We made it. We “sailed” the 920 nautical miles from Darwin to Medana Bay Marina in Lombok, Indonesia. Sail is in quotes because we really only sailed half the time. We mean that quite literally. While our sail began on a glorious beam reach with 15 knots of wind it soon became clear that this was just a tease. The wind quickly dissipated and did not return until day 4 of our 6 day passage. Once the wind decided to grace us with its presence it was quite lovely. We had a fairly consistent breeze of 12 to 15 knot blowing from our stern. We took full advantage of the following wind with a wing on wing sail plan — genoa poled out to port and our main winged out to starboard. We were flying for a few days between 7-8 knots. Life was good until it wasn’t. Toward the end of day 5 — during our watch change at 2 AM — we noticed that a critical piece of our whisker pole had come undone (more on that below) and that put an end to our prodigious downwind sail. 😢
Still, as sails go, this one was largely unremarkable. And unremarkable — particularly after our epic sail up the Queensland coast of Australia where almost every critical system on our boat failed at some point — is what we were going for. That is not to say that our voyage was devoid of adventure. We had enough (thank you) but mostly the drama free kind even if it added some spice to our passage.
We will start with the cool stuff and go from there. Top award in this category goes to the bioluminescence we saw on day 5 during the early part of the night watch before the moon rose and the sky was dark. The bioluminescence in the water made it look as though we were sailing through the Milky Way with creamy patches of water, against an otherwise black sea, that twinkled with bright blue-green lights. Though we often say that on our best sailing days we feel like we are on a magic carpet swooshing though the sky, that visual took little imagination as our boat’s smooth wake gave the ocean that splash of milk look and the pin head sized lights became stars that danced in the water. Apparently, bioluminescence is very common in Indonesia due to its nutrient dense waters. The microscopic organisms in these waters emit a light when disturbed and the movement of our boat was all that was needed to activate the reaction. At any rate, the display is quite stunning and had us mesmerized. Also in this category was that Dax caught his first fish. It was a mid-sized tuna and he got it up on the boat. Unfortunately, as he was picking the fish up it wiggled off the hook on to the deck (creating a bit of a mess in the process) and it was pushed off the boat into the water so it could continue to live until, perhaps, caught again. Jill was napping during Dax’s inaugural fishing effort and only woke up at the tail end when spray from the hose cleaning the deck created misty sprinkles that dropped down on Jill through her open hatch. She thought it was raining and was about to close the hatch when she poked her head out and learned about Dax’s catch.
In the challenging category there was a tie for first place: avoiding FADs and drastically altering our sail plan at 2 AM during the changing of the “guard” due to a whisker pole failure. “FADs” are fishing aggregation devises that are scattered across the ocean in Indonesia waters. FADs are designed to attract tuna, mackerel, and other pelagic fish, which tend to gather around floating or submerged structures. Offshore FADs in Indonesia are often made from large plastic barrels which are anchored in place. Below the surface, ropes or palm fronds are suspended to create shade and structure for fish. These FADs are not lit at night, don’t appear on official charts, can be placed miles off shore and are dark and semi submerged making them difficult to see, especially in rough seas or at night. Indonesia has thousands of these along both coasts, especially in tuna fishing areas. One study estimated that there might be up to 50,000 unlicensed anchored FADs in Indonesian waters. As you can imagine, they’ve become a serious navigational hazard for cruising sailboats like ours. Running over one could break a rudder or cause a rudder to get tangled in a mess of ropes. We were fortunate that we had no close encounters with any FADs (at least not to our knowledge 😀) but other boats in the fleet did and knowing that they were out there — particularly during the night — kept us on high alert.
