When I went back to the boat it was like a living nightmare. We're now in customs
and probably been here 40 minutes. OK Liz is just pulling the anchor up
now. We're trying to rush to get the anchor up because we're sailing. Yes
we're sailing! And we're greeted by next villages kids who eventually came round
to giving us the middle finger!
So one of the things we noticed when we were sitting at anchor yesterday, having
dropped the hook, it's very very busy. We get a lot of little speed boats and
they act as taxis between the islands. And they zoom backwards and forwards.
They're the kind of little boats you might hire out on a boating lake, where they
have a great big outboard on the back. Here we've got family just getting ready
and they'll be shooting off to do whatever - visiting their relatives or
maybe going to their workplace. It's very very busy here, lots of motorbikes and
lots of boats. You get the feeling of this being the liveliest part of the Anambas
which of course it is, because it's the capital town.
As you can see, Liz is being led by a very helpful tourist office lady who's
directing us to the Harbour Master. We can never, after ten years remember
the order in which all this is done... and in fact sometimes it's different from
country to country. We've just been to immigration and we've
got our stamp, and that took less than five minutes which is a record.
Terima kasih! Thank you! So now we're at the Harbour Master's office.
No Sooner had I put the camera down and handed him some documents...that's it, done! That's
two down, and both took less than five minutes. I think we're being led into a
false sense of security, though. I suspect that somewhere down the line something
is going to take rather a long time. It's our understanding that we officially
should have filled in a form online, which Liz attempted to do but the
website was down, and it wasn't very successful. Of course the internet
connection here is terrible, so I think the next stage is going to take rather a long time...
We're now in customs and we've probably been here about 40 minutes
because there's a whole load of online stuff that
we hadn't finished and we needed to get done, and Jamie's finally finished it. They're
now printing everything out. They want the ship stamp but it's on the boat so
they're coming back to the boat with us.
So we did it we did it all we filled out
all the forms printed them all out and now this kind gentleman is having a
cigarette while we go up to Quarantine!
In the dark recesses of a dodgy dirty old backstreet it's Quarantine! Don't normally do quarantine
actually, but anyway... Quarantine's all done done done done!
The only thing we don't have is our ship's stamp, which we must get and come back to
Customs to stamp our paperwork and I realised, actually, that our ship's stamp is
out of date, it's got our old registry number on it, but I don't think they care, and
I know we don't care. It's clouding over a bit now we
understand there's some some weather coming in
It's been pissing with rain, so it's not been great for recording.But we've just
been walking through the streets and we've come across this little place here,
which is a hardware store, and it has lots of things for the boat. Of course
they have lots of boats here. It's always nice just have a little rummage
around these stores and to see what they have on offer, and I found myself a
little siphon pump which I need, so that's pretty good, wasn't a wasted afternoon.
As you know, we forgot our boat stamped so I had to go back to the boat
to pick it up, and go back to Customs. Well, when I went back to the boat it was
like a living nightmare. Because of this bad weather there's a swell that's been
coming in on both our boat and the one other boat that's next to us. Literally,
I am not joking when I say they are doing this. It was horrendous. Anyway so I
picked up the stamp, I then went back to the Customs office. Horror of Horror, the
customs officer said he needed to come and check our boat. "Come on," I said to
him, "Look, it's really bad," so he said I'm gonna have a chat with my boss. He went
to talk to his boss and his boss apparently said, well what's the problem?
So we walked down to the jetty where our dinghy is tied up and we looked out to sea.
He took one look at the boat and he said, "No I'm not going on that!"
So we took a detour, and we sat down and had a coffee ,and killed a bit of time,
and went back to the office. Anyway, the paperwork's done so I think I'm just going
to sit down here with Liz, and enjoy the one place in Tarempa that does beer!
OK, Liz is just pulling the anchor up now. We're trying to rush to get the anchor up
because... ["push gently, three seconds!"]
OK? ["Yup"]
Sorry, we're trying to get the anchor up because... Last night was probably one of
the worst night's sleep I've had in a very long while. The town of Tarempa is
lovely, and the people were so great. So the town itself's great, but
the anchorage is appalling. So we just had to get out of there as soon as it was
light this morning, because the rolling was awful, that wind just terrible
in every way. A noisy harbour. So we got out and we've come here. So we came out
and we headed north, and we headed east. Went round the top of the island and we
found this little place. It's another little bay. Funnily enough the chart has
us anchored right on top of an island. Have a look at this...
