Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Kumi and the Orangatangs and to Belitong Island
At first light the next morning we rode a one knot tidal current up the river. To get from the Kumai river delta to the mouth of the river we followed the waypoints below. After you enter the main river the water is deeper and you can move around the river somewhat, no channel. We arrived at the anchorage of the town of Kumai after 2 hours and anchored in 50 ft at 02 44.371S 111 43.953E
We took the dinghy to go ashore but there is no where to land as is it all commercial, no beach. But you can tie up at Henrys who runs most of the Kumai river tours. Need to ask someone where it is. People who booked there jungle tours back in Lovina Bali paid twice as much as those of us who booked them locally in Kumi. We paid 1,050,000RP or just over a $100 for the 3 day trip, one of the best spent $100 ever. There are a lot of operators and boats, no need to book in Lovina and even those that booked with Henry got a better price in Kuami..
The town of Kumai has many large apartment style buildings that are actually giant bird houses to house swallows for bird nest soup for the Chinese, and is big business here. We explored the town some and it had a little different flavor to it and seemed more Muslim than others. It is not a tourist town and was like many of the down and dirty towns we have visited. There are ATM machines here now and we got some more Indonesian cash. There is a BNI bank just 10 minutes from where we left our dinghy and a market a few minutes beyond that.
We are booked to go on a three day jungle trip up a branch of the Kumai river and see the famous Orangutans and jungle. There is 8 of us off four Yachts. Just Magic, Nuka Lofa, Sharita and ourselves. The old fashioned looking wooden boat is about 40ft long and 10 feet wide and 2 levels high. The 4 man crew lives below and the upper or top deck is ours for the 3 days.
We are picked up at our boats at 9:30am, an hour late and at the same time a boat boy is dropped off to stay on the boat to look after it while we are gone. Sometimes large islands of grass come down the river and can dislodge your boat from its anchor, and they protect against theft as well. You lock the boat up and the boat boy sleeps in the cockpit and food is brought out to him.
Our boat crew consists of a female cook, boat skipper/helmsmen, a deckhand and our guide who speaks passable english. They all work together to look after us. We motored up the river at a sedate 5 or 6 knots and stopping along the way to look at birds and long nose monkeys swinging in the trees, also pass the occasional crocodile. Over the 3 days we stopped at 3 different feeding stations where you walk for 20 minutes or so into the jungle to where a platform is set up and food is put out for the orangutans. They are fantastic to watch. We saw some along the trails and others high up in the trees near the feeding platforms waiting for the food. They swing from tree to tree not like regular monkeys as they are too big. They climb up a tree until high enough that their body weight bends the tree enough that they can grab the next tree and go like this from tree to tree. They do a lot of funny things and are very intelligent.
We watched one dominant male, bigger than all the rest sitting high up in a tree. A female came on the platform and suddenly the male descended the tree at a unbelievable rate of speed and grabbed the female by the leg as she started to run from platform and pulled her up to him and proceeded to rape her, though she did not struggle after things started.
The boat crew waited on us hand and foot, cooked our meals, did the dishes, put our beds out each night with a mosquito net around each double mattress and hung from the sun cover. There was a cover on the mattress, but no sheet for ourselves, I just put my rain shell over my shoulders and that was enough. (We are almost on the equator). We all just slept in a row on all the mattresses. These were put away each morning. There was actually very few mosquitoes as we were well into the dry season. There is suppose to be malaria in much of Indonesia. They brought out drinks for us during the day, no alcohol, that we had to bring ourselves. It was all a nice change from boat life on our own boats. We had a nice sing along in the evening tied up to the edge of the river on a small rickety dock, just forest all around us. We were sorry when the trip finally ended as it was a great experience with great company.
We found out our boat boys had mutinied and abandoned our yachts while we were gone. Though all was well on the boats, nothing missing. Nuka lofa had dragged anchor while the crew was with us, but some other yachties rescued it. Adi our trip organizer we heard is bit of a shady character. Probably better to use Henry. but our trip was great do in part to the great 4 man crew on our boat.
