We left our little bay behind and sailed off to a great anchorage on the island of Sagu Dampar where we caught up with John & Cathy from Mystic Moon.  This place is really out of the glossy magazines with turquoise waters, coral gardens galore, local fishing boats nestling in the bay and many small idyllic sandy beaches.   Most anchorages in the Anambas are 20m plus but we found a couple of great spots here with good holding and not too deep.  We carry 60m of chain and a further 40m of rope but we like to anchor in 5 – 10 metres so the Captain was happy… Continue reading →

We had arranged to meet up with Ingrid and Vince Mzungu on the small island of Tioman so that we could sail the 100nm to the Anambas Islands. Tioman is a port of clearance for Malaysia and also a duty-free island, so we stocked up on beer and bourbon, cleared out and set off early in the evening.  The Anambas are actually part of Indonesia located in the South China sea between the Malaysian Peninsular and Borneo. There are 255 islands in the archipelago of which only 26 are inhabited.  Only since the Indonesians have stopped requiring a CAIT (the old cruising permit for Indonesia) have boats found it viable to visit these islands.  They now have their own immigration and customs offices which makes it easy to visit and in fact, they are encouraging people to come.  This group of islands is at present, completely untouched and unspoiled.  They are off the beaten track, -cont reading ….>

We stayed for a couple of nights on Kentar – a small island in the Riau group before we all headed into Tanjung Pinang on the island of Bintan.  I had been here 16 years ago on a work conference and had not seen any of the island except the resort we were staying, so I wanted to explore it this time.  It is very close to Singapore and as a result the tourism industry consists mainly of Singaporeans and Malaysians.  The port town of Tanjung Pinang was hectic continue reading…

There is a tradition amongst sailors that those who have not sailed across the Equator are called Polywogs and those who have are called Shellbacks.  Ian and I were both Polywogs when we left but all was about to change.   At precisely 11.06am on 25th October 2016 we sailed (slowly) over the Equator and can now proudly continue reading…

We sailed to the small island of Ketawai off Bangka with no pre-conceived ideas of what to expect.  Every stop in this trip through Indonesia has been completely different but Ketawai was the jewel in the crown.

We arrived at about 9am to a cacophony of horns and sirens – all our friends who had already arrived cheering us in.  We in turn did the same to  arrivals after us – I think we knew this was a special place after that.  Within about 30 minutes of our arrival a small boat arrived -continue reading…->

We arrived at Belitung after a three day sail from Kumai.  It was not a great sail, the anchorage we stopped in was very rolly and we dragged along with two other boats in the night which gave us a bad nights sleep which is dangerous in itself.   We travelled with 5 other boats and all arrived in Belitung late afternoon just in time to have a few beers   continue reading…

We arrived in Kumai after a slow slow motor/sail from Karamungjawa – there is just no wind here which is starting to really frustrate Ian.   Kumai is in Kalimantan  which is the Indonesian side of Borneo – the other parts of Borneo (Sarawak & Sabah) belong to Malaysia.  The reason we came this far out of our way was to visit the orangutans in their natural habitat in a huge national park called Tanjung Puting – which promised to be one of the highlights continue reading..

14 of us decided to visit Borobudur and Prambanan in central Java.  This entailed a two hour fast ferry from Karamunjawa to Java and then another 5 hour bus journey through Java to Magelang where we were going to spend the night before our 4.30am rise.

First giggle of the trip was when we all plonked ourselves down in the first class section of the fast ferry – when we were promptly all continue reading.

Karamunjawa is off the central north coast of Java and is an archipelago  of 27 islands.   The main island is small and very untouristy – a change from Bali but very pretty and clean.   We took three days to get here from Lovina with a stop over on an island called Bawean, and arrived about 3pm – just in time for a quick beer and shower continue reading…

Bali is a special place especially for us who come from Western Australia as it is our closest capital city and our number one destination for holidays.  The cost of coming to Bali from Perth is half that of flying to any other Australian city and it is in the same time zone – so West Australians tend to know Bali better than their own country!   So when we set off for Bali from Lombok we thought we knew what to expect.

We usually go to the south of the Island but on the rally we were all going to Lovina in the north.  Lovina is a really beautiful part of Bali – very unspoiled and still retaining the charm that is Bali.

We arrived early in the evening, and Lovina was thumping – it was their local festival and there was also a welcoming ceremony for us. Continue reading →