Unfortunately, the whisker pole situation, created a very urgent situation that we had to contend with at an inopportune time. Jill typically covers the night watch from 10 PM – 2 AM and Zack relieves her at the end of her shift. When Zack came above deck to begin his watch on day 6 he used a flashlight to inspect our tackle. This is something he often does so he can catch a failure early, hopefully before it causes significant damage. As he flashed the light on our whisker pole he noticed that it was swinging excessively when it should be relatively stable, held in place by guy lines that run from the outboard end of the pole to the deck. For the non-sailors among you, a whisker pole is a removable boom that attaches to our mast. We extend it out away from the mast to one of the sides and then attach our head sail to it during a sail downwind, preventing the sail from collapsing or flopping. We then extend our boom to the other side of the boat creating a “wing-on-wing” configuration (head sail on one side of the boat and main on the other), greatly enhancing the performance of our very heavy boat when the winds are coming from behind us. At any rate, when Zack saw the whisker pole swinging he knew something was amiss and, after some deliberation, he realized that we really had no choice but to to disengage our genoa from the pole and put the pole back in its place on the mast. This is no easy feat at 2 AM. Very strict about our safety protocols, Zack had to don his PFD and go forward on the bow, attaching himself to the jacklines to ensure he didn’t go overboard. Jill had to furl the genoa and steer the boat. When it came time to use our halyard to lift the pole and reposition it on the mast we woke up our strapping nephew Dax. He missed most of the excitement but he was a huge help during this critical part of the operation when we really needed 2 people on the bow. (Don’t worry mom and dad — we made sure that Dax was clipped into the jacklines at all times though he didn’t need too much encouragement, assuring us that safety was his priority too. Or, in his exact words “I don’t want to die.” Guess our stories about people falling overboard and dying when we gave him his safety briefing were effective.) End-to-end, the whole process took us about 30 minutes. And, of course, these things never happened during daylight! When the sun came up and Zack was able to examine the end of the whisker pole he discovered the root cause of the problem. One of the dyneema loops on the end of the pole that the guy lines attach to broke so the pole was no longer secured to the deck in 2 places — forward and aft of the pole. In the end, though the situation definitely gave us an early morning adrenaline rush, it was certainly not the worst boat part failure we have endured. (Not even close.). The real significance was that we could no longer deploy our highly successful wing on wing sail plan which caused our speed to drop considerably and forced us to use our motor more that we would have like during the last 1 1/2 days of our passage. 😢
In the challenging category we also have to give honorable mention to the art of playing chicken with large ferries during the night. This occurred during the final 90 nautical miles of our passage when we steered our boat through the Alas Strait which separates the eastern side of Lombok from the western side of the adjacent island of Sumbawa. About a third of the way through the passage we had to transverse a ferry crossing with fast ferries (we counted about 6 of them) coming from both direction about 5 – 10 minutes apart. “Playing chicken” is a bit of hyperbole because the fact of the matter is that large ferries don’t want to collide with us any more than we want to collide with them so both parties use caution when crossing paths on a navigation route. Still, navigating through this crossing is a bit like threading the need and moving at just the right speed that will allow you to cross safely in front of or in back of the fast moving ferry. Of course, this too, had to happen at night! We decided our best course of action was to keep steady and be predictable. As we mentioned above, these ferries really don’t want to hit us — it’s not a good day for anyone when that happens — so if the ferry captain understood our speed and heading they could set a course that would allow us to avoid a collision if we both continued at the same speed on the same trajectory. Since we are writing this blog entry you already know that we made it through the channel unscathed.
We arrived at Medana Bay Marina in Lombok at around 8 AM on Monday, September 15. After a multi-day passage we are usually fairly tired but thanks to the addition of our new crew member, Dax, we were relatively well rested. He’s not doing solo night watches yet but he was able to relieve Zack at 6 AM which meant that Jill could sleep without concern until at least 8 AM and Zack could go back to sleep for a siesta. Between being able to get 5-6 solid hours of sleep and our supplementary naps, we were able to stayed relatively charged. This was great because our agenda for our first day was boat cleaning and laundry. We arrived a day before customs and immigration were scheduled to arrive at the marina for clearances so we could go to shore but we could not leave the marina property. We figured getting our boat chores out of the way on Monday would be a great use of our time and we could then have the better part of 3 days for some sight-seeing fun.
As always, we crammed a lot in those three days. On Tuesday (September 16), after clearing in with immigration and customs, we went to visit the nearby Lombok Wildlife Park. The Wildlife Park is a small but mighty park that prioritizes animal well-being and education above entertainment. Some of the animals live loose in the park while others requiring socialization are let out of their enclosures for extended periods of time for interactive sessions. The park had a nice array of animals ranging from birds to snakes, crocodiles and other reptiles, elephants, pigmy hippos, otters, deer, sun bears, monkeys and orangutans. As we walked through the park very well informed rangers guided us from one area to the next, placing food in our hands so we could feed various animals and also inviting us to have an up close encounter with some of their resident snakes and birds. It was a great, low key, way to spend the partial day, allowing us to ease into the local activities.
