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Captain's Log:   

What is it like to sail alone through the savage and lawless waters of Indonesia? 

We began our passage through Indonesia in a atmosphere of misinformation, rumours and fear.

The notorious Bugis dominated Indonesian waters for centuries, like Scandinavian Vikings in the ninth
century. The Bugis were fearless sailors. They built magnificent boats, and created a tradition of piracy checked only temporarily by Dutch administrators in the first part of the twentieth century. Bugi people inhabit most of the south eastern islands of Indonesia, and Indonesia is again back at the top of every pirate area danger list. We wanted to go to Bali and reach Singapore and Malaysia and our sailing route took us directly by several Bugis controlled islands, such as Sumbawa and Komodo.

Sailors in Australia marinas regaled us with stories of blatant daylight boardings and boat disappearances. We were daily advised to prepare ourselves for thefts of anything left unlocked on deck and, worse, night boardings by armed gangs with AK47 machine guns. The trial of the perpetrators of the Bali bombing was in process during our time in Australia, and stories of Indonesian or Muslim hatred and violence were published daily in the newspapers and broadcast every night on TV. Warnings of further new or potential terrorist attacks on tourists were issued every few days by the Australian government ( thereby whipping up support for its Afganistan and Iraq war commitments). Some boat insurance companies cancelled marine insurance coverage for Indonesian waters. Tourists were banned from Sumatra because of the Aceh rebellion. In fact, while preparing for our passage, Aceh rebels on Sumatra captured a freighter in the Malacca Strait and held the vessel and crew for ransom from the Malaysian government. Reports of violence and shootings on the Indonesian border with East Timor were frequent. Many of our circumnavigating sailor friends decided to head south to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa thereby avoiding both Indonesia and Red Sea.

We were apprehensive, to say the least, but nevertheless heard enough good reports to stick with our original sail plan, taking us to Timor, Bali, Borneo and then up to Malaysia.

Indonesia is a huge country. We had to sail westwards, crossing the Arafura, Timor, Suva and Flores Seas, just to reach Bali. Then we had to change direction and sail north across the Java Sea and part of the South China Sea to reach Singapore and Malaysia. I calculated that our passage through the Indonesian archepaelago to Malaysia would take us about six weeks.

Our initial four day passage was short and pleasant. We left Darwin harbour in good weather and crossed the Arafura Sea to Timor, a long wiener shaped island north of Australia; and as we closed on Timor, we began our Indonesian cruising experiences. During our first night in Indonesian waters we encountered unchartered gas wells and oil derricks, unlit long-liner fishing trawlers dragging enormously long hooked lines, nets all over the place (marked in the daytime with faded flags or dirty plastic bottles and invisible at night) and, near the shore, hundreds of small unlit fishing boats, mostly outrigger canoes (or pruhas).

Our objective was Kupang, approached through a narrow ten mile strait at the western tip of Timor. Our two hour passage through the strait was the most harrowing two hours of sailing that I have ever experienced. I still have nightmarish visions of hundreds of shadowy fishing boats bearing down on me in the dark from all directions. We entered the strait in the dark and saw some lights ahead of us, but nothing prepared us for the sudden shock of hundreds of moving motorized fishing boats, crisscrossing the strait at high speed all around us. Although some were brightly lit, others turned on lights, or shone spot lights on us, only when we came within a few feet of them. And they moved fast, much faster than us. We, of course, dropped our sails and tried to motor on a steady course in mid channel, but they had the right of way, even though we could not see most of them, at least not until they flashed their lights on us from a few feet away. We heard their noisy, thumping, belching motors come very close to us in the darkness and then felt them move around or past us or behind us like scary jumping shadows. Some of the fishermen yelled and waved. Many came dangerously close just out of curiosity, because I had proper navigation lights and was to them a very strange and foreign vessel. They all towed nets or lines.

The wind and current swept us through the strait at about ten knots. I could not stop. It was dangerous to turn or attempt to maneuver. I knew the fishermen could see us and I therefore tried to steer a steady course and hoped that they would steer around us.

I tried to hold a northerly course, relying on my cockpit chart-plotter, as well as an electronic and a magnetic compass. With the strong current and wind, it was a little difficult to hold the course, but I could tell from my instruments that I was making progress. Although I could see nothing but the shadowy forms of the fishing boats, moving around us a few feet away in the dark, my instruments were all giving me the same readings, and I know that we were gradually moving toward the end of the strait and would soon be free of the crowded nightmarish mess.