We left the following afternoon to anchor again at the mouth of the Kumi river after negotiating a fish net that was strung across most of the river. We had to go near the river bank to get around it and were worried about running aground. Early the next morning we headed our for Belitung 260 miles away which meant 2 nights at sea. While up the river we had our first real rain in 3 months, the season is coming to and end.
We plan to check out of Indonesia in Belitong and then head up to Singapore from there with 2 or 3 stops along the way. The first two days were great sailing with moderate seas and good winds. Then we had to motor the last half of the last night at sea. Also had lots of sheet lighting late that night. I dropped the main sail since we were motoring anyways, in case there was some big wind coming with the lightning. But the big squall was saved for the coming morning. The second day out we passed a very busy shipping lane with more ships than we had ever seen before just past Kalamitan. Two hours later all was quite again with just the odd fish boat around.
The next morning with about 15 miles to go to Belitung, a huge squall came on us. I dropped the sails again and waited as this huge black cloud came down on us, the sea in the distance looked like it was boiling.Then the wind went from zero to about 20 knots and very heavy rain was onto us. We were glad the wind did not come up to bad, but you never know with these big squalls if it is going to be 15 knots or 50 knots. It poured rain for about an hour and a half. This is the first big rain squall we have seen since last year. The wet season is coming for this area and a change in the monsoons.
We got into our anchorage just after the squall passed and another one was coming on our tail with more rain. We used the approach waypoint of 02 31.519S 107 40.539. Then straight into the anchorage to drop anchor at 02 33.093 107 40.572 in 35 feet. Then the rain poured down again with 18 knots blowing off the beach into us.
Navigating into Kumi river:: Cmap and Navionics was farily accurate until you get further up the river then out some. 02 56.92S 111 41.55E , 02 54.23 111 42.52, 02 53.46 111 42.19, 02 51.17 111 43.55, 02 49.83 111 43.48, 02 47.63 111 42.03, 02 47.15 111 42.10 When in river it is deep and can move around it.
We took the dinghy to go ashore but there is no where to land as is it all commercial, no beach. But you can tie up at Henrys who runs most of the Kumai river tours. Need to ask someone where it is. People who booked there jungle tours back in Lovina Bali paid twice as much as those of us who booked them locally in Kumi. We paid 1,050,000RP or just over a $100 for the 3 day trip, one of the best spent $100 ever. There are a lot of operators and boats, no need to book in Lovina and even those that booked with Henry got a better price in Kuami..
The town of Kumai has many large apartment style buildings that are actually giant bird houses to house swallows for bird nest soup for the Chinese, and is big business here. We explored the town some and it had a little different flavor to it and seemed more Muslim than others. It is not a tourist town and was like many of the down and dirty towns we have visited. There are ATM machines here now and we got some more Indonesian cash. There is a BNI bank just 10 minutes from where we left our dinghy and a market a few minutes beyond that.
We are booked to go on a three day jungle trip up a branch of the Kumai river and see the famous Orangutans and jungle. There is 8 of us off four Yachts. Just Magic, Nuka Lofa, Sharita and ourselves. The old fashioned looking wooden boat is about 40ft long and 10 feet wide and 2 levels high. The 4 man crew lives below and the upper or top deck is ours for the 3 days.
We are picked up at our boats at 9:30am, an hour late and at the same time a boat boy is dropped off to stay on the boat to look after it while we are gone. Sometimes large islands of grass come down the river and can dislodge your boat from its anchor, and they protect against theft as well. You lock the boat up and the boat boy sleeps in the cockpit and food is brought out to him.