On Wednesday (September 17) we joined the World ARC Rally organized tour. The tour was really a potpourri of activities designed to give us a taste of Lombok. We visited a few local markets (very similar to the markets we visited throughout Southeast Asia) as well as the Islamic Center Mosque, referred to as the “Grand Mosque” by locals. It is located in the biggest city within Lombok, Mataram, and is the largest mosque on Lombok, serving as the principal mosque on the island as well as a cultural hub for the Muslim community. As part of the tour we enjoyed lunch at a very simple local restaurant on the beach. As is often the case, you can’t let the no frills structure deceive you. We were treated to a large array of local dishes (including several that were vegan though the grilled silver snapper dusted with garlic and paprika and served whole was definitely not one of them 🐟). All the dishes were beautifully prepared with aromatic local spices. It was a true delight.
On Thursday, we organized our own private tour. The highlights were a visit to another local market, strolling through a traditional village, hiking to the Sandang Gile and Tim Kelep waterfalls (aside from their majestic beauty we enjoyed the added adventure of trudging through the river to get to the second of the two falls and then getting caught in a downpour when we arrived), and stopping for lunch at the Rinjani Lodge, with commanding views of Mount Rinjani and the surrounding valley. But the best part of the day wasn’t an official part of the tour. As we were driving to one of our activities, we ran into a wedding procession that was just getting organized. Our driver pulled over and we were able to watch as the wedding party pulled instruments out of a mobile music cart and organized the procession with young men in the front, followed by the bride who was on an elevated seat held up by bamboo poles which rested on the shoulders of the men who carried her and finally, with what appeared to be the similar of our “flower girl” and “ring bearer” custom, three young (~ age 5) and incredibly adorable children — each carried on an elevated seat similar to the bride — brought up the rear. As the procession sashayed its way down the street there were lots of smiles, music and dancing. The one thing missing was the groom. Our guide explained that the wedding party was headed towards the bride’s home where the groom would be waiting. Per tradition, the wedding procession begins 1 kilometer or more away from the bride’s home where the marriage ceremony will take place. It was such a treat to observe this tradition. Apparently, weddings don’t typically occur on a Thursday morning so we were very fortunate to have one on our path. A picture of the procession is the feature photo for this blog entry.
As always, we like to share our observations about the places we visit and provide some context with a brief overview of the countries politics, economy and/or religion. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state, the 14th largest country by area and the 4th most populous country. This really surprised us. Though we could see on the map that Indonesian islands cover a large geographic area, we were not aware of the population density per square mile. It is also the largest economy in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is predominantly Muslin with almost 90% of its population identifying as being a part of that religion. Interestingly, Indonesian Islam is more moderate, pluralistic, and tolerant than the Islam practiced in many Middle Eastern countries. This is in large part due to Indonesia’s history of blending Islam with diverse local cultures and traditions and the influence of Indonesian Islamic organizations that promote tolerance and religious pluralism. (Still, they never missed that 5:00 AM call to prayer — amplified by a loud speaker — which served as our wake up call every morning.) Politically, Indonesia is a democracy though, like Singapore, freedoms are constrained by strict laws governing defamation, blasphemy, and online speech. Finally, economically, despite being the largest economy in Southeast Asian, the benefits have not trickled down through society as well as in countries like Vietnam and Thailand. Many in Indonesia still live near the poverty line, particularly in rural areas, and corruption is fairly high.
Lombok is generally a representative slice of Indonesia, though it is less diverse and less developed than some of the other islands like Bali and Java, and it struggles with infrastructure and service gaps. This was really evident to us when we compared our experience in the rural areas we visited in Thailand and Vietnam with Lombok. The markets were less vibrant and bountiful and the housing much more primitive. The homes were often largely open air structures. We were also struck by the amount of trash (e.g., plastic water bottles, food containers and wrapper, etc.) strewn on the streets and across the beaches — an indication of sanitation services not meeting population needs? Finally, we observed a very disturbing cultural norm involving smoking among young children (~ age 10). We certainly observed a greater percentage of the populations in Thailand and Vietnam smoking vs. in the USA but not among school-age children. Is that an artifact of Lombok’s public health gaps? All that said, we found the people of Lombok welcoming, warm, curious and engaging. In addition, though the trash marred some of the island’s natural beauty, it is an island of stunning contrast: lovely sandy beaches, tall volcanic mountains, lush forests and quiet villages. We were fortunate to experience all of that during our three days of exploration.
