonesia – the fourth-most populous nation on earth – relies on wood fires to cook their food. 

Recycling and bicycles in Gili Air

It’s no wonder novelists, who often give voice to the intellectual angst of a time,  are picking up on the frustration.  Jennifer and I will pick up the bottle in the water, and our carbon footprint is as small as can be these days, but we too feel a sense of powerlessness as we watch our oceans rise and its waters become more tangled in the plastic detritus of a consumerist world.  As we begin to allow ourselves to think about re-entering life in America in a year’s time, we’re starting to think about how we might deploy our professional energies; my background is in healthcare, which has its own set of national and global challenges, so I suspect I’ll stay in that realm of the impossible; Jennifer, responding to some of our experiences of our circumnavigation, is considering environmental issues as one option. 

But for now, it’s the guilty pleasures of Gili Air, where, I am pleased to say, they seem to have embraced the new green imperatives – composting, recycling, and a complete lack of cars on the island.  Instead, we have horse-drawn carts and bicycles.  It’s a start.

Gili Air's mass transport system

Feast and Spices

Here's two short videos of an Indonesian village -- Wailamung -- preparing for a feast, and hands-on demonstration of where a few common spices come from ... enjoy!

Miss and Hit

When we left the mooring at Komodo's Gili Lawa Laut, we intended to sail a short 16 miles to Banta, mentioned in one of the rare cruisers' notes as having a good anchorage and great snorkeling. We've relied on these fragmentary notes to find places to anchor in Indonesia; the shorelines are incredibly steep, and the anchoring systems used by boats rely more on leverage than weight. The steeper the slope, the more likely the dug-in anchor will be yanked out as the tidal current and/or wind swings one way and then another. Picture a steep bowl, and a hook into its side. Pull up to the lip of the bowl (i.e., toward shore), and the hook digs deeper - all good. Pull down to the bottom of the bowl, and the hook slides out. Not good. Thus, we look for places where the underwater profile is at least reasonably sloped - and where the flattened areas do not lie too close to threatening reefs.  With the benefit of hindsight, volcanos thrusting out of the ocean are not great places to look for anchorages.

Despite the glowing remarks in the random cruiser's anchoring notes from 1990 or so (discovered on a random internet site), the bay in Banta seemed to defy gravity - a mere 100 yards from shore, the bottom was impossibly deep - at least several hundred feet. Any closer, the bottom shoaled quickly to a dozen feet or so at high tide. All or nothing. No middle ground ... so we abandoned Plan A, and continued west, sailing overnight along the coast of Sumbawa, the island west of Flores and Komodo, toward other anchorages. At dusk, we passed between the main island and an active volcano jutting some 6000 feet above the water, and, iceberg-like, rising 12,000 feet from the adjoining ocean floor.  Later, we dinghied over and visited the sulfurous lake in the volcano's caldera.

The winds were spotty but the current favorable, so we motored along on one engine through the night, arriving at the tiny central Sumbawa village of Kananga at noon or so the next day. Here, another set of cruisers' notes were spot-on: we found a shelf of dense black volcanic sand lying in just 25 feet of water, just offshore. To the north, across a narrow channel, lies a dormant volcano, its caldera filled with a fresh water lake. As a first order of business when arriving at an Indonesian village, I took our dinghy ashore to introduce ourselves to the village chief.

In this case, we had arrived at the sub-village of Sarae, or sand, the administrative center for Kananga. It was Sunday, a day of rest but of no religious import for this 100% Muslim community. The port office - painted cinderblock - was obvious by its flagpole atop of which flew the red-and white striped Indonesian flag. I was greeted enthusiastically by a T-shirted man and a woman wearing a modest head covering, and was asked to sit down on a bench outside an adjacent building.

A few minutes later, two young women walked up - one with brown hair, round glasses, and a quick smile; the other wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf. In near-perfect American idiomatic English, they introduced themselves, and, quite at ease with themselves, asked how they could help me ... unsure of the scope of their command of English, I patiently and simply explained I was introducing myself to the village, and asking permission to anchor off their beach.