We're in 20 meters. We've got reefs either side of us. You probably can't see
but there's a reef that runs all the way across here, and there's one much closer -
you should be able to see that one just there. But we don't want to stay here
because I don't know if you can see over my shoulder, that's an FAD, a fish attraction
device, and there are three of them in this very small bay. So we don't really
want to be too close to them. They probably tow them out later, but we're
worried about them moving and us moving later, so we're not gonna stay here
tonight. Just been looking on the map, trying to decide what to do next and
we're gonna move north. It's only about six miles from here into what they
describe in the Cruising Guide pilot book as a fjord. It offers really good
protection, so we're just gonna hunker down there for a couple of days because
the good places we want to show you, and discover ourselves, we need to see them
in good light. Just round the corner from here is Waterfall Bay which is
supposed to be spectacular, so we're going to wait until the weather clears
up a bit and then we're going to go to Waterfall Bay and a few other
places that we've got lined up. So at the moment it's a question of really just
hunkering down and getting through this weather.
[What's happening?] Yes, well, we've left that little anchorage because it is a little
bit brighter, but it is still raining... And we're sailing, yes we're sailing! To the
fjord as it's colloquially known.
Wind's picked up now we're clear of the land.
We're getting about 15 knots of true wind. We're doing a good five and a half
knots now. Liz is saying we're hitting six knots so it's a bit like
sailing around the Solent on a typical blustery English day. It's very overcast.
It's drizzly. And it's just nice to be sailing, even though we are both very,
very tired. We didn't get much sleep last night...
We're in 25 meters, which is the deepest we've anchored in for quite a while
actually. We're in this... how to describe it...
fjord. Let's call it a fjord.Beautiful low hills here, which have a
mixture of palm and also trees that look a bit more familiar to us in the
northern hemisphere actually. I can't quite identify them from here.
Millie's just seeing to our welcoming party.
This is the island of
Muber. I think that's how it's pronounced, M U B U R. And we're in what we've called
the fjord. Which is this lake-like inlet with pretty good protection. All the
way around the west side and the east side are these little stilted houses. As
you know we've already been visited by some local kids, so we thought we'd just
nip ashore and have a little snoop around.
We've just got to shore at the island of Mubur. Mubur? And we've tied
up onto a wooden jetty with a very simple ladder. Managed to get
ourselves here. There's Dad with three children. There's a guy mending his
motorbike. Everyone's very smiley! Gonna see what we can see!
Like pretty much all the little villages on these islands, it's built on stilts. So
every house, every walkway, it's all stilts, and you can see that as
you look around.
Behind me you can hear the roar of the waterfall. It's one of two main
waterfalls on this strip. We can hear this waterfall from our boat
which is out at anchor over there. You can also probably hear the kids behind
us playing around on their bikes and they're cycling up and down this
concreted causeway. This causeway basically runs all the way down
to the end of the island and back again, with all of the local residences (as Liz
says) built on stilts. just here by the water's edge.
We've just reached the outer limits of this part of the village. There's a school
here, but doesn't look to me as though it's being used at the moment.
I think it might be lunchtime, 'bout one o'clock, perhaps they're all at lunch? It's very, very
quiet today. I think it maybe also be to do with the weather.
This is one of the three or four mosques on this strip. Always surprises me how
many mosques you get in such a small area. It does seem as if this is
divided up into little settlements. There's a little bit of a gap between
where the school was, they have their own mosque. This is the main one, it has three
speakers pointing in three different directions, and it looks like it's a
work in progress. Looks like they're still building it. I'm looking at the Imam
here. He's just pointed me to his little residence, which
is on the side of the mosque. It's a tiny little room with a fold-out
mattress. Very clean, very simple. This is where he sleeps.
What's your name? ... "Budra!" What's your name? ... "Eyo". Eeyore?
I beg your pardon! Noooo. Naughty! We got as far as the second waterfall and were greeted by next
village's kids who eventually came round to give us the middle finger saying "f**k
you, f**k you!" I actually don't think they really know what they were saying. One of
the kids had a Manchester City football shirt on,
so unfortunately these guys don't have a very good taste in football teams! But never
mind We're now playing Pied Piper with the kids behind, and we're going to
lead them into a dark cavernous cave and lock them up, and teach them that
swearing is very, very naughty.
Behind me, among all the many villagers sitting
here, is a man called Zaidi, and he's just handed his phone over to me to talk to
his son. He's studying on another one of the islands at college,
and he's learning English, and obviously wants to practice his English. It's a
good opportunity for him to talk on the phone and to practice his English.
It's nice sitting here having our "Kopi", our black sweetened coffee, with the locals.
Getting to sort of know them. They seem like a really nice bunch of people. It looks like a calm, friendly village to grow up in.
Liz, talk to us about the complications of trying to learn the language, what are we trying to learn? we're trying to learn Indonesian bahasa
We're trying to learn Indonesian Bahasa. It's not difficult, the pronunciation is very
similar to ours, and they use the same alphabet It's quite simple, but
we're just not learning it. Everyone's trying their English on us. We just
learned yeah... Gular is sugar! Didak is no/without...
Indonesia: "Kopi didak ada gular." English: "Coffee no sugar!"
I'm just arranging a group photo...