Our journey through the islands begins

We left Lovina, Bali, behind on Sunday 8th August to start our sail through the Indonesian Islands as far north as Batam. Total mileage (as the crow flies) around 9oonm with 42 days left on the visa. It is obvious we will not have enough time to visit all the islands and see everything so we need to start some serious planning if we want to avoid overstaying our visa and risk the wrath of the authorities. Besides which we have flights booked to return home for the engagement!
So our first journey is to the Kumai River on the southern coast of Kalimantan, Borneo. Stopping  at a couple of rolly anchorages along the top of Bali and Java we made our way to the  the island of Gili Jang on the eastern end of Madura and rested there for a day before making the sail across to Kalimantan.


 

Leaving Gili Jang behind it was a 2day, 2 night sail across the Java Sea to Kalimantan. No problem, we are in the trades now and it will be a dream sail. A little bit of moon out, that always makes sailing at night pleasant and also helps to see the dreaded FADS. Once again we are wrong, what is it with us and weather, we just can’t seem to pick it right.
The breeze blew from the East not the south or south east as expected/forecast. It blew 20/25kn not 15kn and the sea was like it is when you leave Rottnest to sail back to Freo with a good sea breeze blowing, you know - short, choppy and confused!
We spent 48hours hanging on, my legs felt like I had done a day at the gym doing lunges they ached so much and my feet were sore. We really had to hang on and life below decks trying to get a meal ready was not easy. Glad I bought those Continental Pasta Meals for these situations!
Along with the wind and sea state we also had a lot of shipping around us to dodge as well as inter island trading boat, squid boats, local fishing boats but surprisingly no FADS out here, well at least we didn´t see any if there were.

Thank goodness for the AIS (Automatic Identification System) it takes care of telling us where all the big ships are and their course etc so we only had to look out for local traffic. The squid boats are out at night, that's when you catch squid, but I bet you knew that anyway! They are lit up like little cities on the ocean. As you get close by they almost blind you they are so bright and this destroys your night vision. At one stage I think Basanti counted 39 of them in their path. Which way do you go?? Then we had the 30m barge that was towing… but what and how long is the tow? On the AIS it doesn’t tell you that. According to the AIS our closest point would be 0.7 nm. I called him up on the radio and finally managed to get across I wanted to know the length of what he was towing, 200m “with a light” he said. We saw no light but just as it passed our bow it went in front of the loom from a squid boat and we were able to see this very low structure passing a safe enough distance in front of us. Phew!
It was a very uncomfortable and busy 2 day sail. We slept very little and we were very grateful to drop our anchor as we sailed into the bay and as soon as we were in flat water the anchor went down in 4m water but we were still 8km from shore. It was 4 am so we could get a couple of hours sleep before we navigate the bay to the Kumai River in daylight. We are now anchored just outside the river mouth waiting for the incoming tide to take us up the river to our anchorage at Kumai town.
Then we will hire a boat to take us further up the Kumai to Camp Leaky to visit the Orang-utans. That’s the reason we came here.  More Later…..we have a visitor!