Well, to cut to the quick, there was no need for simple English; the conversational pair of Berly and Shally took me under their wings, introduced me all around, and walked me to the store where I picked up some eggs, coffee, tiny tomatoes, beans, and bean sprouts - all locally grown. As we walked, I learned a bit of their story. They were here as part of Indonesia's version of the Teach for America program (their description). The program - Indonesia Mengajar (Teach Indonesia) - has over 4000 applicants across Indonesia, but only 72 are chosen - with 6-10 sent to a village in each of 9 regions. Given the breadth of Indonesia's islands, running into 2 of them was as lucky as finding a safe place to anchor. Once my land-based chores were done, I invited them and two of their host family friends back to our boat for some tea.

At the boat, I am pleased to note that they loved their Crystal Light drinks, as well as the stack of New Yorkers (for the teachers), and some blank school writing tablets, and pencils we gave them for their students. After a time on the boat, where they asked whether we had Facebook pages, and used their cell phone camera to take pictures of themselves at the wheel of our boat, we were, in turn, invited to join them for lunch at their home. There, we sat in a modest house on stilts, on a 6x9 carpet, and enjoyed a wonderful lunch of rice, stewed spicy vegetables, grilled flying fish, and coffee. Shally had studied to be an architect, and hopes to get into urban planning after completing a master's degree; Beryl studied communication science, and while expressing an interest in a master's program, confessed to having fallen in love with the students, and that she was, perhaps, considering a career in teaching.

We have met many Indonesians in our sailing time here, but to a one, all were either living hand-to-mouth, caring for their families and communities, were local teachers in local schools, or were in the trades. Beryl and Shally were, if you will, the first cosmopolitan Indonesians we met who were overtly aware of the breadth of Indonesia's cultures, lands, and challenges. In their words, their goal is to give students and their families a sense of possibility, centered around education. As an ancillary goal, they saw their role as helping to stitch together the several Indonesia's we've seen: urban and rural; Muslim, Christian, and Hindu; outlying island group to outlying island group.

We wish them well, and hope to see them on Facebook (!) ... we're glad we missed out on the Banta Island anchorage, and we're glad we hit the jackpot here, in Kananga, when we chanced to meet two of Indonesia's brightest hopes for the future ... and, in their students, some future hopes!

Anniversaries

The summer before we left on our trip, we sailed to a good friend's house on the Eastern Shore for their 40th wedding anniversary. I've known Terry for years, and I crewed on his ocean-capable sloop on his first blue water voyage - to and from Bermuda - and we wouldn't have missed the party even if we didn't have the chance to show off our new boat, ile de Grace! Many of Terry's friends are sailors as well, and as the party took shape, a number of them trickled down to his dock to check out our little catamaran. To a one, the men all seemed to have the same reaction when I talked of our circumnavigation plans: "You are so lucky to be married to someone who sails and shares your dream."

I am lucky. I met Jennifer in August 1981, as we both began our graduate studies at Princeton. A few months later, we sailed my parents' boat, Dutch Courage, and she - and, in turn, I, was hooked. In November of that year, we joined a family friend and sailed his ketch down an ice-cold Chesapeake Bay, ending up in Beaufort, NC a few days and a few groundings later. While there were some fits and starts, we never looked back. We began to live together in the summer of 1982, and have been together ever since.

There are certain parallels between the voyages of marriage and circumnavigation, parallels I'll try not to stretch to the breaking point. In the case, of our marriage, Jennifer and I had a mostly-synchronized vision of a loving, lifelong, committed and caring relationship with children, but neither of us had any real idea of the challenges and choices we'd face along the way. Like any marriage, we've had our ups and downs - times when we were forced to examine our own and each other's hearts and souls, times when we've hurt each other and times when we've needed more of what the other person had a hard time giving. These are the painful truths of any meaningful relationship I think: two strong people, each possessed of the usual complement of strengths and weaknesses, each striving to maintain a sense of self while pursuing the common vision of a mutual commitment to a lifelong union, blessed in a church, before our friends and family.

I am lucky that one of us - Jennifer - is possessed of uncommon doses of patience, foresight, and forgiveness, traits that have kept our marriage on course even when the road got rocky. After 27 years of marriage, and the last 18 months of intimate, unceasing partnership, I see us achieving our shared vision of a lifelong union more clearly than ever.

