Withdrawals and Deposits

Introspective meanderings aside, there are times when sailing a boat around the world can, for all its challenges and adventures, just leave you drained.  Today we lie at anchor in the bayside village of Banda Neira, one of 12 villages in the Banda Islands.  We arrived yesterday late morning after a straightforward 7 day downwind sail from Thursday Island, Australia.  As we approached the island, we received our first rain in several months – the ocean-laden  tradewinds hits the small mass of islands, and rain ensues.  We look out our front window onto Gununj Api, an active volcano that last erupted in 1988, and tomorrow we dive the lava flows from that eruption, where magma ran down the hillside and sizzled the ocean.  Alongside our little vessel is the 75-foot or so Gemini, a wood-planked island hopper that waits here for the local fishermen to fill its holds with tuna; once full, they sail to Bali.  Local fishermen can earn 15,000 Rp – the US equivalent of $2.00 – per kilo of fish.  The 3-foot tuna I caught inside the Barrier Reef weighed about 15 kg … but the 6-foot black Marlin I caught weighed about 35 kg … we made 15 meal bags out of that fish.  We understand that the recent rains have made fish scarce in the market, and we plan to give some our fish away to locals that have helped us anchor and get settled in here.

A black marlin ... 6 feet long -- 15 dinners!

Bandaneira fishing boats, tied to the dock

We’re anchored in a bit of an awkward position, squeezed in between Gemini, with its crew of a dozen or so, most using handlines to fish for dinner as they await the Banda tuna fishermen, and a dozen or so local boats – narrow canoes, really, with small outboards or “roostertails” – the James Bond-like engines with a driveshaft extending back into the water.  Behind us is the Hotel Laguna, capably managed by Bang-Bang, who helped us anchor yesterday, along with his friends Hadji – who runs the local dive shop, Eddie, who seems to be everywhere, and quiet Edwin. The hotel has no guests.  We’re the only non-local boat here, and there are only 3 or 4 non-locals on the island, ourselves included.

The sea bottom drops off quickly – our stern, secured by crossing line to palm trees that line the harbor, is in about 10 feet of water.  Our bow – secured with one of our anchors – lies in about 40 feet of water.  Our anchor, just another 45 feet ahead of us, is in about 80 feet of water. Going from shore to 80 feet in about 120 feet of horizontal distance poses an anchoring challenge … since the bottom continues to drop at that rate to 300+ feet just offshore.   Arriving, we made a rookie mistake, and were not prepared adequately for the stern-to anchor requirements of having two lengths of 200-foot line for the stern crossing lines, and I didn’t do a good job in choosing how and where to drop our bow anchor.  In addition, I inadvertently caught one of the local’s mooring buoys in my prop – had to dive and untangle that mess.  As a result, we spent a restless night worrying that we’d swing into the adjoining fishing fleet, and I re-hashed the botch I made of the anchoring.   This morning, we worked with Eddie and Hadji to re-orient ourselves, and I felt a lot better.

Of course, that didn’t last long – I returned to the boat and saw that the display panel of our auto-pilot was fogged up.  I had seen this movie before, in Panama, and then we discovered – after the autopilot stopped working – that water had entered the delicate circuit board enclosure, and in the heat, began to evaporate and fog the display.  I removed the panel, opened it up, and watched a good 2 oz. of water drain out.  Fresh water, so not as bad as it could be, but we’ve had ther air conditioning on for a few hours, the panel sitting on one of the vents, drying it out.  I’ll need to use some silicone to seal it, since the seal is obviously shot.  I hope the leak isn’t in the LCD seal …

In addition to our re-anchoring and de-watering, we were dealing with our watermaker, whose output is running at 60% of specs, and whose water quality is below par.  Those of you taking careful notes for the final exam may recall earlier issues with our watermaker.  We ask a lot of it, and it usually performs, but it is a bit finicky.  Today, I spent 20 minutes on the satellite phone with my new best friend, Neal, at Hybrid Energy in Brisbane – the friendliest and most helpful Aussie I’ve met by several orders of magnitude.  We have a diagnostic game plan but no diagnosis yet.

Finally, on the issue of boat logistics – this is not all surf and sun, folks – we’re trying to fill up our diesel tanks at the Indonesia government price-regulated rate of 0.65 / liter – a far cry from Australia’s free market rate of $1.65/liter.  The small native boat carrying the drums of fuel to this island was scheduled to arrive today – hence the urgency of re-aligning our anchoring job.  It’s not yet arrived, depriving us – and more importantly, the local fishermen – of the chance to refill our tanks.  Maybe tomorrow.

Lots of kids!

In the background are the five-times-daily calls to prayer for the Muslim population, the clamor of kids – “Hey Mister” – and the periodic solicitation for some of this and some of that. Jennifer went for a long walk today through this little town, and while we do a very good job of being polite and greeting folks in the native Bahasan, and are learning phrases, it can be a real mental drain to stay local all the time so we retreat to our boat to catch our breath.

In one of those retreats, as I was completing the diagnostics on the watermaker issue, I was hailed from the dock by Mann, the English teacher in the local school; he’d like me and Jennifer to visit his 14-year-olds who are studying English and give them a brief talk on our voyage … and that puts  all the day-to-day issues in perspective.  I took stock of my situation:  we’re sailing our boat around the world.  How cool is that?   Suddenly, with that simple request,the energy withdrawals of our boat challenges and cultural adventures were replenished –“come tell us about your trip.”   

Pac Mann's school -- publicly financed

We meet him at 8:00 tomorrow morning – in his words, “not island time, real time.”  I’m feeling rejuvenated already.