Our boat crew consists of a female cook, boat skipper/helmsmen, a deckhand and our guide who speaks passable english. They all work together to look after us. We motored up the river at a sedate 5 or 6 knots and stopping along the way to look at birds and long nose monkeys swinging in the trees, also pass the occasional crocodile. Over the 3 days we stopped at 3 different feeding stations where you walk for 20 minutes or so into the jungle to where a platform is set up and food is put out for the orangutans. They are fantastic to watch. We saw some along the trails and others high up in the trees near the feeding platforms waiting for the food. They swing from tree to tree not like regular monkeys as they are too big. They climb up a tree until high enough that their body weight bends the tree enough that they can grab the next tree and go like this from tree to tree. They do a lot of funny things and are very intelligent.
We watched one dominant male, bigger than all the rest sitting high up in a tree. A female came on the platform and suddenly the male descended the tree at a unbelievable rate of speed and grabbed the female by the leg as she started to run from platform and pulled her up to him and proceeded to rape her, though she did not struggle after things started.
The boat crew waited on us hand and foot, cooked our meals, did the dishes, put our beds out each night with a mosquito net around each double mattress and hung from the sun cover. There was a cover on the mattress, but no sheet for ourselves, I just put my rain shell over my shoulders and that was enough. (We are almost on the equator). We all just slept in a row on all the mattresses. These were put away each morning. There was actually very few mosquitoes as we were well into the dry season. There is suppose to be malaria in much of Indonesia. They brought out drinks for us during the day, no alcohol, that we had to bring ourselves. It was all a nice change from boat life on our own boats. We had a nice sing along in the evening tied up to the edge of the river on a small rickety dock, just forest all around us. We were sorry when the trip finally ended as it was a great experience with great company.
We found out our boat boys had mutinied and abandoned our yachts while we were gone. Though all was well on the boats, nothing missing. Nuka lofa had dragged anchor while the crew was with us, but some other yachties rescued it. Adi our trip organizer we heard is bit of a shady character. Probably better to use Henry. but our trip was great do in part to the great 4 man crew on our boat.
We left the following afternoon to anchor again at the mouth of the Kumi river after negotiating a fish net that was strung across most of the river. We had to go near the river bank to get around it and were worried about running aground. Early the next morning we headed our for Belitung 260 miles away which meant 2 nights at sea. While up the river we had our first real rain in 3 months, the season is coming to and end.
We plan to check out of Indonesia in Belitong and then head up to Singapore from there with 2 or 3 stops along the way. The first two days were great sailing with moderate seas and good winds. Then we had to motor the last half of the last night at sea. Also had lots of sheet lighting late that night. I dropped the main sail since we were motoring anyways, in case there was some big wind coming with the lightning. But the big squall was saved for the coming morning. The second day out we passed a very busy shipping lane with more ships than we had ever seen before just past Kalamitan. Two hours later all was quite again with just the odd fish boat around.
The next morning with about 15 miles to go to Belitung, a huge squall came on us. I dropped the sails again and waited as this huge black cloud came down on us, the sea in the distance looked like it was boiling.Then the wind went from zero to about 20 knots and very heavy rain was onto us. We were glad the wind did not come up to bad, but you never know with these big squalls if it is going to be 15 knots or 50 knots. It poured rain for about an hour and a half. This is the first big rain squall we have seen since last year. The wet season is coming for this area and a change in the monsoons.
We got into our anchorage just after the squall passed and another one was coming on our tail with more rain. We used the approach waypoint of 02 31.519S 107 40.539. Then straight into the anchorage to drop anchor at 02 33.093 107 40.572 in 35 feet. Then the rain poured down again with 18 knots blowing off the beach into us.
Navigating into Kumi river:: Cmap and Navionics was farily accurate until you get further up the river then out some. 02 56.92S 111 41.55E , 02 54.23 111 42.52, 02 53.46 111 42.19, 02 51.17 111 43.55, 02 49.83 111 43.48, 02 47.63 111 42.03, 02 47.15 111 42.10 When in river it is deep and can move around it.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
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.
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.
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