Deciding to embark on this circumnavigation required an equal leap of faith; I've written about some of the challenges of 24x7x365 proximity, and we've faced some real decision points along the way between suspending our trip or completing what we set out to do. In the end, as in our marriage, Jennifer's steadfastness of purpose, patience, and flexibility have proven to be the critical attributes to our decision to sail south around Africa - postponing her lifelong dream of sailing the Red Sea and the Med - and then home to Maryland.

Trips that take a lifetime, or trips around the world are easy to imagine - even easy to embark upon. Seeing them through is another thing. I'm lucky beyond description to be married to a woman who shares my love of adventure, and possesses the strength of character to help me through the storms and squalls, even -perhaps especially - those of my own making. While we celebrate this anniversary by ourselves, we expect to host our own 40th wedding anniversary in 13 years - July 14, 2024. We hope many of you will be able to join us.

Kanawa

Nemofish in the anemone

We've spent the last few days moored off Kanawa Island, a small atoll that lies between the large islands of Flores and Komodo, on the edge of the Komodo National Park. There's a small resort here, using the term loosely: a dozen or so small, rustic bungalows, an open-sided dive "shop," and a slightly larger open-sided, concrete-floored shelter that serves as a combination dining room and reception area. The reef rolls around the southern side of the island, where the resort is situated, and boasts an amazing array of corals, fish, and, at the end of a ramshackle 100-yard pier built on wooden sticks and with planks that have seen better days, a small colony of lionfish.

Lionfish resting in coral

These lionfish are florid creatures, boasting translucent, brown-and-white striped fins jutting our every which way, accented with whiskers and spikes that fill the spaces in between. In water, they hover, twist and turn, and their combination of fins, spikes and body create a ball that can run from a few inches in diameter for the young ones to over a foot in diameter for the adults. An exotic example of the life force in these reefs, where the cold waters of the Indian Ocean mix with the warm waters of the Flores Sea on a twice-daily basis.

The resort is owned by a small consortium of Italian investors, one of whom, Max, lives on the island - he's battling a case of typhoid fever right now, likely picked up in the nearby main town of Labuan Bajo - literally, "boat harbor of the Bajo people," the Bajo being one of the many Indonesian cultures/peoples that migrated around and into these islands. The dive shop was started a few months ago by Ed and Marie, and Englishman and Swede, respectively, who met years ago as they pursued their divemaster certificates, and then, after time in various global diving hotspots, decided to set up a business here on the island.

On their 40' wooden boat powered by two single-piston Chinese diesels, and measuring just a scant 10 feet in beam, we spent two days diving 6 sites in the Komodo National Park. We fell asleep last night delightfully exhausted - and in awe at the sheer variety, quantity, and quality of the reefs in this part of the world. We have dived many sites in our Pacific crossing, but we both agree that none can compare with these.

Komodo's mixture of warm and cool water creates ideal fish/coral conditons

The prototypical Komodo dive is a pinnacle dive - where the boat drops you in the lee of a large rock jutting up from a deep bottom. The tidal currents swirl around these rocks - to the point where, if you aren't careful, you'll be swept out to sea or, worse, down deep - and create a regularly-replenished feeding ground for fish of all sizes, marine animals of all sorts, and hard and soft corals of all types. The other two types - a channel drift dive, and a wall dive - are also common here, but we began our two days of diving on Castle Rock and Crystal Rock. Dropping into the water, we sank into the lee of Castle Rock, a rocky spike that lies awash at low tide. Splayed out in front of us, against the rising column, swam schools of bright yellow and blue fish, thousands turning one way and then the other, in silent synchrony. Swimming through them, with Jennifer at one point nearly invisible in their midst, we faced a wall of hard and soft corals whose diversity brought Darwin's evolutionary theories to mind: nature will try everything once, twice if it works.

Komodo corals

I imagine a King Neptune of old, considering petitions from various coral developers, as they pitched their ideas: "How about a coral that juts 10 meters horizontally from the wall, but less than an inch in diameter, and punctuated with bands of blue?" "Go for it!" ... "How about a mustard-yellow soft coral, patterned on the leaves and stalks of a cauliflower, and swaying gently in the current?" "Why not?!" ... "Can I try out a purple rose concept, with diaphanous leaves that look like tissue paper?" "Have a go!"