We can’t write a blog entry without a mention of food! As you know, food plays an important role in the Che Figata crew’s enjoyment of any travel experience. You will be glad to know that we had some amazing meals, starting with our featured breakfast and dinner selections during our passage and continuing with some spectacular dinners out in Lombok. On the boat our breakfast highlights included avocado toast topped with feta and mushrooms sautéed in olive oil with minced garlic, chia seed pudding parfait with layered blueberries, strawberries, bananas and raspberries and Jill’s veggie forward tofu scramble with onions, red peppers, garlic and mushrooms and topped with cheddar cheese, hot sauce and cashew lime crema. Dinners on board included many of the Che Figata crew favorites: Vegan Caesar salad with house made dressing and croutons (topped with miso, soy, honey, ginger and garlic glazed salmon for the non-vegans), cheesy black bean and vegetable fajita burritos topped with salsa and cashew lime crema, black bean jackfruit chili topped with avocado and cheddar cheese (served over macaroni noodles), pasta smothered in marina and topped with “meatballs” made with impossible burgers (a wonderful Melissa Clark NYT recipe) and Mongolian tofu served over thick rice noodles. Off the boat we particularly enjoyed our dinners at Tugu Resort and Oberoi Resort. We savored classic Indonesian dishes heavy on curry and rich coconut cream based sauces at both resorts. An added bonus was that we were able to meet up with the Szel crew, Jaime and Fiona, at the Oberoi. They are fellow participants of the first half of the World ARC rally who broke off from the group in French Polynesia. We stayed in touch and were delighted to hear that we would overlap in Lombok. It’s always such a treat to be united with fellow cruisers who you just click with and we definitely place Jaime and Fiona in that category. We had a lot of fun catching up.
As we put the final touches on this blog entry we are getting ready to set sail for Christmas Island. With the predicted favorable sailing conditions (🤞) we should be there in about 4 days. After a brief 48 hour stay there we will be off the Cocos Keeling. Our next blog entry will cover the two part sail to Cocos Keeling as well as the adventures of the Che Figata crew at both stops. But before we sign off, 2 more notes about our voyage thus far. The first is about Dax. We are thrilled, but not surprised, about what a great addition he has been to the crew. We’ve already mentioned how he has contributed to our ability to get sleep on passages. It’s also been nice to have him to help with sail adjustments. Before Dax (we think we will start to measure our experiences as BD and AD!), Jill was both the FT cook, bottle washer and first mate. If she was not cooking and cleaning she was helping Zack change our sail plan or on a watch herself. It left her with little down time to just decompress. With Dax as our first mate, it better balanced the Che Figata chores and that makes life more pleasant for everyone. Finally, the unanticipated benefit, is how nice it is to have a young “brain” aboard the boat. Dax has become our “go to” if we can’t find something. Whether it’s our glasses, cell phones, iPads or some boat gadget, Dax is Johnny on the spot knowing exactly where we have left things. It’s like having a human AirTag on all our stuff. We just hope the endless “Dax, have you seen my [fill in the blank]” doesn’t become too tiresome. 😀
Second, and finally, we were assigned our number for the second half of the rally. We are number 37. Always looking for some cosmic sign that brings meaning to the random assignment, we Googled the number to understand its significance. We learned that the number 37 holds significance across various fields, including mathematics, where it is a prime number with unique properties like being the first irregular prime. More importantly, in numerology and spirituality, it can symbolize the connection between divine and human realms and represent wisdom, creativity, power, fame, and charisma. We are not sure how to synthesize that into something relevant to our circumnavigation but we like the suggestion of a close connection with the divine (we’ve wished for divine intervention more than once during our passages) as well as the power of the positive traits associated with the number. They will serve us well as a critical back up when we work through the inevitable boat issues, can’t solve them ourselves and are unable to summon up assistance from the sailing gods. (If you can’t fix something on your own and the gods won’t help it’s good to possess traits that make others want to help you!) We are going with that.
We are 90 minutes from the start of the sail to Christmas Island and still have some chores do so we are signing off for now. We will be back at you in a few weeks when we conclude the Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling portion of our world tour!
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