Thus Spake Obi-Wan-K’noathi

Back in Northwest Oz overything settled back into its usual WA rhythm. We are drinking like troopers and Louie conjures up huge cooked breakfasts before we even think of hoisting sails. We are getting bloody good at this! With Lisa aboard via Warroora to Cape Farquar, which is a bit of an iffy entrance and mooring. And no shootable fish inside the reef, the abundant large Grey Nurse sharks must have eaten the lot. Outside the reef we dangled on a long rope behind Tribute in amazingly clear but cold water and Mix was the lucky (and fearless) one to dance with a humpback whale which came to sniff us out. Crew additions at Gnaraloo- Nats, Megsie and Sandra joined and miraculously we were treated with another beautiful mellow downwind sailing day, with whales, wine and a big mackie. Once at Red Bluff, the girls had to swim in through the shorebreak. And the mackie was trussed to a surfboard to float in with them.
Anyway. The home stretch tomorrow.

Obi-Wan-K’noathi is a redneck philosopher/fisherman who lives- or ought to live- in a shack somewhere round Cape Farquar. He is old as the weathered red rocks and his language is colourful as the reefs. The fresh Southwester blows through his mind and I spend the days thinking up aphorisms to attribute to him. So far, they’re too rude to entrust to these pages so I must leave you, and this blog, and this trip and this ship with the observation that all this rah rah about the merits of travelling and arriving has really got to stop.

Come forward, you can see the end from here!

Almost home. .we sailed -upwind of course- via the Montebello's to Coral Bay. The Australian skies are clear and the air is crisp and chilly in a hard Southeasterly, blowing from the Great Sandy Desert over the Indian Ocean. And after pondering the meaning of life for three months, drenched by the ocean and scorched by the sun this realisation dawned on me: I am but a small cogwheel in life's vast machine and my purpose during this reincarnation is to host hen's nights.

Prenatal poultry calculations

To say that we have arrived would be premature. But were anything to go wrong now, we could swim to the mainland. It is just past midnight and we are approaching Dampier. The whole area is lit like a christmas tree with wellheads and drilling platforms, it is tricky seeing if any of them move or have navlights.

But be that as it may, we are expecting to make landfall just short of five days after hoisting anchor in Lembar. Five days of wet and bouncy upwind sailing, we had to park the boat for a while just off Lombok before we even dared to enter the cocktail shaker where currents, wind and swell collide. After that- shipboard routine of reading, dozing, cooking and being on watch. Every day at 1700 heaving-to for regimented callenistics and a saltwater shower. We made a 183 nM day, not bad if you consider that the current downwind record for Tribute is just over 200 nM. Highlight was a marlin, hooked, landed and released by Marlin today.

The wellheads turn out to be a traffic jam of huge ships. Cheers!

PS- Made it! Moored at 0500, customs phoned at 0615, by 0700 we had the officials aboard. Remember the race between Oz & Indo bureacracy? Everyone was friendly and efficient. And dare I say it, two of the customs officers were actually rather dishy. But the quairantine officer removed a bag of garbage plus an apple that we had overlooked and then charged $680 for the honour while apologising for these government regulations... It is a draw, I think.

Meanwhile back in Oz for three hours, and we already have four thwarts under our belt:
- The $680. Ouch.
- Our first encounter with an Australian native, a burly bloke in a fishing stinky did not acknowledge my friendly 'g'day mate'. But he could be deaf or distracted of course, so I repeated the greeting with the same result.
- A bit later a very pumped up grumpy bloke told us that we were not allowed, 'under no circumstances!' to tie up to the jetty. He was about to untie us, but we managed to delay him by a minute so the officials could get off.
- If we want to see the Monties at all (with Nathalie's enticing offer of using Tribute as her hen's night venue with 'fourteen bikini babes supplied to the boat' in mind), we have to make a move again tonight and into a headwind as well .But the shops are closed, and a taxi vv to Karratha is $100. Which means that 1/2 a day in Oz costs more than a month in Indo. Kenoath!

Anyway. A luta continua.

Huu

For reasons not quite clear to me we are travelling under assumed names. ‘Yella ‘ after Louie’s yellow Corona-filled Esky that he’s effectively twinned with. ‘Marlin’, presumably because Mix would like to catch one. And Seuss, as in Doctor. But not much else has changed in Tribute’s travelling routine. From LBJ to Kanawa, then to Komodo where we trundled for hours through the shrub and bush without seeing a single dragon. The guide was apologetic but laughed away our suggestions of a refund.
Anchorages on Sumbawa’s South coast are rare, but I spied some promising features on the chart so we checked it out and found a village hidden deep in a narrow bay. Fishermen pointed us to an anchor spot and we took the duck ashore where M&L were a bit overwhelmed by their sudden popularity- all 150 kids in the village swarmed around them, pointed, chattered and laughed while I took pictures. We were lucky to watch the weekly soccer match with 12 very fast players on bare feet seemingly unconcerned about the rocks on the dirt field.
From there we followed the rugged coastline with a pit stop at Huu, where the presumably famous ‘Lakey’s Pipe’ is with its attendant tourist infrastructure. Mix & I got a very pleasant surf in the next morning with three Americans on ‘Nanga’. We even tried to kitesurf for a brief while until the wind died, much to delight of the villagers.
Supplies are low. In most villages there is a small toko where eggs, rice, coconuts and sometimes cabbages are available. We’ve been trying to make our own roti’s out of flour and essentially live on this with pot noodles for lunch. But for even simple things like canned tuna we have to wait till Lembar, with luck. And I have run out of books.
This morning- with trepidation- we shot through the Lombok Strait once more and made arrangements to clear out of Indonesia. But the forecast looked a bit iffy (not that I’ve ever seen it favourable for getting back to Oz), we cancelled Abou- our Agent -and are now storming North at 12 knots to await better weather on Gili Air. Again.