Frog Fish

The animal life was equally exotic - at one point we saw a thin worm-like eel, about 1/2" in diameter and about a foot long, with a brilliant blue body tinged with iridescent yellow, swaying in the current, opening and closing its ovaloid mouth, its eyes on two protruding bulbs above its mouth. Neither the divemaster nor we had ever seen anything like it. On another dive, we saw the strange and rare frogfish, a fish that can't swim but instead hops along on prehensile feet; it was wedged against a bit of wall coral, unmoving, unwilling perhaps to let go for fear of falling.

Moray ee

Each dive brought new sights and experiences - the usual run of sharks, large pelagic fish, turtles, anemones, sponges, moray eels, tropical fish in schools that defy enumeration - but at the beginning of one deeper dive, where we ducked under a large overhanging shelf about 70 feet below the surface, Jennifer had a rare find indeed. Tucked into the interstices of a large sea fan, hidden deep against the dark underside of the overhang, our divemaster coaxed a pygmy seahorse into view. Barely bigger than a thumbnail, this tiny sea horse lives in the sea fan itself, using the webbing of the coral to snare enough plankton and the like for its food. Jennifer had mentioned to me a number of times her desire to see a seahorse - here was a rare sub-species, invisible to all but the knowing eye.

We feel lucky to have spent time here, at the Kanawa Island resort, diving with Ed and Marie, and Peter, the Indonesian divemaster who seems to know just where the pygmy seahorses hide. Tomorrow, we have some boat work - time to pay the piper - and then on Thursday, our 27th wedding anniversary, we sail over to Komodo Island and take a guided hike to see the legendary Komodo Dragons. It's mating season, so their attentions are elsewhere, but we still need a guide; there are regular reports of attacks on unwary humans. We'll be careful out there. Nature has a way of surprising you.

Jon and Jennifer -- Diving Komodo Islands

Gentrification

Three kids in the village of Wailamung, Flores

Like yuppies moving to the less desirable parts of towns,the ex-pat and wealthy locals are slowly taking over certain harbors in the Western Pacific, moving like a slow-moving warm front from east to west. We saw it near-maturity in the Galapagos, where soft-serve ice cream and pizza joints dotted the newly-refurbished waterfront. The old fishing docks, where the local fishermen brought their catch each morning, had been been relegated to a small corner a few hundred yards away from the new docks. In the Marquesas, the primary port was much less developed, owning in part to its remoteness and lack of regular air service, but there it was: a wood-fired pizza joint, right on the water. Still, Hiva Oa is years if not decades away from the kind of development that characterized the port of Papeete, Tahiti, with its lavish French subsidies and western-style commercial and business environment.

From there westward, development became more spotty. In the western Society islands – Moorea, Bora Bora – there were up-scale resorts, but off the resorts, it was still very rural, undeveloped, and primitive. One small 'yacht club' in Tahaa, just west of Moorea, typified the middle ground -- sand floors, local cuisine, local staff, ex-pat owner, and western-style blues and rock, circa 1975, blaring steadily from the speaker system. In Rarotonga, with its significant New Zealand population and subsidies, the island as a whole had been largely developed along its coastline, but inshore, little had changed in the last 50 years or so. Niue was still rather untouched by western influence – a dive shop and the local ‘yacht club’ were the only evidence of ex-pat mentality.

Twins in the tiny village of Wailamung, Flores

By the time we got to Tonga, we had either given up hope or become accustomed to the western-style amenities in our port, so we were not surprised to discover a narrow sliver of bars, pizza joints, and dive shops when we arrived at Neifu, in the Va'vau group. Lovely set of owners, the usual gang of cruisers drinking the usual beers, and, the real give-away: 60s, 70s and 80s-style rock music from the speaker system -- Stones, Jethro Tull, Beatles, Hendrix, Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, etc. Once we traveled south in Tonga, all signs of development/gentrification disappeared completely, and from there we sailed west to to Fiji, where the pace of local and ex-pat development of picturesque harbors seemed to pick up pace. Quite apart from the considerable Indian influence in Fiji, a number of the resorts on the lovely small islands that dot its waters were owned by ex-pats, and resembled in no small or accidental way the resorts featured in Conde Nast’s Traveler.