We finally cleared the strait and turned into Kupang harbour at 02:00 hours. Were we ever exhausted! We dropped our anchor in pitch black darkness and celebrated our safe arrival. And in the morning at 04:00 hours, two hours later, we awoke and experienced our first Muslim calls to the mosque; and a few minutes later realized that we were completely surrounded by hundreds of anchored fishing boats, cargo boats, floats, buoys and harbour debris. We will never know how we avoided hitting something or getting our propeller tangled in the loose lines scattered everywhere.

Kupang is an old commercial port city, established centuries ago by the Dutch as a trading outpost. What a place! The people are poor. The town is dirty and crowded. A strong military presence dominates. Hundreds of small dry goods stores appear to carry identical inventories of cheap plastic goods piled from floor to ceiling. The air is permeated with a mixture of motor fumes and wood burning ash. There are several large mosques and some old churches scattered throughout the narrow streets, but no parks and few places of interest to tourists. Why did we stop? Kupang is an entry port, the next being Bali, a thousand miles and several days farther west. We cleared in with the authorities and obtained our required cruising permit, entitling us to sail westward to Bali at our leisure.

We also wanted diesel fuel and some provisions. The diesel was bunkered out to us in jerry cans. We filtered it , luckily, because the filter caught a considerable amount of crud that would probably have clogged our engine.

We stayed in Kupang for four days, visiting markets and the single internet cafe at the government telephone company building, and taking an informal one-day tour to visit the few nearby country-side attractions. After receiving our papers and obtaining diesel, we were anxious to leave.

We sailed alone westward across the Timor Sea and the Suva Sea up to the islands of Rinca and Komodo, into the Flores Sea and across the north coasts of Sumbawa and Lombok, stopping at islands or village anchorages for brief night stops along the way. We interspersed our day sails with a few overnighters.

Our biggest problems turned out to be the inter-island currents. The tides in the straits between the islands are irregular and move at speeds which exceed boat power speed, even with the engine revved up at full throttle. The tidal currents are phenomenal and govern the timing of any crossing between islands.

We were cautious and careful in choosing our anchorages and routes among the islands. That being said, we were never threatened and never felt in danger (excepting one night when the wind picked up and shifted at 01:00 hours and rocking waves convinced us to pick up our anchor and leave six hours earlier than we had planned). We were comfortable sailing among the many small fishing boats in the daytime, always getting friendly waves and smiles. At night, we usually anchored near fishing vessels and always got polite waves and smiles. The fishermen were too busy with their own gear and boats to pay much attention to us, and we did not hang around long enough in any one place to attract much attention from unwanted guests.

All the people that we met were friendly. We could easily communicate by simple sign language. A few, men mostly, were aggressive and some were a little grasping or greedy and had to be firmly told we had nothing for them. We experienced no thefts, but, again, we did not leave much opportunities for thieves.

We saw all manner of local fishing craft. Some were amazingly crafted vessels. Some were sturdy and seaworthy, obviously built to withstand any storm with the highest pounding seas. Some were ingeniously fabricated canoes pieced together with sticks and twine. Every island has its own style of craft.

In Eastern Indonesia, near Timor, where the people have Melanesian features, the fishing crafts are similar in many ways to the outrigger dugout canoes seen in Fiji and New Guinea. In Lombok and Bali, the boats look like outrigger surf boards with huge colourful sails. The men fly across the water at great speeds on their light shallow craft, all the while pulling and tugging lines or nets. They all waved and smiled at us.

Apart from the tidal currents in the straits, the sailing was marvelous in this part of Indonesia. Most of the islands have huge, spectacular volcanoes and all of them have miles and miles of palm tree lined beaches. We saw incredible coral reefs and fascinating waterfront fishing villages. The islands here have not been discovered. We saw no other white people on our two week sail between Kupang and Lombok. Then we reached Bali, the tourist mecca , and found civilization and hotels and restaurants and cars and garbage and pollution. 

We were relieved to reach Bali safely. While our experiences had been fascinating, we had been in very remote and strange places after leaving Kupang. If something had happened to us or to the boat, we could not have called 911. We would have been on our own with no available services for hundreds of miles. While local fishermen might have helped us in a pickle, we would have had language problems, and there is no discernable government or police system in the remote islands of Indonesia. There is some kind of navy, but its purpose appears to be limited to the protection of the central government authority in Jakarta. So we were nervous on our journey and glad to finally be in a place where we felt comfortable and could sleep soundly at night.