July 17-22
Hi All,
I am writing this log on Friday July 21 sitting in the lovely Tarempah anchorage. We are now in the South China Sea in the Anambas islands but fortunately far away from the controversial islands in the north. I forgot in the last log to mention that at Nongsa Point Batam Indonesia across from Singapore was our farthest point south this year…..all northing from here. Nongsa is about 1* N latitude and it is a bit surreal to think this time next year we will be far north in Alaska somewhere….in fact our farthermost point north might be Russia or Attu Alaska at around 53*N……whoa….that’s about 3,120nm north…….
Tioman: Kathy did get somewhat better although she still has a deep residual cough. Most of the tours around Tioman are by boat as there is very little infrastructure on the island…..most take you to many of the beautiful beaches or various snorkel/scuba dive spots. We learned that the coral is 50-75% destroyed around this island…..yes Donald for all your FAKE NEWS global warming is happening destroying many of the world’s reefs…..just ask Australia……anyway, I digress…..here the area is being destroyed by pollution, rising water temperatures and over fishing as well as fish et al dying from all the plastic trash. Given all that, we did not do any snorkeling or diving hoping Kathy would get better when we got to the Anambas islands. We did do a day tour by car……it was ok……saw some beautiful old growth rainforest……they also had a good 5+ mile hike in the rainforest which we would normally do but again neither of us were physically up for that. We were content to see what we could from the car.
We also went to a lovely beach, Juara, on the east side of the island (we are anchored on the west side). There we visited a turtle sanctuary where they are trying to find and hatch the various turtle eggs before they get destroyed by man or other animals. There used to be about 30 beaches where the turtles came to nest but now there are only 3 beaches where the turtles come lay their eggs……gives you a good picture of how decimated the turtle population has become certainly in this part of the world but we have also seen this in the Caribbean and South Pacific as well.
We did have a good lunch at a beach cafe…..chicken soup for Kathy (but it didn’t do the cure:(((((……very good but alas no wine or beer sold as a very Muslim island!! I did have an A&W root beer……ODG……did not know they were still around…..I grew up drinking that stuff……very creamy and sweet…….the can said it was best served over ice cream:))))
We left Tioman at 5pm for the 131nm passage to Tarempah on Wedneday, July 19th. The weather conditions were forecasted to be 5-10kts with 1-2′ chop……all South so on our beam as we were going 80*M or almost due East. Well…..Mr Weather said close……we got 10-15G20 kts and 2-3′ waves…..all on the beam. But, as we approached Tarempah we had a strong squall of over 30 kts but at least it was behind us!!! We arrived around 10:30am…….avg ~7.4kts….had a adverse current most of the time…got the anchor down, Bloody Mary’s made and then it rained for the next few hours……so we took a nap:))))) A few hours later Stedem on mv Atlantis arrived and let the games begin:))))
It was interesting crossing the shipping lanes….probably saw 50-60 ships and another 50 or so fishing boats with very bright night lights……probably squid fishing……in all of that we only had to divert 3 times to avoid some of these very large container ships or oil tankers……but seeing a ship 0.5-1.0 miles away crossing your bow was still very impressive!!!
Checking into Indonesia: well…..always an adventure!!!! In order to check back into Indonesia we needed to go to the Port Captain, Quarantine, Immigration and Customs…….Stedem joined us even though he was already checked into Indonesia in Nongsa. The offices are not next to one another so armed with some directions we promptly got lost……stopped to ask for directions and while people were very friendly, not much English is spoken…..eventually we found the Port Captain, but nobody was in the office. Eventually we met a man named Farizan…..turns out he is an agent or at least helps a man named Raymond who helps organize the Rallies in Indonesia. After about 15 minutes of discussion he agreed to take us to the various offices plus calls the Port Captain to return to the offices. Ok……now we got it…..but, along the way we come across 2 boats we know from last year’s Rally…..and they are having issues with Customs….ugh!!!! You need to apply online which Kathy did in Tioman but the Internet is so slow here Customs could not call up the forms…….fortunately Kathy had already printed out the forms so we were good to go!!!! the other boats took almost 7 hours with Customs but eventually Customs got online and was able to check them in!!!
In the mean time we went in search for a cold beer and something to eat…..hmmm…..not going to happen…..no alcohol served in Tarempah……very Muslim…..ok, everyone come on over to Mystic where the beers are indeed cold….we had a very rousing HH with the 3 boats and all was well!!!!
July 22: We have made a few runs into town for fresh veggies et al and are leaving in the next hour or so to start our 3+ week tour around these islands. We will most likely not have internet for the next 3 weeks…….will be nice to be unplugged for a while…..but we will have our Sat phone and will be downloading emails and weather twice daily.
Hope all is well!!
John
Mystic Moon
Tarempah Indonesia
PS: No pictures this time as the internet is just too slow for any uploads……we probably will not have decent internet until we get to Borneo sometime late August!!
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