From Fiji to Vanuatu, where, as readers may recall, the patterns of life seem to have not changed since the late 1800s. From there we jump-shifted to the purely Western port of Cairns, Australia, and then back in time to the tiny Banda Islands and then Ambon. We've written previously about the Banda Islands -- removed in time and distance, and still ambling along in the wake of centuries of colonial occupation. The market there is seemingly unchanged from a market of yesteryear ... the local dive shop is run out of an abandoned hotel lobby by a local, using a government start-up grant. No gentrification there.

Market street in Bandaneira, Banda Islands

Ambon is a city, pure and simple -- dirty streets, worn buildings, a commercial port, and one small storefront business after another. We didn't see another westerner there. Nice two-room houses butted up against tarpaper shacks and open sewer rivulets. No gentrification.

A main street in busy Ambon

After Ambon, we spent a few days in the tiny remote village of Wailamung on the northeast coast of Flores -- about 1500 people mostly living off the land, a contrast to the sea-based subsistence living we've seen throughout the Pacific. The waters of Indonesia are, sadly, heavily fished out, and even now, desperate locals take to using dynamite and cyanide (!) to shock/poison the few remaining reef fish.

Tuesday market by the beach in Wailamung, Flores

We arrived on a Sunday, and happened on the annual village-to-village contest/celebration with Wailamung and an adjacent village -- soccer and volleyball games, a big feast, and music and dancing to dawn ... I was treated as a visiting guest of honor as they conducted the opening ceremonies for the soccer match -- conducted on a scraggy field and bamboo goals ... the players wore their uniforms proudly, even if the ball refused to travel in a straight line across the goat-cropped pitch. I noted with a smile that the battery-operated stereo system blared out the theme to the recent South African-hosted World Cup as the players took the field. Details matter.

The feast took a lot of preparation; men butchered three sea turtles -- again, exceptions to the general ban on hunting these animals are made for local peoples who have depended on them for food for generations. The women were busy screening, washing, and cooking the rice in huge pots over woodstick fires, and the children ran around as they usually do when adults are busy preparing the meal.  See here for a video summary of the day.

Cleaning the turtles for the Sunday village feast

After the time spent in the village of Waiulamung, I realized that since leaving Cairns in mid-May, with a passing exception at Thursday Island, where the Torres Strait island people dominated, we really hadn't seen any western influence or westerners. In fact, since leaving Thursday Island, we hadn't even seen any sail boats!

However, we encountered a few sailboats as we approached arriving Labuan Bajo on the western coast of Flores, adjacent to the marine park that protects Komodo Island and its many tiny island neighbors, and, once ashore, we no longer wondered where the westerners in Indonesia went.

Main Street in Lambuan Bajo, Flores

Wham. Here's where they all are -- the waterfront is as dusty and ramshackle as we've seen, but we're in the midst of a genuine gentrification program here. At least 6 dive shops, small and not-so--small restaurants, usually on the second floor to overlook the harbor (and sit above the local's corrugated-tin-roof shacks that line the trash-strewn, rocky waterfront), and lots of small souvenir shops run by locals. The street (only one road) is under construction -- widening, as well as a sidewalk of sorts -- and there's a commercial buzz in the air. The Lonely Planet says this town is aiming to be the "next big thing" and it seems that if money talks, it's on its way. Located just a few short miles from dozens of the world's best diving and snorkeling sites, and islands that still feature the near-mythical Komodo Dragon, as well as hosts of other flora and fauna, this town seems well-positioned for that kind of future.

Boats alongside in Labuan Bajo

I don't begrudge them that future; I do hope the ex-pats that seem to run the resorts and dive shops and restaurants engage in the welfare of the local community; there remains a deep poverty throughout Indonesia, especially if one ventures just a block off the main street. I do appreciate the western meal and bread, and the reliable internet access. As I write this, I can even find myself tapping my feet to the sounds of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," as it blares out on the wall-mounted Bose speakers. 60s music -- the sign of an island ex-pat!

But I am also looking forward to weighing anchor, now that the official port formalities are complete, our western appetites sated, and our emails up to date. In a few days we sail an hour west of here, and spend a week or so exploring the natural attractions that have led to this small fishing port's recent and ongoing development. I wish them well, and hope that the additional tourist traffic that both encourages and results from such development neither damages the environment nor the dreams, aspirations, and welfare of the local Indonesians. Time will tell.

