Lovina Bali to Kumi Borneo

When Dorothy flew back to Bali, I hired a car and driver to go pick her up at Kuta a town a few miles from the airport.  Swannies crew shared the car with us making the 3 hour drive more fun. The car and driver costs $45 and we split that between us and Swannie.  It is safer to use an Indonesian driver than drive yourself especially if you have an accident, as it is always your fault. 
We looked around Kuta a bit after picking up Dorothy and saw a fabulous beach, and some western type food products at the Bali Deli.  Then did a brief stop in Ubud another tourist town.  I can now see why people fly to Bali for a resort holiday.  It is a different world on the South end of Bali.  this one small area is not like the rest of Indonesia where we have spent the last two months.  It is more expensive, much cleaner and really geared up for the tourist . Lots of fancy hotels and great cleaned up beaches.  lot more vans and SUV's here, the rest of Indonesia rides scooters and small motorbikes mostly.
The last day before we left we hired another car and driver with the Kelli and Chad of Just Magic and toured around a bit more. Looked around Ubud a bit more and did a nice hike up a small road through some farm land and into a back entrance to Ubud where we met our driver.  Then to a coffee plantation and then another temple site and park area where we got another good walk in.
That night the rally put on a dinner for us at a local pub on the beach.  This is the first event we have attended since Kupang.

After more than two weeks in Lovina the time has come to pull up the anchor and leave.  Our next major stop is the Kumai River Kalimantan province of Southern Borneo.  We planned to stop at Rass island 70 miles away for a rest, so left at 2PM to do an overnight sail.  After motoring for 2.5 hours a nice breeze came up and we were soon sailing along nicely.  By dark the SW wind had increased to much more than we needed and soon had 2 reefs in the main. The seas got unusually rough after a few hours and occasionally a big breaking wave would throw us over on our side with large splashes of water in the cockpit.
We ended up making much better time than planned and got to Rass Island by 4AM so decided to just keep going and not waste a fair wind. We passed to the West of Rass and headed for Bawean Island 120 miles away. 
We had not been looking forward to the overnight passages on this section, as we have heard about all the fishing boats and unlite fishing platforms out after dark making for difficult overnighters. Also heavy ship traffic.  From Lovina to Rass there were lots of these fishing platforms made of bamboo and anchored to the bottom in deep water.  We did not hit any jut through good luck. We saw a number of ships on AIS as well and called up one that was close to a collision course, but it never answered  so I but on the engine to speed up a bit to clear him. After Rass we saw much more fishing boat traffice. The ones with the dim single light were difficult to deal with as you  could not tell if they were 200 meters away or 2 miles away, and they do not show up on the radar.  I turned on our radar during the night. At one point I turned the radar from the 1 mile range  to 2 mile range ( 2 miles per range ring or 12 miles across screen) yikes, there was dozens of  targets, so I switched back to the 1 mile range as I did not want to think about those targets that would mostly go by us without a problem.  There was enough to worry about close by.  Late in night I heard a small bang and snap beside our hull and figured we must have grazed one of the unlite fish traps that are everywhere.  These are 3 or 4 thick bamboo poles lashed togheather with a small tree branch sticking up so they can see them in daylight. But glad we were sailing  otherwise could get a rope in prop or a bent prop from the rafts, we were not worried about the steel boat.
We arrived saftely at Bawean Island by 8:30am very tired and dropped anchor in 35 ft at 05 43.754   112 39.990.  It is a easy anchorage to enter and lots of room. We anchored further out than needed to keep away from bugs and locals. I had picked up a cold yesterday and feeling rotten so we decided to stay another day here and then get a very early start for Kumai.  Later we had a laugh as the muslim call to prayers came on over the amplified speakers they always use.  There was 3 different ones from different areas of the village and being out on the water we could here them all as they all overlapped and each singing something different making for real noise, especially since one of them had a bad singer.
After 2 nights here and feeling much better we set out to do the 180 miles to Kumi.  We left at 3AM motoring for awhile with a few fish boats either side of us, but not a problem.  The rest of the way we did not see many fish boats, just a few ships.
     During the day a 100ft wood fishing vessel altered course to approach us.  As he got closer he turned as though he wanted to come up along side.  I quickly rolled in head sail and started engine and then turned hard to port and steered around the back of him and then just kept going away from him.  He then went back on his course and kept going.  Things like this always make you think of pirates when no other boats are in sight.  I think he maybe wanted to bum some stuff off us or was just curious, but it would be dangerouse to let him get to close in the big seas.
   By 4::30 pm we arrived at the mouth of the Kumi River in Southern Borneo Indonesia.  We dropped anchor in 12ft at 02 53.820S   111 42.141E.   The wind got up for a couple of hours and made the anchorage a bit bouncy.  If you cant make the Kumi river before dark, some boats anchored anywhere along the west side of the point of land leading into the Kumi anywhere up to about 30 miles back, just behind the light at the point.
Tomorrow we will head 2 hours up the river to the town of Kumi.  We just heard on the radio from Just Magic that they had booked us on a 3 day jungle trip to see the jungle and famous orangatangs with 2 other yachts.