Day 80, Year 3: Passage to Indonesia, Day Tiga (Three)
Date: Hari Senin (Monday), Bulan Juli 28, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Still Not a Cloud in the Sky; Winds SE 5
Air and Water Temperature: 78 degrees F (getting warmer)
Location: Passage from Darwin, Australia to Kupang, W Timor, Indonesia
Latitude: 11 degrees 14.559 minutes S
Longitude: 126 degrees 30.558 minutes E
Miles to Go: 204 (more than halfway)

If you are reading this pagi ini (in the morning),
“Selamit pagi!” (Good morning!)
or
“Selamit siang!” (Good day! – middle of the day)
“Selamit sore!” (Good afternoon! – late afternoon to sunset)
“Selamit malam!” (Good evening! – after sunset)

As you can see, I am practicing by bahasa Indonesian (the language of Indonesia). It is a form of Malay, a Southeast Asian language that is a member of a family of languages called Austronesian. Bahasa Indonesian is the official language taught in the schools and is used formally by most Indonesians, but there are hundreds of variations. They say there are as many variations as there are ethnic groups on the islands of the Archipelago. I will be very lucky to learn just a little of the official
language, but we will have to learn some as very few Indonesians speak English. Mark and I were shocked in the Rally information meeting we had last week. We were asked to raise our hands if we have been to Indonesia before and we felt like almost a third of the audience raised their hand. For us it will certainly be the first trip into any part of Asia, so the language and the culture will be totally new to us.

Siang ini (this afternoon) we got our first introduction to Indonesia. Seemingly out of nowhere, we were suddenly following a long line of flagged buoys. Then we spotted a fishing boat motoring down the line of buoys. The fishing boat was different than any we have seen and was painted in bright blue, red, and yellow. It was definitely flying the Indonesian flag, so we were glad that we had raised our Indonesian courtesy flag today. As I write this log, we are passing three huge Australian owned
oil rigs to our north and soon the continental shelf will drop off and we will be in deep water for the first time since arriving in Australia. Once we are in deeper water there should be less fishing activity until we reach West Timor.

There is still no wind and really no hope of any before we reach Kupang. So on we motor. We are kept busy learning more about the language and geography of the Indonesian Archipelago and working on a few projects. Before we reach Kupang, we need to make sure everything of value on deck is locked down and it took all morning for us to find the few locks we have onboard. It truly is amazing how things hide from you in such a small space as a sailboat. We found our Kryptonite bicycle locks and
are using those to lock down our outboard motors. We dug out the heavy chain and locks we used to secure our dinghy in the Caribbean. The locks were seized up but Mark has been successful in getting them to work once again. We really didn’t need to worry about security in the South Pacific, but it is an issue in Southeast Asia. We also had a watermaker issue today, but we think we have that under control. The pre-filter needed to be changed and we are dragging the dirty one in the water behind
us to clean it. That is the prescribed method in the manual. Scot Free called early today saying that they were not moving forward and thought they had lost their prop. Klinton, the son that is crewing with them through Indonesia, jumped in the water to inspect the prop and found that it was tangled in a mess of seaweed. Once he removed that, they were once again moving forward.

The moon is waning during this passage and it makes night watch a really dark experience. On the first night out when I came on watch at 10:30 pm and looked around, there were so many boat lights in the distance that it looked like we were surrounded by village lights. The lights behind us and to our port were closest with the lights in front of us twinkling in the distance. During the night, positions kept changing and we passed a couple of boats and a couple of them passed us. It took constant
vigilance to make sure we were at a safe distance from our neighbors. Last night things had changed. The lights behind us were much further in the distance and the lights in front of us were almost not visible. There was one other boat about a mile and half in front of us and that was our closest neighbor for the night. We have never traveled with so many boats, and we actually thought that by the second night we would have spread out even more. But since almost everyone is motoring, we are
all going about the same speed. The crescent moon doesn’t rise until the middle of the night, so the water and sky are pitch black except for the stars and boat lights. Usually the stars give off some light, but not last night. Watch during the daytime is much easier. We have only a couple of boats to starboard, so that is our escape route if anyone gets too close. When we approach West Timor, we have to go through a pass between two small islands and West Timor. We are hoping to do that part
of the trip during daylight hours as there are small unlit fishing boats and fish nets and no way to see them in this darkness.

Just one more note. The sunrises and sunsets out here are so different from what we had throughout the Pacific. Both sunrise and sunset look almost the same. The sky near the horizon looks like it is on fire. The reds, oranges, and yellows are so intense that the sky looks more like a painting than a natural occurrence.