Looking west from our anchorage
as a local boat returns to Labuan Bajo, Flores

Inventory

With just the two of us on board, we sail the boat safely on our overnight passages by alternating watches: Jennifer handles the 6pm - 10pm watch, I come up for the 10pm to 2am watch, and she closes out the night from 2am to 6am.  I have a hard time sleeping when the sun is up, so it works well.  One of the natural byproducts of this watch schedule is that we each have blocks of time to ourselves.  Many of the blog postings I've written are conceived on the night watch, and on one of our recent sails, I again found myself reflecting in the solitude of an open ocean, a clear night sky, and a brisk following wind.

One of the ways I pass the time on night watches is to reflect on things I've done and not done, places I've been and want to visit, and people I've stayed close to, and those who have drifted away.

Several years ago, one of my dearest friends took her own life, and devastated a vast network of family and close friends.  Our friendship spanned 30 years; the memories of my dear friend arise often in the context of my night watch reflections, and led to this poem.


Inventory

Having lost count of the stars in the sky,
I spend my night watches taking inventory:
Recollection, regrets, recriminations, lists
Of places I meant to visit, or did, of lovers,
Of ports and passages, tugging apart
The fabric, pulling one thread to find another.

Memories yield to others:  the Cabo marina
Jumps north to your summer house in Wellfleet,
And then south to Key West and from there
You disappear, into the night sky.

I try again, this time recalling cities I mean to visit
And each list becomes the cities we never visited.
On another night, musical lists, and one song
Leads to another, and then you re-appear,
Leaning against the bar, like you'd never left.

After the concert, you left for good,
Having taken inventory and found life lacking,
As if leaving forever might complete your list.
But those around you, who loved you,
Stare at galaxies, lose count of stars,
Make lists that always bring you back.





Earlier poems here:    Banda Squalls    Austral Winter   Again and Again   Distance   Aftermath    Runes    Date Line  Celebrant    The God I Asked    If I Were A Boat  Weather Reports 

Banda Squalls

Each sub-culture has its own internal sub-sub cultures. Musician? Bassist, drummer, or guitarist? Soccer? Field or goalie? Like to read? Novels or non-fiction? Each sub-sub-culture spawns narrower categories. Rock or jazz? Attacker or defender? Modern or historical? In sailing, I can think of several first-order categories: day sailor or overniter? racer or cruiser? monohull or catamaran? with each having its own sub-sub categories.

I was moved to reflect on sub-cultures within sub-cultures while being pelted by driving rain, my foul-weather gear snapping in a 30 knot wind, and our little boat pounding up and down 4-6 foot swells as we sailed southwestward from Ambon to the Nusa Tenggara islands that delineate Indonesia's east-to-west southern border. South of these islands lies the Indian Ocean; north lies the Banda Sea. We were slogging it out on a close reach in the Banda Sea - the wind coming over our port bow, and seas surging up through the netting that separates our two hulls on the foredeck.

Here's the dirty little secret of our circumnavigation so far: not only have we used the auto-pilot to steer our craft for days on end, relying on our hands only when we make the final approach to an anchorage, but we have been sailing almost exclusively downwind - as gentlemen are wont to do. We're following the centuries-old clipper ship routes - ships that were notoriously unwieldy when the wind was forward of the beam.

We left the Banda Islands on a northwest downwind run to Ambon - we needed to check in with immigration, etc., and official Indonesian ports of entry are few and far between. Unfortunately, this meant we needed to make a rare southwest sail when we left Ambon for Nusa Tenggara - sailing at right angles to the southeast tradewinds that prevail in these latitudes. Worse, the seas, which are created by the wind energy, also run SE-to-NW, so we'd be running abeam of them as well.

All good, but then we hit a large patch of nasty squalls - one after another, and suddenly the gentleman-like notion of sailing downwind using an autopilot went out the window. So - back to the sub-cultures of sailing: there are those who race, and those who cruise. Racers tend to optimize their sails by the moment; cruisers by the day, voyagers by the passage. A racer is attuned to the small shifts of wind that can mean the difference between first and last; the cruiser just wants to have fun, and the voyager just wants to arrive safely.

Day sailors have the weekends - they may lack the time or ambition for long passages or overnight cruises, but they learn to make the most of the day's weather - rain or shine, calm or windy, they manage their sails and rudder to the conditions at hand. The day sailor just wants to make it back to the marina in one piece, having experienced the thrill - or boredom -- of the day's weather and sea conditions.

