Hello!
I’m writing this from the comfort of Boom Marina, Banyuwangi. It’s been a weary time getting here since the last post as we left Pulau Baku Limau. It’s taken us a week to get here - 1st passage of two night sails, 1 1/2 days in Bawean, 2nd passage of 1 night sail and finally two day sails.
Sunday 15 March
We had some lovely sailing with the wind behind us and the current with us for much of the way to Bawean. The Java Sea, which we were traversing, was a little more crowded as we’re approaching the more populous islands.
Indonesia is an Archipelagic State with Archipelagic Waters, a term you can see used on the chart on our RayMarine chart plotter. Tim noticed this during his night watch, so I looked it up too.
‘Archipelagic states are composed of groups of islands that form a state as a single unit, the islands and the waters within the baselines as internal waters (archipelagic waters). Under this concept ("archipelagic doctrine"), an archipelago shall be regarded as a single unit, so that the waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, are subject to its exclusive sovereignty (while allowing ships from other countries to exercise the archipelagic sea lanes passage or innocent passage at their choice).’ Excerpts from Wiki Archipelagic States and Waters.
Monday, 16 March
From seeing the moon and stars and little else, we now see the glowing lights of ships in the distance. The small reddish light in the photo the port side navigation light of a vessel coming towards us. What is hard to see in the photo is that along with the red port light are 3 vertical white lights. Three vertical white lights indicate a tugboat with a barge under tow.
Happily, our chart plotter sorts all these light out for us and can be setup to automatically warning us of potentially dangerous situations. We are always checking the chart plotter day and night so we’ve never used it before. We particularly wanted to keep an eye on the slow moving tugs, some of which were towing a barge on a 200m+ tow line. The barges aren’t particularly well lit, if they are lit at all. We like to give them a very wide berth.
Bawean was a nice rest and a very short visit with Indan and her friends. We were greeted by her friends who transported us to the meeting place on the back of their scooters. This is not my preferred mode of transport, but this is how anyone without a car travels in SE Asia. We saw no cars at all during our short visit. We met at Kopi Kerrong. Kopi Kerrong is a ‘coffee’ shop. Kopi has long South East Asian history.
We did a little fruit and veg shopping to top up our stores. Back at Kopi Kerrong we were treated to a local Photo Booth experience. lol. I don’t know what else to call it!
This was the result, though it took us a while to get up to speed with the performance aspect of the experience.
They really are a nation of young people who experience life via their phones. Maybe everywhere is these days. We are currently in Boom Marina, Banyuwangi. It’s just after Ramadan, it’s a holiday and the marina is a ‘destination’ for taking selfies or friends taking photos of each other. Pose, snap, review, pose again and repeat. We are obviously very old. ;D
We didn’t stay long as during Ramadan they start late and as sailors we finish early. And we like to get back to the boat in daylight, particularly if it’s an unfamiliar anchorage.
We did see food being set out to be given to the poor from Mosque as we whizzed back to the dock and our dinghy. It would have been nice to be able to walk back to see what there was to see, but it really was too far and we’d bought, among other things, a watermelon at the fruit and veg stall.
We headed off the next day at about noon to arrive in daylight at our next anchorage.
Hmmm…. I wonder where that squall is going?
That one didn’t come anywhere near us, but we can also use the radar on our chart plotter to see approaching weather.
The squalls show as green, pink and red. Red is approaching, pink is when you are under it and green shows areas that won’t affect you or have passed over you already.
The squalls that did catch us up during the night were pretty much windless, one or twice there were periods of pounding vertical rain, and there were a few squalls that had the most active lightning and thunder we have ever experienced. We were in the company of a number of ships, all going the same direction we were. With all those great lumps of metal around us, we were pretty sure that they were more attractive targets. There were some ‘flashbangs’ that made us jump and from one of these, the static it generated made a our wind generator panel perk up, and we think it shorted the light on the on/off button on our electric kettle. In retrospect, I should have used the gas kettle instead, but we’re getting used to not seeing the little blue light.
This was the first weather of this kind we’d run across in a very long time. The last time was crossing the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone south of the equator and just west of the Galápagos Islands. We didn’t like that much either.
Though when we arrived at the anchorage, the deck still felt silky under foot it was so clean and salt free.
This anchorage was notable for a number of things.
In the approach to the tip of the island patches of water was a vivid green with gold particles floating through it - mostly likely and algae bloom said the internet.
After dinner, Tim threw the food scraps over the side the water seemed to boil with green bioluminescence in the dark. Many a handful of porridge oats was tossed into the water hoping to catch it in a photo but no luck there.
It was the last day of Ramadan and there was much celebration from the island across from us.
This is just a taster.
We went to sleep and woke the next day to the same sights and sounds celebrating Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the end of Ramadan.
We arrived at Boom Marina, Banyuwangi yesterday. We anchored the day before in a small bay, with a man fishing on the shore and huge fish jumping all around us. Motoring, no wind, to the Banyuwangi we passed one of the small trimaran fishing boat. As we motored away from him, fish started jumping near us. The trimaran is a fast design and he turned his boat around and zoomed straight over the patch where the fish were last seen, then dashed over to the next and the next.
Someone who knows about these things once said to us, ‘It’s not called catching, you know. It’s called fishing.’
Today hasbeen a busy day. Laundry at daybreak, fruit and veg market by 10.00, lunch and rest then long walk to a ‘shopping mall’ where we hoped to buy a Tupperware for Tim to safely carry the fragile wind speed indicator from the top of the mast - swinging arrow for direction and 4 cups spinning for wind speed - to England. No luck with the Tupperware. Tim is quite sure the wind instrument is not the problem, but RayMarine is insisting. *grumbles*
No time for photos except for this unusually patterned cat. :)
The curbs are SO high and it felt like they got higher and higher as the day went on.
We’re off again tomorrow and in another 4 day sails or so we should be at our final destination, Lombok, where we will not go anywhere for a couple of weeks at least. :)
You can find Banda Neira Part 2 blog, back dated to July 2024 when we were actually there,
here…
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