PS-Actually set sail on the 14th, early am. Hoping for a five day crossing, six more likely.

All the way to LBJ

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the captain should go down with his ship. To Davy Jones' locker, or to Labuanbajo for the fourth or fifth time. In hindsight Tribute could have travelled further through Nusa Tengara if there weren't three separate crew movements through LBJ.

Ever since the owner of a mooring demanded money, Tribute's been strung between its anchor and a stern line which is tied to a lamppost in the police station's garden. When leaving for the morning's nasi, the gentlemen in uniform and I exchange selamat pagi's. And likewise malams at night. They made a handy profit out of our last fuel transaction and now often ask if my jerrycans need refilling. There is a mosque just up the road and both Peter and I are impressed with its imam. He has a good strong voice with range and passion and there is variety in what we presume are prayers. In the distance we can hear his colleagues but they don’t have a patch on ‘our’ guy. Little things like this matter, especially at five a.m. And just behind the cops is the harbourmaster's office whose inhabitants have yet to bother us.

Back in Oz, many commented on my Indo plans by saying 'piracy'! Some skipped that word and simply asked what guns I'd be taking. The sailing press was reassuring on the piracy front but pessimistic about another scourge, the bureaucrats. As I understood it an official of some flavour would row, swim or motor out of every hamlet and village to demand copies in triplicate of all possible paperwork as well as arbitrary fees for this honour. Now, it is unwise to sell the skin of the bear before one's shot it but so far this has happened only once. And there’s the possibility that on our return the Australian Customs and DPI will outhassle Indonesian Officialdom. Any takers for a bet?

But I digress- the friendly humans in uniform are as the rest of LBJ's citizens. Not a grumpy Indonesian have I met, and the ones who speak English cross the (currently broken up) street to get some practice in. LBJ is a bit of a transit port for dive charters and visits to Rinca or Komodo and it has some low-key tourist infrastructure. A couple of simple restaurants, a few dive shops and a souvenir store where wood carved dragons are displayed. And secluded in the forest up the hill is the Paradise Bar.

Paradise has a colonial atmosphere. The entire clientele is Caucasian except for a gaggle of local boys who all have Rasta hair and who seem focused on meeting girls. For the others there's food, Bintang and live music. On guitars which are out of tune in themselves and between each other a selection of world music is performed. The artists swap instruments, the waiter joins when he's free, the audience is invited and overall (like I noticed in the Philippines) there seems to be a refreshing lack of ‘look mama I can play' attitude.

I rented a small motorcycle to explore the hinterland of LBJ. Without a map I followed my nose until the road or track petered out, and then returned to repeat the same in another direction. Eventually I found the main road to Ruteng which was so rutted and gutted that I took it for a dead end. You'd think that off-road bikes would be very popular here, but strangely the roads are swarming with the standard issue Asian motorcycle. The type that can carry an entire family. I am unsure what they are-there's no markings apart from the brand. How can anyone own a motorcycle that is simply 'Yamaha'? Where do they get their bragging rights from-the colour? Is there no need in Asian society to be able casually mention that your Howazuki GXR-Z 1100 Mk II has not only got ABS but also RSVP? It is all very odd and I cautiously made my way up a distant pass where the air was cool and bamboo grew four stories high.

Meanwhile I'm on my own and moored in a pretty bay on the Northern tip of Komodo. I set a new Zen record by taking 8 hours to cover 17 miles- and that is as the fish swims. Until half an hour ago it was idyllic, half a moon and a glassy sea and silence except sounds of splashing fish and indeterminate animal noises from the land. Pure tranquillity. Then a small motorboat came into the bay- I suddenly thought of pirates and guns again- but they scouted a mooring for a large and brightly lit tourist barge which motored around the headland later. The sanctity of nature was shattered, the music and laughter carried miles across the water and I thought fuck you too & started the generator after all.

So, back to LBJ to pick up Mix and Lou. I hope Bali doesn’t damage them too badly. The clock has started ticking again. There’s a mission and a schedule and there’s the wild South coast of Sumbawa and Lombok, and after that the Indian Ocean.

...I once travelled with a Swede who took his time to deliberate the postcards he wrote. But he always settled on the same phrase, which he explained was the nicest thing you could wish someone and that he couldn’t think of anything better to write:

‘May all your dreams come true’.