Cruisers tend to set their sails and hope for the best; they tend to favor waters with predictable winds and weather, and can talk endlessly about whether to risk everything by venturing out in anything less than perfect weather. When we were passing through the Bahamas, we'd hear these cruisers discuss whether or not to make the 30 mile trip to another island because of a chance of rain. No problem - if life moves that slow, then why not sit it out for another day?

Voyagers, the fourth category, tend to look at the weather too, but tend to have a higher threshold for any decision to postpone or re-route. Squalls OK, cyclones not OK. I'd put us in this category , and in that spirit, we left Ambon after a fine Indonesian lunch at the Hotel Tirta Kencana, which had hosted us for a few days, raised our sail to the second reef position (we just want to cross the finish line), and left the island behind. Secure the sheets, set the autopilot, and basically watch out for unlit fishing boats.

A day or so later, we were forced to adjust our strategy ... in effect, to shift from a voyager sub-culture to a day sailing culture  ... and even, God forbid, to the racing sub-culture. We entered an area of squalls, and circumstances dictated that we dust off our little-used sailing skills to actually sail upwind, adjusting our course regularly to account for the shifting winds associated with these squalls. One squall would approach - we'd see it on radar, as well with our eyes -- a slightly-more-gray smudge on the horizon - and the winds would drop briefly to 15 knots or so, shift 20-30 degrees, and then, at some magical transition point, the winds would pick up to 25 knots or more, with pelting rain. Calm, squall, calm, squall ... repeat repeat repeat.

We weren't racing, but we were called upon to deploy a more immediate feedback loop between sail, rudder, wind, and waves than we've been used to on this long voyage. It's more tiring to be sure, but it's the price to pay for visiting the many smaller ports and islands on the Nusa Tenggara coast. No one said it would be downwind sailing all the way around the world, but we were getting used to it.

To date, the weather on our circumnavigation has been dreamlike - with just a few exceptions, we've had blue skies, following winds and relatively calm seas. The last twelve hours have reminded us of the alternative - gray skies, blustery winds, and a choppy ocean. Many friends who spent cyclone season in New Zealand faced these kinds of conditions for days on end as they sailed south from Fiji and Tonga - each were relieved to have arrived safely, and a few vowed never to do it again. For me, it's been a useful reminder of our fortune, for one, as well as the need to remain vigilant when we leave Indonesia for the less-predictable Indian Ocean.

The winds have abated enough to permit me to write this, and the skies ahead are tinged with blue; it seems as if the weather system that brought us wind and rain is moving off the northeast, pulled along by the tradewinds. We continue to head southwest, under engine as now the wind, typically and ironically, has completely died. But that's sailing for most people - we've been lucky on this downwind voyage of ours. It's hard to imagine a few hours ago we were holding on for dear life, worried about our sails and hearing the slamming of the waves against our hulls. I've penned a short poem about the experience, included below.

It's nice to know that the sub-cultures of sailors permit re-entry - and that we're still able to recall the skills and attitudes of our racing and day sailing brethren, who learn to take the weather as it comes. And if we do enough of this voyaging, and see more of these weather interruptions, we might just be considered for the ultimate rank of a sailor -- that of master mariner - one who spends his or her life voyaging. One of the books on board refers to this vaunted status by recalling the epitaph of one Captain Augustus N. Littlefield, who died in 1878, and is buried in the Common Burying Ground in Newport, Rhode Island: "An experienced and careful master mariner who never made any call upon underwriters for any loss."

A life to aspire to, but for now, let's just cross this Banda Sea and make a safe landfall and anchorage on Nusa Tenggara.


Banda Squalls

Last night you were pissed off,
Your shirt wrinkled, body roly-poly,
Sputtering froth and foam, slapping me
Sideways, picking me up, and dropping me hard.

After all we've been through, I deserve better.
But I know enough to expect anything different,
So I did what I always do when you come at me:
I time my moves, slide down your back as you lift me,

Turn away from your curling fists,
Duck my head when you spit at me,
Ride your punches, ignore your growls,
Grip the wheel, and keep my boat moving,
Sailing to a blue sky just beyond this darkness.